Science fiction master Ray Bradbury dead at 91
Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, has died at age 91. His daughter, Alexandra Bradbury, confirmed the famed author died Tuesday night in southern California.
Bradbury was one of the most celebrated authors of the 20th and 21st centuries, who wrote dozens of fantasy, horror, science fiction and mystery novels. The Ray Bradbury Award, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for screenwriting, is named in his honour.
Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois and was a direct descendent of Mary Bradbury, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.
Although slowed in recent years by a stroke that meant he had to use a wheelchair, Bradbury remained active into his 90s, turning out new novels, plays, screenplays and a volume of poetry. He wrote every day in the basement office of his Cheviot Hills home and appeared from time to time at bookstores, public library fundraisers and other literary events around Los Angeles.
His writings ranged from horror and mystery to humour and sympathetic stories about the Irish, blacks and Mexican-Americans. Bradbury also scripted John Huston's 1956 film version of "Moby Dick" and wrote for "The Twilight Zone" and other television programs, including "The Ray Bradbury Theater," for which he adapted dozens of his works.
Bradbury broke through in 1950 with "The Martian Chronicles," a series of intertwined stories that satirized capitalism, racism and superpower tensions as it portrayed Earth colonizers destroying an idyllic Martian civilization.
"The Martian Chronicles" prophesized the banning of books, especially works of fantasy, a theme Bradbury would take on fully in the 1953 release, "Fahrenheit 451." Inspired by the Cold War, the rise of television and the author's passion for libraries, it was an apocalyptic narrative of nuclear war abroad and empty pleasure at home, with firefighters assigned to burn books instead of putting blazes out (451 degrees Fahrenheit, Bradbury had been told, was the temperature at which texts went up in flames).
It was Bradbury's only true science-fiction work, according to the author, who said all his other works should have been classified as fantasy. "It was a book based on real facts and also on my hatred for people who burn books," he told The Associated Press in 2002.
Bradbury was married to Marguerite McClure (1922-2003) in 1947. He had four daughters. Earlier this year Bradbury purchased a burial place at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetary with a headstone that reads "Author of Fahrenheit 451".
With files from The Associated Press.
