Author: Jonathan R. Eller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252093356
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Becoming Ray Bradbury chronicles the making of an iconic American writer by exploring Ray Bradbury's childhood and early years of his long life in fiction, film, television, radio, and theater. Jonathan R. Eller measures the impact of the authors, artists, illustrators, and filmmakers who stimulated Bradbury's imagination throughout his first three decades. Unprecedented access to Bradbury's personal papers and other private collections provides insight into his emerging talent through his unpublished correspondence, his rare but often insightful notes on writing, and his interactions with those who mentored him during those early years. Beginning with his childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, this biography follows Bradbury's development from avid reader to maturing author, making a living writing for the genre pulps and mainstream magazines. Eller illuminates the sources of Bradbury's growing interest in the human mind, the human condition, and the ambiguities of life and death--themes that became increasingly apparent in his early fiction. Bradbury's correspondence documents his frustrating encounters with the major trade publishing houses and his earliest unpublished reflections on the nature of authorship. Eller traces the sources of Bradbury's very conscious decisions, following the sudden success of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, to voice controversial political statements in his fiction. Eller also elucidates the complex creative motivations that yielded Fahrenheit 451. Becoming Ray Bradbury reveals Bradbury's emotional world as it matured through his explorations of cinema and art, his interactions with agents and editors, his reading discoveries, and the invaluable reading suggestions of older writers. These largely unexplored elements of his life pave the way to a deeper understanding of his more public achievements, providing a biography of the mind, the story of Bradbury's self-education and the emerging sense of authorship at the heart of his boundless creativity.
Author: Jonathan R. Eller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252052293
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 542
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Book Description
Celebrated storyteller, cultural commentator, friend of astronauts, prophet of the Space Age—by the end of the 1960s, Ray Bradbury had attained a level of fame and success rarely achieved by authors, let alone authors of science fiction and fantasy. He had also embarked on a phase of his career that found him exploring new creative outlets while reinterpreting his classic tales for generations of new fans. Drawing on numerous interviews with Bradbury and privileged access to personal papers and private collections, Jonathan R. Eller examines the often-overlooked second half of Bradbury's working life. As Bradbury's dreams took him into a wider range of nonfiction writing and public lectures, the diminishing time that remained for creative pursuits went toward Hollywood productions like the award-winning series Ray Bradbury Theater. Bradbury developed the Spaceship Earth narration at Disney's EPCOT Center; appeared everywhere from public television to NASA events to comic conventions; published poetry; and mined past triumphs for stage productions that enjoyed mixed success. Distracted from storytelling as he became more famous, Bradbury nonetheless published innovative experiments in autobiography masked as detective novels, the well-received fantasy The Halloween Tree and the masterful time travel story "The Toynbee Convector." Yet his embrace of celebrity was often at odds with his passion for writing, and the resulting tension continuously pulled at his sense of self. The revelatory conclusion to the acclaimed three-part biography, Bradbury Beyond Apollo tells the story of an inexhaustible creative force seeking new frontiers.
Author: Jonathan R. Eller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096630
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
In Ray Bradbury Unbound, Jonathan R. Eller continues the story begun in his acclaimed Becoming Ray Bradbury, following the beloved author's evolution from a short story master to a multi-media creative force and outspoken visionary. At the height of his powers as a poetic prose stylist, Bradbury shifted his creative attention to film and television, where new successes gave him an enduring platform as a compelling cultural commentator. His passionate advocacy validated the U.S. space program's mission, extending his pivotal role as a chronicler of human values in an age of technological wonders. Informed by many years of interviews with Bradbury as well as an unprecedented access to personal papers and private collections, Ray Bradbury Unbound provides the definitive portrait of how a legendary American author helped shape his times.
