
Years later Ray would write a story in which he gave his uncle wings and makes him a vampire. Attends the Century of Progress Exposition (the Chicago World’s Fair) that summer with his parents and again with his aunt Neva he is fascinated by “The City of the Future” and the dinosaurs of the “Sinclair Prehistoric Exhibit.”įavorite uncle Inar Moberg moves to California. Ray reads borrowed copies of Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories. Reads Sunday comics to kids on a local radio station in Tucson.įather moves family back to Waukegan in the spring. Attempts a sequel to a John Carter of Mars novel. Receives toy dial typewriter for Christmas. Father loses his job with the telephone company and moves family back to Tucson. Performs his own magic act for various service clubs and lodges and on Christmas Eve at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall.īegins to read Jules Verne. Given a book on magic for his eleventh birthday attends local performances by Blackstone the Magician several times between 19. Is terrified of crossing local ravine and uses this fear later in “The Night” and “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” stories later novelized within Dandelion Wine.ĭiscovers the romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs and begins to read Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars series.

Discovers Amazing Stories Quarterly, one of the earliest science fiction pulps. Aunt Neva reads him Edgar Allan Poe’s works. Sick in bed with whooping cough, Ray misses three months of school during the fall term. Ray’s baby sister, Elizabeth, dies of pneumonia in February. A young cousin almost drowns in Lake Michigan he uses this incident much later in “The Lake.” Ray’s sister, Elizabeth Jane Bradbury, is born in Tucson. Begins 1st grade in Waukegan, but father moves family to Roswell, New Mexico, then to Tucson, Arizona, looking for work. Grandfather Bradbury dies, and Aunt Neva starts reading Ray the Oz books by L. Sees Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera with his mother and again with his brother, Skip.



Grandfather shows him pictures of the 18 world’s fairs. Parents help him learn to read from the newspaper comics. Given 1st book of fairy tales, Once Upon a Time, by his aunt Neva Brad- bury for Christmas. Learns about radio from his paternal grand- father. In February (age three), taken by mother to see Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Twin boys were born four years earlier, but one, Samuel, died at age two. Ray Douglas Bradbury born August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, the third child of Esther Moberg Bradbury and Leonard Bradbury.
