Ray Bradbury, on imagination:

Love what you do and do what you love.

Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it.

You do what you want, what you love.

Imagination should be the center of your life.

– Ray Bradbury.

Born on this day – Ray Bradbury:

Writer

August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012

Credits:

Books:

Death is a Lonely Business (1985); A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990); Let's All Kill Constance (2003); Dandelion Wine (1957); Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962); Farewell Summer (2006); Summer Morning, Summer Night (2008); Fahrenheit 451 (1953); The Halloween Tree (1972); Green Shadows, White Whale (1992); Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines (1998); From the Dust Returned (2001); Dark Carnival (1947); The Martian Chronicles (1950); The Illustrated Man (1951); A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (1952); The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953); The October Country (1955); The Day It Rained Forever (1959); A Medicine for Melancholy (1959); The Small Assassin (1962); R Is for Rocket (1962); The Machineries of Joy (1964); The Vintage Bradbury (1965); The Autumn People (1965); Twice 22 (1966); Tomorrow Midnight (1966); S is for Space (1966); Fever Dream And Other Fantasies (1968); I Sing the Body Electric (1969); Ray Bradbury (1975); Long After Midnight (1976); Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (1979); The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980); The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980); Dinosaur Tales (1984); A Memory of Murder (1984); The Toynbee Convector (1988); Selected from Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed (1990); Classic Stories 2 (1990); Quicker Than the Eye (1996); Driving Blind (1997); One More for the Road (2002); Stories Volume 2 (2003); Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003); The Cat's Pajamas (2004); Now and Forever (2007); We'll Always Have Paris (2009); A Pleasure to Burn (2010); The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: Critical Edition Vol 1 (2011); The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: Critical Edition Vol 2 (2014); The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: Critical Edition Vol 3 (2017); Killer, Come Back To Me (2020); Venus Remembered (2020); The Poems (1945); Skeletons (1945); The Homecoming (1946); The Black Ferris (1948); The Blue Bottle / Death-Wish (1950); There Will Come Soft Rains (By: Leonard Nimoy) (1950); The Veldt (1950); A Sound of Thunder (1951); The Fog Horn (1951); The Playground (1953); All Summer in a Day (1954); The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1972); The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978); One Timeless Spring (1980); The Love Affair (1982); Death Has Lost Its Charm For Me (1987); Fever Dream (1987); The Thing at the Top of the Stairs (1988); The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007); Marionettes, Inc. (2009); Defense Mech (2021); Why Man Explores (1977); The Art of Playboy (1985); Zen in the Art of Writing (1987); Folon's Folons (1990); Yestermorrow (1991); Rod Steiger: Memoirs of a Friendship (1998); Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities 1950-2050 (2001); Conversations with Ray Bradbury (2004); Bradbury Speaks (2005); Match to Flame (2007); Listen to the Echoes (2010); When Elephants Last In The Dooryard Bloomed (1973); Where Robot Mice & Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977); This Attic Where the Meadow Greens (1979); The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope (1981); The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (1982); Kaleidoscope (1940); The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics (1963); Pillar of Fire and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond Tomorrow (1975); Nemo! (2012); Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2 (1953); Learning to Live Finally (2005); Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2009); Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview (2011); Jorge Luis Borges (2012); Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2013); James Baldwin: The Last Interview: and other Conversations (2014); Ray Bradbury (2014); Gabriel García Márquez (2015); Lou Reed (2015); Ernest Hemingway (2015); Nora Ephron: The Last Interview (2015); Philip K. Dick (2015); J. D. Salinger (2016); Oliver Sacks (2016); Jane Jacobs (2016); David Bowie (2016); Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2017); Christopher Hitchens (2017); Hunter S. Thompson (2018); Kathy Acker: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2018); Julia Child: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2018); Ursula K. Le Guin (2019); Graham Greene: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2019); Toni Morrison: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2020); Frida Kahlo: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2020); Shirley Chisholm: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2021); Fred Rogers: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2021); Johnny Cash: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2021); John Lewis: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2021); Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2022); Kurt Cobain: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2022); bell hooks: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2023); Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2023); Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation (2009); Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation (2011); Something Wicked This Way Comes: The Authorized Adaptation (2011); Invasion From Mars:Interplanetary Stories (1949); Star Science Fiction Stories 3 (1955); Alfred Hitchcock Presents 13 More Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV (1957); Stories for the Dead of Night (1957); The Ghoul Keepers (1961); The Bedside Playboy (1963); Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum: Twelve Shuddery Stories for Daring Young Readers (1965); The Microcosmic God (1965); Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me (1967); Worlds to Come: New Science Fiction Adventures (1967); Time Untamed (1967); 21 Great Stories (1969); Nova 1 (1970); Young Demons (1972); The Devil's Generation (1973); Galaxy Science Fiction - October 1973 (1973); Gooseflesh (1974); Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow... (1974); Beyond Midnight (1976); The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 22nd Series (1976); Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1976); The Late Great Future (1976); The 10th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories (1977); Weird Legacies (1977); Rod Serling's Other Worlds (1978); They Came from Outer Space: 12 Classic Science Fiction Tales That Became Major Motion Pictures (1979); Ghosts That Haunt You (1980); The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980); Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror (1980); Weekend Book of Science Fiction (1981); Scaremongers (1981); Perspectives in Literature: A Book of Short Stories, Vol. 1 (1983); 13 Horrors of Halloween (1983); The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories (1984); Fourth Planet from the Sun (1984); Cutting Edge (1986); The Monster Book of Monsters (1988); Science Fiction Stories (1988); Tales of the Occult (1989); Great Baseball Stories (1990); The Horror Hall of Fame (1991); The Short Story: 30 Masterpieces (1992); Monsters in Our Midst (1993); The Ultimate Witch (1993); Sea-Cursed (1994); Space Movies (1995); Night Screams (1996); Mystery Stories (1996); Dark Terrors 3 (1997); Time Machines (1997); The Young Oxford Book of Nasty Endings (1998); A Magic-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic (1998); Eleventh Annual Collection (1998); The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: The 50th Anniversary Anthology (1999); October Dreams (2000); The Writer's Guide to Fantasy Literature (2002); Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters (2002); Writing Los Angeles (2002); Murder On The Railways (2003); Dark Delicacies (2005); A Tangled Web (2005); Nightmares on Congress Street, Part V (2006); Masques V (2006); Selected Shorts (2008); The Best of Cemetery Dance II (2008); Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead (2009); The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (2010); Like Water for Quarks (2011); Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (2012); A Carnivàle of Horror (2012); Psychos (2012); Other Worlds (2013); The Time Traveler's Almanac (2013); Fantastic Stories Presents (2014); Field of Fantasies (2014); Darker Terrors 7 (2016); Grave Predictions (2016); Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries, and Lore (2017); Lost Mars (2018); The Science Fiction Collection #1 (2018); Flight or Fright (2018); 99 Classic Science-Fiction Short Stories (2019); The Science Fiction Collection (2019); One Hundred (2020); The Ultimate Short Story Bundle (2020).

