Ray Bradbury, Master of Sci-Fi Genre and Author of 'Fahrenheit 451,' Turns 91
Ray Bradbury, the author of “Fahrenheit 451” and to many, the father of the 21st century, turned 91 today.
Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury is a distant relative of the Spalding family, now a household name in the sports equipment industry. However, Bradbury’s family was broke during the depression and could not afford to send him to college. Instead, he went to libraries.
"Libraries raised me,” he told the New York Times in a 2009 interview. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
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It was during that time that he wrote “Fahrenheit 451” on a paid typewriter at UCLA’s Powell library. In a somewhat ironic twist for a man who says he does not believe in colleges, the 1953 book would eventually become required reading for millions of American students and a staple in American literature college courses. And many critics say that the book’s description of a future overran with advertising, violence, political correctness, and mass censorship was an eerily accurate prediction of our present times.
Bradbury would later go on to write several more classic novels and short stories, including “The Martian Chronicles,” a highly influential short story collection about humans who flee a destroyed Earth to colonize Mars.
As one of the masters of the science fiction genre, Bradbury has been credited for inspiring a wide array of technological innovations with his stories, including the Walkman and interactive television. But he has also been an inspiration for city planning, including several shopping centers in southern California.
According to Bradbury, however, he wishes city planners would take more of his advice and rely on more simplistic options. His answer? Food.
“Places to eat,” he said. “The secret of cities is eating. In Paris there are 20,000 restaurants. You go down Main Street, people are sitting out and people-watching -- that's what I'm talking about.”
Bradbury credits great storytellers for being the main ingredient of a great story. Elaborating on what makes his stories great, Bradbury told Salon.com that he has “a strong sense of metaphor. And that with my stories, you can remember it because I grew up on Greek myths, Roman myths, Egyptian myths and the Norse Eddas. So when you have influences like that, your metaphors are so strong that people can't forget them.”
In 2000, Bradbury was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and was presented the National Medal of Arts by President and Mrs. Bush in 2004. He is currently living in southern California.
