Although well-known to and beloved by many as a leading writer of science fiction, Ray Bradbury is a far more complicated subject than most may realize. In the world of science fiction, he is an object of admiration and dismay, while outside the genre, he is an enigmatic figure who blends a lyricism, nostalgia, and scientific possibility in ways that surprise and delight.

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, the third son of Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury. By age eight, Bradbury had discovered pulps like Amazing Stories, which he began to read voraciously. His father suffered the trials of most Depression-era Americans, moving his family from and back to Waukegan three times, before finally settling in Los Angeles in 1934. That year, Bradbury began to write in earnest, publishing in an amateur fan magazine in 1938 his first story, "Hollerbochen's...