Movies and television:

100 Years of Horror: The Evil Unseeable (1996); 451 (2012); 451° Fahrenheita / Audioplay (2018); A Century of Science Fiction (1996); A Conversation with Ray Bradbury (2008); A Piece of Wood (2005); A Sound of Thunder (2005); A Very Careful Man (2010); Alcoa Premiere (1962); Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1956–1986); Aliens, Dragons, Monsters and Me (1983); All Summer in a Day (1982 / 2014); All Things Shining (2012); Amargosa (2000); Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1991); American Masters (2008); American Playhouse (1982); An Unfathomable Friendship (2003); Animation Lookback (2014); Apostrophes (1978); Ararman Uterord Ory (1980); Arena (1994); Armchair Theatre (1963); Before the Night Is Gone (2012); Behind the Attraction (2021); Besuch bei Ray Bradbury (2001); Budet laskovyy dozhd (1984); Camera Three (1978); CBS Library (1982); CBS Television Workshop (1952); Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man (2010); Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future (2018); Chrysalis (2008); Cineficción Radio (2020–2021); Clarinda y el tiempo en una botella (1985); Cock & Bull Story (2002); Comic-Con '08 Live (2008); Comic-Con '09 Live (2009); Comic-Con 2006 Live (2006); Comic-Con 2007 Live (2007); Comic-Con 2010 Live (2010); Comic-Con Begins / Podcast Series (2021); Con palos y piedras (2000); Corwin (1996); Cosmic Thoughts (2003); Curiosity Shop (1971); Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 (2022); Day at Night (1974); Death and the Maiden (2016); Dennis Miller (2004); Dimension X (1950–1951); Dominus (1990); Druckfrisch (2008); Dust (2019); El Marciano (1965); El que espera (2004); El umbral (2003); Elektronnaya babushka (1985); Embracing Chaos: Making the African Queen (2010); Eternos (2019); Ex Libris (1990); Fahrenheit 451 (1966 / 2018); Fahrenheit 451, the Novel: A Discussion with Author Ray Bradbury (2003); Famous Monster: Forrest J Ackerman (2007); Father Electrico: Ray Bradbury Lives Forever! (2017); Fireside Theatre (1954); Flesh of the Universe (2017); Future Fantastic (1996); Good Morning America (1979); Great Books (1996–2001); Habia una vez (1985); Hardball with Chris Matthews (2004); Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (1989); Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius / Universal Horror (1998); Here There Be Tygers (1989); Historias para no dormir (1966); Hollywood Legenden (2004); Hooray for Horrorwood (1991); How Shakespeare Changed My Life (2016); How to Live Forever (2009); Hugh Hefner: American Playboy Revisited (1998); Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (2009); Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962); Ich auf Bestellung (1968); I'm King Kong!: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (2005); In Search of Tarzan with Jonathan Ross (1998); It Came from Outer Space (1953); It Came from Outer Space II (1996); ITV Television Playhouse (1963); Jack in the Box (2013); Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre (1956); Journey to the Unknown (1968); King of Kings (1961); Komnata (1987); La botella (2023); Last Sunset (2012); Late Night Story (1978); Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1995); Le grand échiquier (1983); Lights Out (1951); Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989); Live Forever: The Ray Bradbury Odyssey (2013); Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000); Los Siete Locos (1997); Malls R Us (2009); Man in Space / The Optimistic Futurist (2004); Mañana puede ser verdad (1962 / 1964); Marionettes, Inc. (1965); Martanská kronika (1964); Melodrama infernal (1969); Mirrors (1978); Moby Dick (1956); Night Caller (1973); Omnibus (1980); On Camera (1955); On the Fourth (2020); Out of the Unknown (1965); Out There (1951); Písen pro