Raymond Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard Spaulding and Esther Moberg Bradbury. He began his writing career while still a teen-ager, publishing Futuria Fantasia, a fan magazine. His first professional sale, the short story "Pendulum," appeared in the November 1941 edition of Super Science Stories.

After working as a newsboy from 1940 until 1943, Bradbury turned to a fulltime writing career. During the 1940s, his work was published in several science-fiction magazines, including Weird Tales.

The 1950s and early 1960s proved to be Bradbury's most productive time as a fiction writer. Published in 1950, his first short story collection, The Martian Chronicles, achieved enormous popularity. Several more collections followed; The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, A Medicine for Melancholy, and The Machineries of Joy were among the most successful. He also published three novels—Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and Something...