Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, a town he would later fictionalize as Green Town in numerous stories and several novels. His father, Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, worked as a telephone lineman. His mother was Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury. Bradbury had older twin brothers, Leonard and Samuel, who were born in 1916, and a younger sister, Elizabeth, born in 1926. His brother Samuel died in 1918, and his sister in 1927 (Nolan 39–40).

Bradbury has described his childhood in detail, claiming total recall from birth on. Seeing Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the age of three profoundly affected him. Memories and images of Chaney as Quasimodo, a deformed man perceived as a monster, strongly inform A Graveyard for Lunatics , Bradbury's novel about being a screenwriter in Hollywood. Other childhood passions included "Douglas Fairbanks, Edgar Allan Poe when [he] was eight, Buck Rogers at nine, Tarzan at ten, and all the science fiction magazines from these same years" (Nolan 5). David Mogen, the author of one of the two scholarly monographs on Bradbury's work, argues that Bradbury's "immersion in popular culture" from an early age grew to include a wide variety of media, including "books, comics, movies, theater, museums, magic-shows, circuses," all of which shaped him as a writer (Mogen 2).

Because of ongoing work and economic problems, the Bradbury family moved often, from Waukegan to Arizona and back in 1926 - 27 and 1932 - 33, then to Los Angeles in 1934 (Nolan 43). The family stayed in California long enough for Bradbury to enter Los Angeles High School, where he was active in the drama club and took writing courses (Nolan 45). Bradbury's early interest in acting, which he almost chose as a career, has remained strong throughout his life. He began publishing poetry, short stories, and articles during his high school years. After graduating in 1938, Bradbury continued to live with his family, selling newspapers for ten dollars a week (Nolan 52).

Bradbury's love for both his hometowns, Waukegan (Green Town) and Los Angeles (depicted in Death Is a Lonely Business and A Graveyard for Lunatics as energetic and creative), comes through in his writing. However, Mogen cites one of Bradbury's stories as well as personal interviews to show that Bradbury's own adolescence was difficult: he wore glasses and was teased by his peers, and found solace in his love for movies. He sought out stars, rollerskating ten miles to the studio to get their autographs (Mogen 5), a story he also tells about his teenage self in A Graveyard for Lunatics .