Special thanks to @waywardsouls and @IamSongforsomeone for recommending Ray Bradbury to discuss!
❝We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.❞
-- Ray Bradbury
American fantasy, horror, and science fiction writer, Ray Douglas Bradbury was known for his highly imaginative short stories and novels that incorporates poetic styles, nostalgia for childhood, and the awareness of changing technology and the effects it contributes. He was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He knew he wanted to be a writer when he was twelve years old and he said he wrote every day since he decided to be a writer. Once he graduated from high school, he started going to his local library three times a week because he wanted to learn more. He wasn't able to afford attending college; he said, "'Libraries raised me.'"
He adored horror films such as The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and the books of L. Frank Baum and Edgar Rice Burroughs. To earn money while he wrote, Bradbury sold newspapers. His first published short story was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma" (1938) featured in a fan magazine called Imagination!. In November 1941, "Pendulum" (written with Henry Hasse) was published in the first professional science fiction magazine, Super Science Stories. Overall Bradbury published more than 30 books, close to 600 short stories, and countless poems, essays, screenplays and plays in his lifetime.
His well known novels were Fahrenheit 451 (1953), The Illustrated Man (1951), The Martian Chronicles (1950), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007 and is one of the most celebrated author in the 21st century. He continued to write up until 2008 with novels and short stories, one of his four daughters would help transcribe his words to the page. In 2012, he died in Los Angeles at the age of 91, his fascinating works will be remembered for decades to come.
Discussion Questions:
Bradbury called himself a fantasy writer than a science fiction writer. What genres do you, as a reader, gravitate towards? And as a writer, what genre or trope you want to try to write?
As a writer, what's your daily / weekly goal to write?
And as a reader, how many short stories, poems, or novels' worlds do you live in, on a monthly basis?
Always open to additional questions and comments on about Ray Bradbury and his works.
If there is another author you would like to see a discussion on, please post your suggestion in the comments below for a chance to be featured in a future chapter!
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