Ray Bradbury, author of more than 500 stories, poems, essays, plays, films, television plays, radio, music, and comic books, was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois. Twice during his childhood, Bradbury moved with his family to Arizona, returning to the midwest both times before settling permanently in Los Angeles in 1934. At the age of fifteen, Bradbury began submitting short stories to national magazines, beginning his career as one of the best known science-fiction writers of all time. After his graduation from Los Angeles High School in 1938, Bradbury worked his way up from selling newspapers on street corners and publishing short stories in amateur fan magazines to writing the best-selling classics The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950, and Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. Bradbury has won numerous awards for his works. His Sun and Shadow won the Benjamin Franklin Award of 1953-54 for Best Story in an American Magazine. In 1954, Fahrenheit 451 won the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal and Bradbury received an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters for contribution to American literature. Switch on the Night earned the Boys Club of America Junior Book Award in 1956. Icarus Montgolfier Wright in 1963 garnered an Academy Award nomination for short film. He was honored in 1977 with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and in 1977 with the Balrog Award for Best Poet. In addition to his writing achievements, Bradbury was the idea consultant and wrote the basic scenario for the United States pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair, as well as being an imagineer for Walt Disney Enterprises, where he designed the Spaceship Earth exhibition at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center. From 1985 to 1992 Bradbury hosted a syndicated anthology television series, The Ray Bradbury Theater, for which he adapted 65 of his stories. The 1998 film The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, released by Touchstone Pictures, was written by Ray Bradbury. It was based on his story "The Magic White Suit" originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1957. In 2002, Bradbury's own Pandemonium Theatre Company production of Fahrenheit 451 at Burbank's Falcon Theatre combined live acting with projected digital animation by the Pixel Pups. In 2008, the film Ray Bradbury's Chrysalis was produced by Roger Lay Jr. for Urban Archipelago Films, based upon the short story of the same name. The film won the best feature award at the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival in Phoenix.
