In November 2000, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was conferred upon Mr. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. Ray Bradbury's work has been included in four Best American Short Story collections. His short stories have appeared in more than 1,000 school curriculum 'recommended reading' anthologies. In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays. Other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind.

In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state. Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, which many consider to be Bradbury's masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden. His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter.

Although his formal education ended there, he became a 'student of life,' selling newspapers on L.A. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938.

Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born Augin Waukegan, Illinois.

R is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury