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REUTERS take on it.
Author Ray Bradbury dead at 91
Ray Bradbury, the American author who helped popularise science fiction with works such as The Martian Chronicles, has died at the age of 91.
The prolific and gregarious Bradbury left a massive body of work, including Fahrenheit 451, a classic novel about book censorship in a future society, and other favourites such as The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
"Mr Bradbury died peacefully, last night, in Los Angeles, after a long illness," a spokesman for his publisher HarperCollins said.
"The world has lost one of the best writers it's ever known, and one of the dearest men to my heart. RIP Ray Bradbury (Ol' Gramps)," his grandson Danny Karapetian said on Twitter.
Millions of Bradbury's books have been sold around the world and his stories translated into dozens of languages.
A child of the Depression born in small-town Illinois, he grew up reading Jules Verne, HG Wells, Edgar Allan Poe and George Bernard Shaw.
As a writer he first made an impact with The Martian Chronicles, a series of stories about Earth colonisers destroying telepathic Martians.
Over his long career there were hundreds of novels, plays, scripts and poetry.
He called himself a 'hybrid' author, ranging across fantasy, horror and science fiction.
His most celebrated work, Fahrenheit 451, was a grim futuristic tale of firemen burning books which the author later called a warning about television destroying interest in literature. The title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites.
The novel, which Bradbury wrote on a rented typewriter at the UCLA library, featured a world that might sound familiar to 21st century readers; wall-sized interactive televisions, earpiece communication systems, omnipresent advertising and political correctness.
Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present.
"In science fiction, we dream," he told the New York Times.
"In order to colonise in space, to rebuild our cities... to tackle any number of problems, we must imagine the future, including the new technologies that are required...
"Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present."
The famous American futurist and writer lived in the same house for 50 years, called the internet a distraction, and did not like electronic books.
He was disdainful of automatic teller machines and denounced video games as "a waste of time for men with nothing else to do".
"Two or three years out of high school my stories were terrible, but I had to lie to myself that someday I would become excellent," he said.
"And by gosh, by writing every day, for 20 years, I became excellent."
Bradbury brought not only futuristic vision but a literary sensibility to science fiction and fantasy writing.
His interest in writing began as a boy and even in his later years he liked to write daily - whether it was a novel, a short story, a screenplay or a poem.
"The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me," he said on his 80th birthday.
I think he altered the landscape of fantasy forever. Stephen King said to me once in an interview there is no Stephen King without Ray Bradbury.
He long bemoaned the end of manned missions to the Moon and had an asteroid and a lunar crater named after one of his works.
"The problem with the world is doomsayers. We're surrounded by negative people - I can't stand them," he said.
"I've been surrounded by people who never believed in the future. It was true then, it's true today."
His biographer, Sam Weller, said he had a singular, wild American imagination.
"Even until his very late years when he grew much more frail obviously, his energy was still fantastic," he said.
"I think he altered the landscape of fantasy forever. Stephen King said to me once in an interview there is no Stephen King without Ray Bradbury."
Reuters
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