Ray Bradbury

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(August 22, 1920 – May 6, 2012)

Ray Bradbury first became interested in SF when he read a A. Hayatt Verril Ant story in Amazing at age 9. He continued to read and got hooked on Astounding in 1937.

In the fall of that year, he met a member of LASFS in a bookstore, and when T. Bruce Yerke heard there was another reader around, he invited him to the club. Bradbury went to a meeting where he met Henry Kuttner and Forry Ackerman. (This was also the week when the first issue of Voice of the Imagi-Nation was published.) He joined the following week and was soon club librarian and writing for various fanzines. He was a member of WAFFF and an adherent FooFoo.

In Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan, Yerke describes the teenaged Bradbury: "This fantastic creature became endeared to all of us henceforth, and though often the victim of assaults with trays and hammers by infuriated victims of his endless pranks and disturbances, remained a primary figure in the club all through 1938, 1939, 1940, and 1941."

Bradbury began to publish science fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. His first published story was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma", which appeared in the fanzine Imagination! in January, 1938. He started his own fanzine, Futuria Fantasia, in 1939 and wrote most of its four issues. He later became a filthy pro. He was a member of the West Coast Writers Group. He is considered one of the Big Three.

Author/critic Christopher Isherwood compared his work to that of Poe's.

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959
One of the more distinguished fans-turned-pro, had made a reasonably good name for himself in fanzine work before America's entry into World War II, tho his neoish characteristics were not loveable. But, crashing the pros, he began to turn out fantasy and science-fantasy which, tho in a quasi-mystical style not representative of the best modern SF, gained much praise and popularity in the late 40s and early 50s either in spite of or because of its close resemblance to modern "arty" writing. (During this period of Fifth Fandom we were undergoing all sorts of soulsearching about stf not being Literature, and welcomed a Real Artistic Writer.) From this output derived Bradburyism as a descriptive of the gentleman's attitude toward the world; it's merely another department of that Anti-Materialist cult which keens over the grave of home handicrafts and proclaims the Evil of dirty old mechanistic science's trampling on Higher Spiritual Values.

Awards, Honors and GoHships:


Person 1920—2012
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