Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter, celebrated for his imaginative and influential writing. Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, and passed away on June 5, 2012 in Venice Beach, California.

Among the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, Bradbury worked across a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction. He is best known for his novel *Fahrenheit 451* (1953) and his short-story collections *The Martian Chronicles* (1950), *The Illustrated Man* (1951), and *The October Country* (1955). His other notable works include the coming-of-age novel *Dandelion Wine* (1957), the dark fantasy *Something Wicked This Way Comes* (1962), and the fictionalized memoir *Green Shadows, White Whale* (1992).

Bradbury also contributed to screenwriting, with work on productions like Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. His efforts brought many of his stories to television, film, and comic book adaptations. He was also a poet, with collections such as *They Have Not Seen the Stars* (2001).

The New York Times lauded him as "an author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and noted him as "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream".