Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg. During his youth he spent much time reading at the Carnegie Library, which he later used as a setting for Something Wicked This Way Comes. In 1932, a carnival entertainer called Mr. Electrico touched him with an electrified sword and shouted "Live forever!"; Bradbury said this created a lifelong habit of writing every day. At the circus he also saw performers such as Mr. Electro and the Tattooed Man, who appeared in his stories. His first published story, for which he was paid $27.50, appeared in Super Science Stories magazine in 1941, and by 1942 he was a full-time writer, though his first book, Dark Carnival, was not published until five years later. He became an award-winning, internationally known author of fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and mystery, publishing more than 500 novels, short stories, screenplays, plays, scripts, and poems, and is widely considered among the greatest writers of twentieth century American literature. Dandelion Wine, written in 1957, is a semi-autobiographical novel based on his childhood memories of Waukegan, following Douglas Spaulding, his brother Tom, and their summer adventures in Green Town, Illinois; the title beverage made by Douglas's grandfather serves as a metaphor for bottling the joys of summer, and a sequel, Farewell Summer, was published in 2006. Asteroid 9766 Bradbury and Dandelion Crater on the moon were named in his honor. His bestselling books include Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and The Martian Chronicles, and more than twenty of his short stories and novels were adapted for motion pictures and television, including the six-season television series Ray Bradbury Theatre. He never learned to drive, getting around town first on rollerskates and later by bicycle. The park in Waukegan was given to the city in 1891 by John F. Powell, a dealer in seashells and former mayor of Waukegan, and was originally called Powell Park. Because another larger park a block north had the same name, the Waukegan Park District renamed it Ray Bradbury Park when it dedicated the park to Bradbury on Tuesday, June 26, 1990. Bradbury also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to the motion picture industry.
