The Vintage Bradbury (1965) was the first "best of" collection of 25 stories selected by the author. It was published by Vintage Books, a paperback division of Random House.

Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is widely considered one of the greatest and most popular American writers of speculative fiction of the twentieth century.

His popularity has been increased by more than twentytelevision shows and films using his writings.

Although he is often described as a science fiction writer, Bradbury does not box himself into a particular narrative categorization:

"First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power..."

On another occasion, Bradbury observed that the novel touches on the alienation of people by media:

"In writing the short novel 'Fahrenheit 451', I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog.

I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction..."

Source - Wikipedia