School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?

When Bradbury returned to Los Angeles he connected all the short stories and that became The Martian Chronicles. He loved Burroughs' The Warlord of Mars so much that at the age of 12 he wrote his own sequel. Electrico.

Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into comic books television shows and films. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951) Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers.