Ray Douglas Bradbury Essays - Mars In Fiction, Free Essays

Ray Douglas Bradbury Essays - Mars In Fiction, Free Essays Ray Douglas Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22,1920. He was the third born son of Leonard Spauldling Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury. In the fall of 1926 the Bradbury family moved from their home in Waukegan to Tucson, Arizona. However, their stay there only lasted until May of 1927 when they moved back to their original habitation. Bradbury began writing his own literature on butcher paper when he was 11 years old. Ray and his family moved again moved to Tucson, Arizona and back to Waukegan, Illinois again in 1932. This rapid movement was initiated when Leonard Bradbury was laid off from his job installing telephone lines, only to be rehired later in the year. In 1934 the Bradbury family moved yet again, but this time to Los Angeles, California. Ray attended high school in Los Angeles. He graduated in 1938, finishing his formal school career. Bradbury decided that in order to further his education, he would spend his days at his typewriter and his nights at the library, reading. Since he needed a way to make some money to get by, Ray took a job selling newspapers on Los Angeles street corners. His first published story was ?Hollerbocher?s Dilemma,? which was printed in an amateur fan magazine in 1938. In 1939, Ray published four issues of Futuria Fantasia, his own fan magazine, in which he contributed most of the published material. Bradbury?s first paying gig, was ?Pendulum,? which was published in Super Science Stories in 1941. Finally in 1942 he discovered his distinctive style of writing after writing ?The Lake.? By 1943 he had given up selling newspapers, and began a full-time job as a free lance write for many periodicals. In 1945 the magazine Best American Short Stories, selected Bradbury?s short story ?The Big Black and White Game,? to appear in an issue of the magazine. Bradbury?s most significant published works up until the present include: Dark Carnival in 1947, The Martian Chronicles in 1950, Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and many short stories, screenplays, essays and poems which are too numerous to name. Ray Bradbury?s writing has been critically acclaimed and heralded as some of the most influential media in the Science-Fiction genre. So far is his lifetime Ray has received the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin award in 1954, the Aviation-Space Writer?s Association Award for best article in an American Magazine in 1967, the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement, and the Grand Master Award from the Science-Fiction Writers of America. Also his animated film about the history of flight, Icarus Montgolfier Wright, was nominated for an Oscar, and his teleplay of the Halloween Tree won an emmy. Presently, Ray Bradbury resides in San Diego, California, where he still writes and gives lectures. The Martian Chronicles The book of Bradbury?s creation that I read was the Martian Chronicles. Initially, I was intrigued by Ray Bradbury?s implementation of elaborately descriptive settings. Each chronicle takes place during a different month and year, arranged in chronological order, from January 1999 to October 2026. Since the story spans over a long period of time, there are several locations in which the events occur. The major settings of the story include: Ohio, a small town next to the rocket launch pad, a large desert on Mars, with canals, that is a harbor to the ?dead cities,? a town on Mars which is the home of Yll and Ylla , the Martian landing site next to one of the canals, a Martian insane asylum, a town, that seems almost dreamlike in a sense, because it is the memories of the flight crew projected onto the Martian landscape, a luggage shop, and a city surrounded by rural farm area, that has only one house left standing. These settings are used as a device to move the novel along from each individual story to the next. I think that this was a very interesting concept, because there are no main characters in the book. However, there are main characters within each chronicle. Ylla is the first Martian introduced in the book; she is friendly, kind, and has an outgoing personality. James Stupple indicated in his book The Past,