Rudolfa III. (2019); Playboy's 25th Anniversary Celebration (1979); Playhouse 90 (1957); Prisoners of Gravity (1993); Pulp Fiction: The Golden Age of Storytelling (2009); Quest (1984); Racconti di fantascienza (1979); Ray Bradbury's Kaleidoscope (2012); Ray Bradbury's the Martian Chronicles Adventure Game (1995); Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2011); Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection (2005); Rendezvous (1959); Retro Static Radio (2020); Rich and Famous (1981); Savannen (1983); Science Fiction Film Awards (1978); Sci-Fi Buzz (1995); Sneak Preview (1956); Something Wicked This Way Comes (1972 / 1983 / 2014); Spaceship Earth (1982); Special Collector's Edition (2012); Stan Freberg Federal Budget Review (1982); Star Tonight (1955); Star Trek Phase II (2007); Steve Canyon (1958); Stories to Stay Awake (2021); Story of... (1962); Studio 57 (1956); Suspense (1952); Tales of Tomorrow (1953); Tattooed Steiger (1969); TCM Guest Programmer (2008); Telescope (1969); That Regis Philbin Show (1964); The 10th Annual National CableACE Awards (1989); The 13th Annual CableACE Awards (1992); The 64th Annual Academy Awards (1992); The AckerMonster Chronicles! (2012); The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1964); The American Comic Strip (1978); The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953); The Best of Hollywood (2018); The Bob Braun Show (1982); The Cure (2011); The Dennis Miller Show (1992); The Disappointment of Jonathan Bender (2012); The Dream Pioneers: Visionaries of Science Fiction (2000); The Electric Grandmother (1982); The Famous Monsters 1993 World Convention Souvenir Video (1993); The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1986); The Fly Papers: The Buzz on Hollywood's Scariest Insect (2000); The Fox, the Forest (2015); The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl (2010); The Ghost of Graham Springs (2012); The Halloween Tree (1993); The Harryhausen Chronicles (1998); The High Frontier: The Untold Story of Gerard K. O'Neill (2021); The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film (2007); The Illustrated Man (1969); The Jar (2011 / 2020); The Last Night (2016); The last night of the world (2022); The Magical World of Chuck Jones (1992); The Making of 'Fahrenheit 451' (2003); The Man in the Air (1993); The Martian Chronicles (1980); The Martian Chronicles / Podcast Series (2014); The Murderer (1976); The Music of 'Fahrenheit 451' (2003); The Oscars (2013); The Pedestrian (2001 / 2008); The Picasso Summer (1969); The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 (2023); The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985–1992); The Rocket (1952); The Sci-Fi Boys (2006); The Screaming Woman (1972); The Screen Savers (2003); The Small Assassin (2011); The Smile (1996); The Stan Freberg Commercials / Segment: Brave New Prune (1999); The Third Expedition (2012); The Tiger and the Snow (2005); The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1978); The Tramp and the Dictator (2002); The Twilight Zone (1962–1986); The Unexplained (1956); The Veldt (1979); The Whimsical World of Oz (1985); The Whole Town's Sleeping (2014); The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998); The Wonderful World of Disney (2001); The Young Set (1965); Through the Forest (2016); Time Travel: Fact, Fiction and Fantasy (1985); Tin Can (2010); Today (1985–1989); Tomorrow Coast to Coast (1974); Trailer Trash (2008); Troubleshooters (1959); Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez (2004); Universal Horror (1998); Vampirismus (1980–1982); Veld (1987); Voyager: To the Final Frontier (2012); Walking on Air (1987); When the World Breaks (2010); Who Is Norman Lloyd? (2007); Windows (1955); Wogan (1990); X Minus One / Podcast Series (1955); You Bet Your Life (1956).

