On August 22nd, Ray Bradbury will turn 90-years-old.
To learn a little bit more about one of the world’s greatest writers of speculative fiction, Flavorpill recently scoured the title Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews by Sam Weller and was able to come out with ten interesting discoveries.
Here are some of Flavorpill’s collected facts:
“#1. Many people know that Ray Bradbury wrote his most famous work, Fahrenheit 451 in just nine days on a rented typewriter in the basement of the UCLA library. However, what wasn’t known until recently is that in the process of writing the novel, he made a unique friend: Ernest Hemingway’s son. They rode the same bus every morning to the library and got to talking. Hemingway told the stranger that his favorite writers were ‘Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury,’ and the two remained friends for decades.”
“#6. Ray Bradbury never went to college. Instead, he went to the library all day, three times a week, until he got married at 27. To this day, he regularly organizes fundraisers for libraries, and refuses to touch e-reader devices like the Kindle.”
Back in late June GalleyCat spotlighted an interview with another reclusive author, Harper Lee. Lee has granted fewer than five interviews in the past five decades and a reporter from the Daily Mail made the cut to be in that significant minority group. 2010 is a significant year for Lee as well because the 84-year-old Pulitzer Price-winning writer behind To Kill a Mockingbird saw her most famous publication reach the age of 50.