Ray Bradbury



Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was an author of Speculative Fiction, Mystery, and Horror. He was also known for his screenplays, poetry, and organizing large anthologies in the Science Fiction genre.

His most well known novel is probably the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451. His most well known short story is probably "A Sound of Thunder", which gave the world the Butterfly of Doom. Other Bradbury works with pages on this wiki include the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains", the dark fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes and the film It Came from Outer Space.

Several of his novels and short stories have been adapted to film and TV series. Back in the 1950s, he discovered that two of his stories had been adapted by EC Comics without permission. He kept his sense of humor about this, writing a note to the publisher praising the adaptations, while remarking that he had "inadvertently" not yet received the royalties. The publisher was eventually able to print several fine authorized adaptations of his work.

Works by Ray Bradbury with their own trope pages include

 * "Christ, Old Student in a New School"
 * Fahrenheit 451
 * The Martian Chronicles
 * Something Wicked This Way Comes
 * "A Sound of Thunder"
 * "There Will Come Soft Rains"

Other works by Ray Bradbury provide examples of
"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, 'You know in your book The Martian Chronicles?' I said, 'Yes?' He said, 'You know where you talk about Deimos rising in the East?' I said, 'Yes?' He said 'No.' -- So I hit him."
 * Accidental Art: "The Year the Glop-Monster Won the Golden Lion at Cannes".
 * Author Avatar: Almost any character who self-identifies as "a writer" tends to have the same same ideals and romantic, lyrical flare as Bradbury.
 * Cloning Blues: "Marionettes, Inc."
 * Contemptible Cover: I Sing the Body Electric - the highest-rated cover on that site.
 * Creepy Child: "The Small Assassin".
 * "Zero Hour".
 * Death Takes a Holiday: "The Scythe".
 * Downer Ending: Several.
 * Dramatic Space Drifting: "Kaleidoscope".
 * Empathic Environment: "Here There Be Tygers".
 * Enfant Terrible: "The Small Assassin" (maybe) and "The Veldt".
 * Evil Phone: "Night Call, Collect".
 * Eyes of Gold: "Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed".
 * Frame Story: His short story anthologies are tenuously linked with ones. In The Illustrated Man, all the stories are animated tattoos on a carnival sideshow's back and The Martian Chronicles is supposed to be a chronological history of Earth's trips to Mars.
 * Fauxtastic Voyage: "The Rocket".
 * Genius Loci: "The Lost City of Mars".
 * Holodeck Malfunction: "The Veldt", depending on one's interpretation.
 * Humans Are the Real Monsters: Several.
 * In the Future We Still Have Roombas: "There Will Come Soft Rains".
 * It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Let's All Kill Constance, with Lampshade Hanging.
 * Kids Are Cruel: "All of Summer in a Day".
 * Kill and Replace: "Marionettes, Inc."
 * Lensman Arms Race: "Golden Kite, Silver Wind" describes an arms race of superstition.
 * Life Embellished: Many of Bradbury's stories are quasi-autobiographical tales, re-imagined with elements of the fantastic and strange. This is particularly true of stories collected in the anthology Dandelion Wine.
 * Lighthouse Point: "The Fog Horn".
 * Literary Allusion Title: Several.
 * Madness Mantra: "The Long Rain".
 * Madness Montage: "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl".
 * Magical Realism: Dandelion Wine and many of his short stories fall into this, usually combined with a hefty dose of nostalgia.
 * Master of Illusion: "Mars is Heaven".
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: "2116", a Bradbury-penned Christmas musical with robots.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: "The Man Upstairs".
 * Out, Damned Spot!: "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl".
 * Purple Prose: He's pretty good at it, though.
 * The Red Planet: The Martian Chronicles, among others.
 * Ring Ring CRUNCH: "The Murderer".
 * Science Destroys Magic: "On The Orient, North" and others.
 * Science Is Bad: "The Murderer" and others.
 * Send in the Search Team: Several.
 * Sense Freak: "The Fox and the Forest".
 * Stock Ness Monster: "The Fog Horn".
 * Talk to the Fist: An anecdote attributed to Bradbury, though nobody seems to know the source:


 * The World Is Not Ready: "The Flying Machine".