Recommended reading - The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Illustrated Man (1951).

by Ray Bradbury.

 Published by Panther.

1977 edition.

Paperback.

 

ISBN-10: 0586043594

ISBN-13: 978-0586043592

 

Description:

Anthology of 18 science fiction short stories.

Contents:

Prologue: The Illustrated Man; The Veldt; Kaleidoscope; The Other Foot; The Highway; The Man; The Long Rain; The Rocket Man; The Fire Balloons; The Last Night of the World; The Exiles; No Particular Night or Morning; The Fox and the Forest; The Visitor; The Concrete Mixer; Main article: Marionettes, Inc.; The City; Zero Hour; The Rocket; Epilogue.

Sample:

It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. I didn’t know he was Illustrated then. …

He took his shirt off. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line. He was a riot of rockets and fountains and people. There were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest.

“You see,” said the Illustrated Man, “the Illustrations predict the future. It’s all right in sunlight. But at night the pictures move. The pictures change. Don’t you look at them, I warn you. Turn the other way when you sleep.”

The night was serene. I lay back a few feet from him. He didn’t seem violent, and the pictures were beautiful. I let my eyes fill up on them.

Sixteen illustrations, sixteen tales. I counted them one by one.

Primarily my eyes focused upon a scene, a large house with two people in it. I saw a flight of vultures on a blazing flesh sky, I saw yellow lions, and I heard voices.

The first Illustrations quivered and came to life. … 

Ray Bradbury, on writing:

 

Find out what your hero or heroine wants,

and when he or she wakes up in the morning,
just follow him or her all day.
- Ray Bradbury.
 

Ray Bradbury, on writing:

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow
after your characters have run by
on their way to incredible destinations.
- Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury, on intuition and writing:

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.

- Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury, on writing:

Love.

Fall in love and stay in love.

Write only what you love, and love what you write.

The key word is love.

You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

- Ray Bradbury.