Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction is the first comprehensive textual, bibliographical, and cultural study of sixty years of Bradbury's fiction. Drawing on correspondence with his publishers, agents, and friends, as well as archival manuscripts, authors Jonathan R. Eller and William F. Touponce examine the story of Bradbury's authorship, from his earliest writings, which include The Martian Chronicles, to his most recently published novel, Let's All Kill Constance. It shows in detail the often devious and unsuspected interconnections between his unpublished fiction, his story collections, and his most celebrated novels.

The Life of Fiction focuses on the nature of Bradbury's authorship, exploring his profound involvement with the life of "carnival" as a textual process as well as a thematic concern in his writings, and each chapter of this book delves more deeply into how this process of meaning has shaped Bradbury's technique over the years. Bradbury's authorship is finally seen as occupying a unique position in our literary landscape -- one that operates on the borders of popular entertainment and serious literature.

In addition to these new discoveries about Bradbury, illustrations from his manuscripts help to illuminate his fiction as a carnivalesque text-in-process. His complex methods of composition and revision, complemented by charts and graphs, help the reader to grasp the complicated stages of revision for publication that Bradbury's stories underwent. Included is a definitive bibliography of Bradbury's fiction, both published and unpublished, a particularly useful tool in tracking the migration of Bradbury's short stories from collection to collection and into other media.

Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction will be welcomed by Bradbury fans and scholars, adding greatly to the understanding of his work and affecting the way Bradbury is read.