Does anyone know what the first actual published stories by Ray Bradbury are and when they occured? I have good reason to beleive Bradbury was a teenager and got quarter cent a word for a series of ganster pulp stories for Street and Smith during the pulp era. " To Johnson for giving me my start and the years 46 and 47 editing together" is the handwritten quote I have with a small drawing on the inside of Zen and the Art of Writing with two tickets to the premier of a Pandomonium theater company show. Ryerson didn't remember the story names but he remembered them coming by mail to Street and Smith and rewriting the endings to publish them and paying quarter cent a word. As the "young kid" got better over time he started earning a half cent a word and got out of Johnson's range to pay for stories. he said he had no idea of the age of the author till he got a phone call from a young kid one day complaining about the ending that had been rewritten. "The Lake" is the earliest Ray admits to but I beleive there were earlier pulp pieces that were of a ganster or horror nature.Johnson has since passed on and all his manuscripts are in BUs(Boston University) Street and Smith archives on great pulp writers. Anyone out there have a collection that goes back to those days of the pulp era when Ray was a young teenager starting out?

First published story: "Hollerbochen's Dilemma," "Imagination!" January 1938. He'd have been 17. The story is anthologized in "Horrors Unseen," edited by Sam Moskowitz. I've never seen it, but presumably fantasy/horror.

This was followed by another 20 unpaid publications. First paid publication: "Pendulum" (with Henry Hasse), "Super Science Stories," November 1941, anthologized by the same editor in "Horrors Unknown," and also fantasy/horror. He was 21 and still selling newspapers on the corner of Olympic and Norton in Los Angeles. After 1942 he made his entire living by writing, once bringing in only $800 in one year! (Rent was only $14 a month back then.)

Bradbury identifies his "first really good story" as "The Lake," "Weird Tales," May 1944. He was 23.

His first detective story was "Killer, Come Back to Me!" "Detective Tales," July 1944. Presumably not too memorable as it's never been anthologized or collected anywhere.

Many of Bradbury's early detective tales are collected in "A Memory of Murder" (Bantam, 1984,) which appeared only because a man bought the rights to a bunch of old pulp detective magazines. Since Ray must have sold "All Rights" rather than "First North American Serial Rights," the man now owned the rights to those stories. I don't know if the missing ones were left out because he hadn't purchased rights to those publications, if Ray didn't sell all rights to certain stories, or if Ray exerted some influence to keep the worst ones out of the collection, which also includes some of his better stories from the same era. Since the book was going to appear anyway, he did write an introduction to it. I believe it went through only one printing and so is or will be relatively rare. It's the only place to get many of these stories. Copies starting at $4.00 can be found at www.addall.com or try eBay or a used bookstore if you are near a large one. Some of these old pulp magazines turn up from time to time on eBay, but that way you'll find yourself spending at least $5.00 per story, which at a half cent a word is probably more than he was paid for them in the first place.

Copel:

Ray's first published story was: "Hollerbochen's Dilemma", 1938, in a fan magazine entitled 'Imagination.' There was no payment made....

But in 1941, Ray had a story in 'Super Science Stories', a pulp SF magazine, where he had published his first story with pay. That story was Pendulum.

The Lake, in 1942, was in the style that we have come to know Bradbury.

His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival, was published in th same year he married, 1947.

Ialways associated Street and Smith publishers with Astounding Stories, for which, as far as I know, Ray never wrote. Street and Smith probably published other magazine names, for which Ray had manuscripts published, however....

Just ordered a copy of Memory of Murder. Got it for only $7.30. Can't wait to get it!!

[This message has been edited by lmskipper (edited 02-15-2003).]

Thanks for the replies folks. I still have reason to beieve there are earlier stories. Ryerson Johnson did indeed edit Detective Tales for a time for Street and Smith(at least some of the original cover paintings hang on his studio wall- see photo gallery at sleepingdogstudios.com for couple shots of the writing studio), as well as Western Romance and other pulps. What he told me was that Bradbury was very very young at the time, about 14-16 and that he was paid a quarter cent a word for ganster stories. Somewhere out in the pulps are these original stories but perhaps under a pen-name. I knew Johnson very very well up till his death and spent much time in his studios going over old pulps (Johnson was a ghost writer of Doc Savage for Lester Dent and wrote some early Black Bat as well as 600-700 western novels and created Mike Shane) where I found Ray's book with the tickets and the handwritten message thanking Johnson for his "giving me my start". When I asked Johnson about it he told me the story, about buying stories through the mail for a couple years (when he was an editor) untill he got an angry call from a young teenager about an ending he had rewritten. Only at this point did he realize how young the writer was, under 16. I suspect Johnson was in Chicago at the time since he was from Algonquin on the Fox river. perhaps Ray was in his early twentys at the time but Johnny was very clear when we discussed it that he was a young teenager I recall. Johnson was late 80s at this point in time (when he relayed the story to me)but his memory of the past was still very good as he was writing a definitive history of the pulp era at that point in time.(unreleased due to his passing away from cancer) Only Ray himself may know/admit to these works but I beleive Johnson may have been correct. The handwritten message from Ray himself to Johnson indicates that this may in fact be the truth.
The "years 46-47 editing" comment makes me wonder though if this was a period where they edited together or was Johnson still buying stories since he edited many magazines across the marketplace, from Good Housekeeping to Western Romance to works for the encyclopedia. Ray may feel that since Johnson felt neccesary to change the endings to publish the stories that these are not really his first true stories but I think he was very young and they were good for his age but not anything he would care to admit to now. This is speculation on my part but I have spent 40 years in Johnson studio in Maine drifting through his pulps and this only came up because I pressed Johnson for the story. I do know that Ray continued to occasionally write Johnson up to mid 80s and admired Johnson as a friend. Johnson's manuscripts from his studio were all donated to the Boston University archives this summer by his nephew Anton but Anton did not come across anything more than the same book with the comment I had previously seen. If these were under a pen-name than Ray may keep quiet on these and we will never know since the original manuscripts are long since vanished in the mountains of pulp that was published.

Copel::::

Here's some Pen-Names Bradbury has used in the past::::

Cecil Claybourne Cunningham

William Elliott

Doug Rogers

D. R. Banet

D. Lerium Tremaine

Anthony Corvais

Ron Reynolds

Omega

Edward Banks

E. Cunningham

Guy Amory

Brett Sterling

Leonard Spaulding

Leonard Douglas

Douglas Spaulding


Check those old pulps ...!!

All present and accounted-for. Below are listed the complete uncollected stories first published 1938-1945. This list of course does not include titles which appear in "Dark Carnival," "A Memory of Murder," or other collections. By the way, anything that does NOT say "Anthologized but not collected" means that, to my knowledge, it was not even anthologized. My checking on this has been pretty complete, but of course I could have missed a few.

Stories listed in error in "The Ray Bradbury Companion":
"Return from Death" as "Anthony Corvais" in "Futuria Fantasia," Fall 1939, and
"The Symphonic Abduction" (anon.), in "Futuria Fantasia," Winter 1940. Author is Hannes Bok. "Futuria Fantasia" was a fanzine edited and published by Bradbury, which ran four issues.
��� ���� �� ��
1938-1939
"Hollerbochen's Dilemma," "Imagination!" January 1938. Anthologized but not collected.
"Hollerbochen Comes Back," "Mikros," November 1938.
"How to Run a Successful Ghost Agency" (as "Brian Eldred"), "D'Journal," March 1939.
"Don't Get Technatal," (as "Ron Reynolds"), "Futuria Fantasia," Summer 1939.
"Gold," "Science Fiction Fan," August 1939.
"The Pendulum" (anon.), "Futuria Fantasia," Fall 1939. Anthologized but not collected.

