Ray Bradbury was an American fantasy and horror author who borned in Waukegan, Illinois. He rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal.
His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. His famous works are The Martian Chronicles and the short story The Veldt. He decided to become a writer at the age of 12 or 13. He participated in his school’s drama club and occasionally befriended Hollywood Celebrities. He was also known as a prolific author, he wrote for several hours everyday throughout his entire life, allowing him to publish more than 30 books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, screenplays, and plays.

Braydbury’s best-known work, Fahrenheit 451, which was published in 1953, became an instant classic in the era of McCarthyism for its exploration of themes of censorship and conformity.

In 1950, Bradbury published his first major work, The Martian Chronicles, which showed the conflict between humans colonizing Mars and the native Martians they encountered there. Many people considered his work as science fiction, but he considered it to be fantasy because it is a depiction of the unreal.

I think the best quote from Fahrenheit 451 is “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.” because this quote delivers the main theme of his novel, Fahrenheit 451 which talks about censorship and conformity.

The significance of Ray Bradbury is that he won several awards such as Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2000), the O. Henry Prize (1947 and 1948), the Benjamin Franklin Award (1953-54), the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement (1977), the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award (1985). Also he authored numerous screenplays and the television scripts including Moby Dick.

I think his novel, Martian Chronicles, is a futuristic and masterpiece novel because this novel depicted the conflict between human and Martian natives in the mars. He said his book is based on fantasy before, but nowadays this is not fantasy anymore because humans are trying to migrate to mars in the distant future. I cannot imagine how he wrote this book in the mid 1900s.

This essential question is based on the short story, The Veldt. This story depicts the children in the machine called the nursery, this is very similar to the Virtual reality in today.

I think this essential question is good for this author because Ray Bradbury has written about futuristic or fantastic stories before. The technology influences humans negatively because it causes physical problems such as eye strain, sometimes it causes behavioral problems, and extreme cases are causing the violence.