Bradbury began his writing career in 1931 at age eleven, using butcher paper that he had to unroll as his story progressed. The following year, he and his family moved from Illinois to Arizona, and that same year, Bradbury received a toy typewriter on which he wrote his first stories.
In 1934, when he was fourteen, his family moved from Arizona to Los Angeles, where his writing career began to solidify. In 1937, he became a member of the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, whose help enabled him to publish four issues of his own science-fiction fan magazine, or "fanzine," Futuria Fantasia. Bradbury's graduation from a Los Angeles high school in 1938 ended his formal education, but he furthered it himself — at night in the library and by day at his typewriter. His first professional sale was for a short story entitled "Pendulum," co-authored with Henry Hasse; it appeared in Super Science Stories, August 1941, on Bradbury's twenty-first birthday. In 1942, Bradbury wrote "The Lake," the story in which he discovered his distinctive writing style. By 1943, he had given up his job selling newspapers and began writing full time, contributing numerous short stories to periodicals. His short story "The Big Black and White Game" was selected for Best American Short Stories in 1945.
