Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920. He was the third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (a telephone lineman for Waukegan Bureau of Power & Light and Esther Marie Bradbury. Ray lived in Waukegan, Illinois for six years until his family left to Tucson, Arizona in 1926.When Ray Bradbury was eleven, he would be writing stories on butcher. Ray was very much into science fiction, horror movies, books, comic books, and magic acts.At age 12, Ray read a newspaper headline reading "World Would End Tomorrow". Young Ray was all excited about this event so he and his brother packed a lunched and camped out on a ridge to see the end. They waited for some time and nothing happened. Disappoint ...view middle of the document...
Some of Ray's influences have been "... L. Frank Baum's magic land of Oz, the never-never Africa of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, and Barsoom, Burroughs' impossible, romantic Mars...". But with even these writers, his biggest influence was not of a writer, but of a magician act of a passing circus. The act was called Mr. Electrico."Mr. Electrico sat in his electric chair, being fired with ten billion volts of pure blue sizzling power. Reaching out into the audience, his eyes flaming. His white hair standing on end, sparks leaping between his smiling teeth, he brushed his Excalibur sword over the heads of the children, knighting them with fire. When he came to me, he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose. The lightning jumped into me. Mr. Electrico cried 'Live Forever!'A few weeks later he started writing my first short story about the planet Mars. From that time to this, I have never stopped. God bless Mr. Electrico, the catalyst, wherever he is"The short story that Ray is talking about is "Pendulum" which he sold (his very first sale) to Super Science Story on his 21st Birthday. Now that he had his dream bubble has popped, his imagination is open to everything and he can write with more courage than he did before.A year after "Pendulum" sold, he wrote the 1942 "...