1940-1945
"The Maiden of Jirbu" (with Bob Tucker), "Polaris," March 1940.
"Tale of the Tortletwitch" (as "Guy Amory"), "Spaceways," April 1940.
"Luana the Living," "Polaris," June 1940. Anthologized but not collected.
"The Flight of the Good Ship Clarissa" (anon.), "Futuria Fantasia," Winter 1940.
"The Piper" (as "Ron Reynolds"), "Futuria Fantasia," September 1940. Anthologized but not collected.
"The Last Man," "Damn Thing," November 1940.
"It's Not the Heat, It's the Hu--," "Script," November 2, 1940.
"The Tale of the Terrible Typer," "Fantasite," November 1940.
"Genie Trouble," "Damn Thing," December 1940.
"How Am I Today, Doctor?" "Damn Thing," February 1941.
"The Trouble With Humans is People," "Damn Thing," March 1941.
"Tale of the Mangledomvritch," "Snide," 1941.
"To Make a Long, Long Story Much, Much Shorter," "Script," July 5, 1941.
"Pendulum" (with Henry Hasse), "Super Science Stories," November 1941. Anthologized but not collected.
"Eat, Drink and Be Wary," "Astounding Science Fiction," July 1942.
"The Candle," "Weird Tales," November 1942. Anthologized but not collected.
"The Piper," "Thrilling Wonder Stories," February 1943. Anthologized but not collected.
"Subterfuge," "Astonishing Stories," April 1943. Anthologized but not collected.
"Gabriel's Horn" (with Henry Hasse), "Captain Future," Spring 1943.
"Doodad," "Astounding Science Fiction," September 1943. Anthologized but not collected.
"And Watch the Fountains," "Astounding Science Fiction," September 1943.
"Promotion to Satellite," "Thrilling Wonder Stories," Fall 1943.
"The Ducker," "Weird Tales," November 1943. Anthologized but not collected.
"The Sea Shell," "Weird Tales," January 1944. Anthologized, and collected in "Dark Carnival" reissue.
"The Monster Maker," "Planet Stories," Spring 1944.
"I, Rocket," "Amazing Stories," May 1944. Anthologized but not collected.
"Killer, Come Back to Me!" "Detective Tales," July 1944.
"Morgue Ship," "Planet Stories," Summer 1944.
"Bang! You're Dead!" "Weird Tales," September 1944. Anthologized, and collected in "Dark Carnival" reissue.
"And Then--The Silence," "Super Science Stories," October 1944.
"Undersea Guardians," "Amazing Stories," December 1944. Anthologized but not collected.
"Lazarus Come Forth," "Planet Stories," Winter 1944.
"The Poems," "Weird Tales," January 1945. Anthologized, and collected in "Dark Carnival" reissue.
"Skeleton," "Script," April 28, 1945. (Not the same as the one in "The October Country.")
"The Watchers," "Weird Tales," May 1945. Anthologized, and collected in "Dark Carnival" reissue.

As can be seen in "Story Classifications," which contains a complete listing of stories by type with year of original publication, I haven't classified many early titles for the simple reason of not having read them! A few might possibly be detective tales, but the first one to appear in a publication with a strictly detective title is "Killer, Come Back to Me!" Ray also had some non-fiction published during these years.
With what he was making at the time, it seems unlikely that Ray could have afforded a long-distance phone call (Los Angeles to Chicago), but not impossible. If Johnson was in New York at the time, Ray was there in July 1939 for the New York World's Fair and other events, and could have made the call then, at which time he had not yet reached his 19th birthday. My list was compiled from lists by William F. Nolan and Donn Albright, who included and noted stories which were co-written, written under pen names, stories of Bradbury's for which other writers supplied endings, and a story of another writer for which Bradbury supplied a beginning, so no published works would have been omitted on such accounts. Donn mentioned that Ray wrote some pulp westerns which were "awful and never published." He had no knowledge of published fiction other than on the lists of collected and uncollected fiction. If this proves true it would be MOST INTERESTING and VALUABLE knowledge! Lost stories? Sounds too good to be true. I don't suppose any record of payment could have survived by which stories could be identified? Even if a story appeared under a pen name, surely the check would be made out to the real author? Ray seems to have kept good records of payments, since he went over his old records some decades later for a book introduction at which time he noted having made only $800 one year.