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 * Ray Douglas Bradbury by Gracious Addai**

Ray Bradbury, one of America's celebrated and greatest horror, fantasy, and science fiction writers of all time is said to have revolutionized fiction books by introducing literary value in his novels that examine human values. In Ray Bradbury's novels, Bradbury uses his early childhood years in his place of birth, Waukegan, Illinois, as an extremely, important, constant source of intense sensations, feelings, and images that generate stories. Ray Bradbury constantly tries to exemplify popular culture in his books. Bradbury's early childhood experiences of circuses and carnivals exerted a major influence in his imagination as can be traced back to one of his earlier work, __The Dandelion Wine__. During post WW11 and during the Cold War, American writers were not really known around the world but Ray Bradbury put the United States of America on the map with Utopian based novel, __Fahrenheit 451__.

Even though Ray Douglas Bradbury believes his novels were in regards masks and metaphors of his life, his books were of different genres. __The Dandelion Wine__ (1957) was a book of childhood reveries, __Hunchback of Notre Dame__- horror fiction, __The Lake__ (1944)- literary value, and __Fahrenheit 451__ as a Utopian novel. Bradbury got inspiration to write from __The Oz__ books as long with the passing away of his sister in his childhood years. Upon his birth on August 22, 1920, Ray Bradbury dedicated his life to collecting history in his fiction books indirectly. Ray was a product of his time and went through the same feelings most kids had because of the world war affecting every child during Rays childhood. __Fahrenheit 451__ is a great example of how history can be recorded through books.

When reviewed by many critics, Ray Bradbury is praised for having a style in which the book contains great depth if not paid attention to greatly. In one of Bradbury's novels, __Fahrenheit 451__, he uses mirror imagery and nature imagery that makes the reader take in the fact that the main character, Montag uses his hands as a reflector of his conscience in where he stops burning houses or anything that is filled with books. As a result of this, Montag's hand becomes a self relection of his conscience and makes him understand how there was another world before his book burning time and lets him understand how he is missing out on a lot. In this novel, __Fahrenheit 451__, Ray Bradbury accomplishes a feat in which the future meets the past.

In other works like __The Martian Chronicles__, Ray Bradbury has recieved raved complements on how the book came to be written. In story of this novel is how the surviving humans that escape to Mars from troubled earth run into conflicts with the original Martians, known as aliens on earth. The downfall of the surviving human race on Mars is how the humans resisted to adapt to ways of survival on Mars but instead wanted to bring idealogies from earth to Mars. This novel by Bradbury shows the low intelligience of mankind in its stubbornnes to adapt for survival because of recent luxuries on earth. In this novel, __The Martian Chronicles__, Ray Bradbury establishes a style in which short stories are weaven into a book.

Ray Bradbury also shows the viewpoint of most young adolescent males during his time in the novel __Dandelion Wine__. In this novel, the main character at twelve years old is Douglas Spaulding who finds himself on the verge of teenage years. Douglas is battling a problem of his secure and uncomplicated world of childhood and on the other side of the fence, an advanterous future. In this book, Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury lets the reader know of how ones childhood years are golden and has to be cherished during and after that period in ones life.

All of Ray Bradbury's hardwork into his novels can be seen in his lifetime achievements by the number of prestigious awards he has recieved. These awards range from the Nebula Award (1988), Prometheus Award (1984), The Gandalf Award (1980), Balrog Award (1979), World Fantasy Award (1977), Aviation-Space Writers Association Award (1968), O'Henry Memorial Award (1947/1948), and Bram Stoker Award (1989). The grandest of all these awards is the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2000). Ray Bradbury was awarded the Citizen of the Year Award from the city of Los Angeles in 1995. In 1970, Bradbury was inducted into The Science fiction Hall of Fame. Even though Ray Bradbury says all these awards don't define him as a person, it is very clear what this man has accomplished in his lifetime. Without a doubt Ray Bradbury has contributed a lot to the science fiction category of books regarding the way he revolutionized it by tying in real life events with possible future living styles.


 * Citations and Annotations**

Chalton, Nicola, Ed. "Bradbury, Ray.**"** __Literary Lifelines: Vol. 2__**."** Danbury: The Diagram Group, 1998, 30-31.

This reference book __Literary Lifelines__ edited by A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel has become essential on collecting information on Ray Bradbury because of the comments by critics. The section on Ray Bradbury gives the reader information about what other science fiction writers were around during Ray Bradbury's years of writing. The book also gives the reader facts about events that happened during Ray's years on earth as from Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to JFK's assassination to Bill Clinton being elected to the Presidency. I would recommend this book because it offers a glimpse of what kind of stories are in Ray Bradbury's books like __Dandelion Wine and Fahrenheit 451__.

McGovern, Rafeeq O. "Bradburys Fahrenheit 451." DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Fuquay Varina High School/WCPS/. 23 May 2008. [|http://find.galegroup.com]

In this database, the author reviews the point of views of critics reviewing Ray Bradbury's book, __Fahrenheit 451__. Renowned science fiction critic Robert Reilly praises Ray Bradbury for having a style in which the book has great depth. In __Fahrenheit 451__, Bradbury uses mirror and nature imagery that makes the reader understand how the main character, Montag, uses hands as a reflector of his conscience in where he stops burning houses filled with books. As a result of hands reflecting how Montag's self-conscience makes him understand how there was another world before his book burning time and lets him understand how he is missing out on a lot of history and what is right and wrong.

Stupple, A. James. "The Past, the Future, and Ray Bradbury." //DISCovering Authors//. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. //Student Resource Center - Gold//. Gale. Fuquay Varina High School/WCPS/. 26 May. 2008 [|http://find.galegroup.com]

This database evaluates the two science fiction books written by the author Ray Bradbury, The __Martian Chronicles__ and __Fahrenheit 451__. __Fahrenheit 451__ is a science fiction book that in time all books were forbidden from being read or existing. The plot of the novel is similar to the Nazi forbidance of books during WW11 in the countries and territories where the Nazi regime were in control of. The __Martian Chronicles__ brings to mind how the human race's intelligence is not very high. In this novel, humans colonize mars after fleeing from troubled earth and later have troubles with the original Martians. In both these science fiction books, Ray Bradbury accomplishes a feat that was not yet developed by weaving short stories into a novel and also accomplishes a novel where the past meets the future.

Toupounce, William. "Ray Bradbury." __American Writers: Supplement IV Part 1__. Eds. A Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York. 1996. 101-118.

This reference book __American Writers__ edited by A. Walton Litz is very helpful because it includes very important criticism and information on Ray Bradbury in an article by William Toupounce. The article contains valuable information about where Ray Bradbury got his inspiration to write science fiction books and how his early childhood affected him greatly regardin the setting of his books. I plan on using this book for facts on my trading card. I would recommend this reference book to other students because it contains valuable background information about the author on his major early childhood events that made Ray Bradbury the writer he has become today.