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
ISBN: 1789095409
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
Celebrating Ray Bradbury's centennial, a deluxe illustrated commemorative collection of his finest crime stories -- tales as strange and wonderful as his signature fantasy. Time travelers...dark carnivals...living automata...and detectives? Honoring the 100th birthday of Ray Bradbury, renowned author of Fahrenheit 451, this new, definitive collection of the master's less well-known crime fiction, published in a high-grade premium collectible edition, features classic stories and rare gems, a number of which became episodes of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and THE RAY BRADBURY THEATER, including the tale Bradbury called "one of the best stories in any field that I have ever written." Is it murder to destroy a robot if it looks and speaks and thinks and feels like a human being? Can a ventriloquist be incriminated by the testimony of his own dummy? Can a time traveler prevent his younger self from killing the woman they both loved? And can the survivor of a pair of Siamese twins investigate his own brother's murder? No other writer has ever rivaled the imagination and narrative gifts of Ray Bradbury, and the 20 unforgettable stories in this collection demonstrate this singular writer's extraordinary range, influence and emotional power.
Author: David Seed
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096908
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
As much as any individual, Ray Bradbury brought science fiction's ideas into the mainstream. Yet he transcended the genre in both form and popularity, using its trappings to explore timely social concerns and the kaleidoscope of human experience while in the process becoming one of America's most beloved authors. David Seed follows Bradbury's long career from the early short story masterpieces through his work in a wide variety of broadcast and film genres to the influential cultural commentary he spread via essays, speeches, and interviews. Mining Bradbury's classics and hard-to-find archival, literary, and cultural materials, Seed analyzes how the author's views on technology, authoritarianism, and censorship affected his art; how his Midwest of dream and dread brought his work to life; and the ways film and television influenced his creative process and visually-oriented prose style. The result is a passionate statement on Bradbury's status as an essential literary writer deserving of a place in the cultural history of his time.
Author: Jonathan R. Eller
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873387798
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 606
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Book Description
This is a textual, bibliographical and cultural study of 60 years of Bradbury's fiction. The authors draw upon correspondence with his publishers, agents and friends, as well as archival manuscripts, to examine the story of Bradbury's authorship over more than half a century.
Author: Sam Weller
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062245066
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 438
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Book Description
Accomplished journalist Sam Weller met the Ray Bradbury while writing a cover story for the Chicago Tribune Magazine and spent hundreds of hours interviewing Bradbury, his editors, family members, and longtime friends. With unprecedented access to private archives, he uncovered never–before–published letters, documents, and photographs that help tell the story of this literary genius and his remarkable creative journey. The result is a richly textured, detailed biography that illuminates the origins and accomplishments of Bradbury's fascinating mind.
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451678193
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by humans who want to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth.
Author: Jeffrey Kahan
Publisher: Kent State University
ISBN: 9781606353653
Category : Horror tales
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Ray Bradbury recognized as a master of horror fiction Bradbury, though a celebrated author, is often shortchanged. He is valorized within one genre (science fiction) and marginalized in others (detective fiction, film scripts, poetry, and, yes, horror fiction). His importance and influence have been distorted by critics who never foresaw our present paradigm, one in which horror writers like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith are imprinted by Oxford, and Stephen King, once dismissed as a schlock meister par excellence, is awarded the National Medal of Arts. While indeed a genre-defying giant in science fiction, Bradbury deserves a place alongside the traditional masters of the macabre. The essays in this collection decrypt Bradbury's horror tales and decipher their social and artistic impact. Just scratching the surface of Bradbury's genius, these essays demonstrate that, while much remains buried in the Bradbury corpus, none of it is dead. The New Ray Bradbury Review, prepared and edited by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, examines the impact of Bradbury's writings on American culture and his legacy as one of the master storytellers of his time. The New Ray Bradbury Review and the multivolume Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury are the primary publications of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, the major archive of Bradbury's writings located at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI).
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062071025
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 is an enduring masterwork of twentieth-century American literature—a chilling vision of a dystopian future built on the foundations of ignorance, censorship, and brutal repression. The origins and evolution of Bradbury’s darkly magnificent tale are explored in A Pleasure to Burn, a collection of sixteen selected shorter works that prefigure the grand master’s landmark novel. Classic, thematically interrelated stories alongside many crucial lesser-known ones—including, at the collection’s heart, the novellas “Long After Midnight” and “The Fireman”—A Pleasure to Burn is an indispensable companion to the most powerful work of America’s preeminent storyteller, a wondrous confirmation of the inimitable Bradbury’s brilliance, magic . . . and fire.
