Ray Bradbury, a writer whose expansive flights of fantasy and vivid tales entertained the world and provided lasting, speculative blueprints for its future, has died. He was 91.
Bradbury died Tuesday night, his daughter, Alexandra Bradbury, told the AP.
He wrote at least 27 novels and story collections, most famously The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Just as notably, Bradbury wrote 600 short stories, and has frequently been credited with legitimizing and elevating the often-maligned reputation of science fiction.
Some say he singlehandedly helped to move the genre into mainstream.
“The only figure comparable to mention would be [Robert A.] Heinleinand then later [Arthur C.] Clarke,” said Gregory Benford, a UC Irvine physics professor.
“But Bradbury, in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, became the name brand.”
Much of Bradbury’s accessibility and ultimate popularity had to do with his gift as a stylist, and ability to write lyrically and evocatively of lands an imagination away.
At the same time, the worlds he anchored in the here and now became so memorable because of the sense of visual clarity and small-town familiarity he instilled.
As influenced by George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare as he was by Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bradbury was a once-in-a-generation talent.
He will be missed, and he’s even gone viral in the YouTube age. Follow the jump for a sexy, modern-day tribute to Ray from a much younger set of his fans: