'It's the art of the possible'

“Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world, you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.” – Ray Bradbury

One of the most celebrated 20th- and 21st-Century Science Fiction writers, Bradbury was born in Illinois in the summer of 1920.  Self-taught as a writer, he won dozens of awards, including the National Medal of Arts, half-a-dozen honorary degrees, induction into at least 4 writing Halls of Fame for lifetime achievement, and a Pulitzer Prize Citation as "an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasty."   

 

Bradbury authored 51 books, led by the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and the coming of age novel Dandelion Wine.  He wrote the series The Martian Chronicles, consulted on dozens of screenplays and television scripts, and authored numerous short stories, comic books and poems.

 

Upon his death in the summer of 2012 The New York Times called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream."

One of our country’s strongest advocates for public libraries, Bradbury said he spent 3 days a week for 10 years educating himself in the public library, “And it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.”