Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles'

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. As a child, Bradbury spent countless hours in the library or listening to radio shows (Ray Bradbury, Contemporary). Since Bradbury’s parents couldn’t afford to send him to college, he often spent hours independently studying in the library. This led him to develop a deep devotion to libraries (Ray Bradbury, Contemporary). In 1937, Bradbury joined the Science Fiction League where he met Henry Kuttner, a professional who’d eventually become a mentor to Bradbury (Ray Bradbury, Encyclopedia ). By living with Mexican Americans and traveling to Mexico Bradbury grew a sense of an “alien culture” (Ray Bradbury, Encyclopedia). This knowledge helped influence his future stories. Many hypothesize that Bradbury’s novel The Martian Chronicles was influenced by his learning of Mexican culture. Bradbury began to gain reputation for writing on “contemporary social issues on racism and illegal immigration” (Ray Bradbury, Encyclopedia). Published in 1950,

Bradbury’s personal opinions about the government conflict with his novel. He dislikes censorship, stating “when government controls things, and you cannot publish or sell or find in a library the books that you want” (Aggelis). Although he doesn’t like censorship, Bradbury believes the government should be selective in what they should fund, believing “[Government is] just saying that they 're funding you just as a gallery does; a gallery has the right to choose what it wants to hang on its walls. That 's not censorship--that 's selectivity" (Aggelis). Bradbury also despised the rise of special interest groups and the idea of political correctness, saying “If we listened to all these groups then we wouldn’t have anything to read or anything to look at” (Aggelis). Bradbury’s personal opinions on censorship and political correctness helped influence his writing of Fahrenheit