Biography
Born in a barn, he had to repeat the sixth grade and dropped out of school entirely in the eighth. He briefly served as a telegraph operator then draftsman in the United States Army, enrolled at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) under the G.I. Bill, quit to return to his travels around the U.S.A., working as an draftsman, before deciding he wanted to become a writer.
In 1960 the first story Johnson ever wrote served as the basis for the Rat Pack movie Ocean's 11, although most of the details were changed for the film. He joined a circle of Southern California science-fiction writers that included Theodore Sturgeon, William F. Nolan, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury. Through them he met Rod Serling, to whom he sold his first story ("All of Us Are Dying", produced as "The Four of Us Are Dying") and, later, his first teleplay ("A Penny for Your Thoughts").
"For me, fantasy must be about something, otherwise it's foolishness... ultimately it must be about human beings, it must be about the human condition, it must be another look at infinity, it must be another way of seeing the paradox of existence." —George Clayton Johnson quoted in The Twilight Zone CompanionRead more about this topic: George Clayton Johnson
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)