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Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter and one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Born on August 22nd, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois. His mother, Esther, was a Swedish immigrant and his father, Leonard, was of English ancestry. He was given the middle name Douglas after the actor Douglas Fairbanks, one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the 1910s and 1920s.

The Bradbury family lived in Tucson Arizona for a year from 1926 to 1927 then it was back to Waukegan. They tried Tucson again from 1932 to 1933 and then on to Los Angeles in 1934. The 14-year-old loved Hollywood and met radio star George Burns. Most people know of Ray Bradbury the writer, but did you know his first paid gig as a writer came when the 14-year-old sold a joke to Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show which ran from 1933 to 1950, when Burns and Allen then transitioned to television.

Bradbury was an avid reader of H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1936 at a secondhand book store, young Ray learned about a weekly meeting of the Los Angeles Fiction Society and at 16 he joined their Thursday-night get together. The teenager would sell newspapers on a street corner and then roller skate to the meetings!

The avid sci-fi enthusiast wrote his first published sci-fi story in 1938, Hollerbochen’s Dilemma. Bradbury would later say about his first story, "no one enjoyed my story" and "I think it was terrible myself". Keep in mind he was only 17. However, in 2014, Hollerbochen’s Dilemma was nominated for the 1939Retro-Hugo Award for Best Short Story.Although Ray Bradbury lived a long and successful life he died two years before the nomination at the age of 91 on June 5th 2012 in Los Angeles.

Was Ray Bradbury destined for success and fame? Well, to answer that question we share the words from Ray Douglas Bradbury himself. In his 1938 Los Angeles High School Yearbook he wrote, likes to write stories, admired as a thespian and headed for literary distinction! That’s amazing. There’s much more we could share with you about the legendary author, but we’ll save it for another Ray Bradbury short story in future episodes of The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.

Okay, I couldn’t help myself, one more thing… to say he was prolific would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts, Bradbury wrote more than 30 books and more than 600 short stories.

Today’s story comes from the Summer 1944 edition of Planet Stories, which was sold for 20 cents. Turn with me to page 51 for Morgue Ship by Ray Bradbury…

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