The Playground

by Ray Bradbury, Jonathan Davis (Read by)

Overview

Ray Bradbury, (l920 - ) a rabid and devoted science fiction fan from his early adolescence and from the early years of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, sold his first story (a collaboration with Henry Haase) to FUTURE SCIENCE FICTION when he was l9 years old and by the end of the l940's was one of the most admired science fiction writers. The irony or paradox of Bradbury's career is that it was - in his mind - the result of his essential failure. Bradbury's his poetic, impressionistic, surreal and decidedly anti-rational stories were deemed unsuitable by John W. Campbell's ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION and virtually all of his early work went to second and third-level magazines.. (Bradbury did sell two tiny pieces to Campbell in l943, the only stories he ever placed there.) In the early postwar years, however,Bradbury's short stories found outlet in the so-called mainstream slick magazines - MADEMOISELLE, CHARM, REDBOOK, ESQUIRE - and he became the first science fiction writer to achieve some significant literary recognition through publication in Martha Foley's BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES and the O.HENRY Prize volumes. His first "novel" - actually a collection of related short stories compiled from work he had published in PLANET, FUTURE and THRILLING WONDER STORIES - was published by Doubleday in l950 and has never been out of print. (It is the basis of both a television and theatrical film.) Collections which followed, THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, A MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY and others were also successful as was Bradbury's early novel, SOMETHING WICKED HIS WAY COMES (also the basis of a Disney produced film in the l980's). Bradbury collaborated with John Huston in the early l950's on a film treatment for MOBY DICK and many of his short stories have been the basis for television and theatrical films, notably the feature-length THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT. He is also a playwright and poet.

RAY BRADBURY: WHEN I WAS IN KNEE PANTS was the title of Damon Knight's long essay in the late l950's on Bradbury's work and influence and indeed Bradbury has been regarded as the poet of childhood; no writer in this century has been able to recapture the fears and sounds and dreams of childhood as has he through an entire body of work. (Perhaps Henry Roth in his l934 novel, CALL IT SLEEP told from the point of view of a six year old tenement boy is his only peer.) Bradbury has through his languorous, imagic, acute sensory style influenced almost every fantasy writer who succeeded him. In l989, Bradbury was awarded the Grandmaster trophy of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and In the year 2000 he was awarded the medal for literary distinction by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. for distinction in literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501256462
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	07/01/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

Hometown:

Los Angeles, California

Date of Birth:

August 22, 1920

Place of Birth:

Waukegan, Illinois

Education:

Attended schools in Waukegan, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California

Website:

http://www.raybradbury.com

Editorial Reviews

How ingenious, the cold, deep playground. You never knew where anyone lived. The boy who knocked your teeth out, who was he? Nobody knew. Where did he live? Nobody knew. How to find him? Nobody knew. Why, you could come here one day, beat the living tar out of some smaller child and run on the next day to some other playground. They would never find you...you could return to this playground a month later, and if the little child whose teeth you knocked out was there and recognized you, you could deny it...and when his back is turned, knock him over. And run off down nameless streets, a nameless person.

Publisher