Throughout Banned Books Week we will feature banned and challenged authors who left us in 2012. This week celebrates these great writers and their works, which helped form the identities of many readers, young and old.
A name now almost synonymous with American Science Fiction, Ray Bradbury brought that genre into the mainstream. Today, his books – which at the time he began writing might only have appeared in small pulp magazines – are major titles on the reading lists of most high school students.
Bradbury is perhaps best-known for his novel Fahrenheit 451, a touchstone for defenders of intellectual freedom that depicted a dystopian future in which a book-banning totalitarian regime ruled America. The book was, ironically, challenged and banned for its language and depictions of violence. The Martian Chronicles too, a collection of short stories about clashes between Martians and Earthlings, was challenged and banned over objections to profanity in the book. Others of Bradbury’s short stories were challenged because good did not always triumph over evil.