Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, author of 'Fahrenheit 451,' dead at 91

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This guy was very, very important to lots of young readers and writers. Like me, long ago.

Science-fiction author Ray Bradbury dead at 91 (Chicago Tribune)
Ray Bradbury, the writer whose expansive flights of fantasy and vividly rendered space-scapes have provided the world with one of the most enduring speculative blueprints for the future, has died. He was 91.

Bradbury's daughter confirmed his death to the Associated Press on Wednesday morning. She said her father died Tuesday night in Southern California.

Author of more than 27 novels and story collections — most famously “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Dandelion Wine” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” — and more than 600 short stories, Bradbury has frequently been credited with elevating the often maligned reputation of science fiction. Some say he singlehandedly helped to move the genre into the realm of literature.
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much more at Trib link above

Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury. And thank you.
 
He knows all the secrets now. I hope he is smiling in wonderment.
 
What a loss. Every year for a long time I re-read the Halloween Tree, and love reading it to my kids, too. martian Chronicles, Something Wicked, so many awesome stories I have treasured by him.

RIP Ray Bradbury, and thank you for so many hours of amazing reading. :rose:
 
This guy was my introduction to the great poet William Butler Yeats, and much much more. Bradbury's short story "The Golden Apples of the Sun" borrows its title from the last stanza of Yeats's 'Wandering Angus':
And walk through long green dappled grass
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.
One can't do much more for a future literature major than introduce him to a line, and thus a poem, and thus the works, of W.B. Yeats.
 
Rest In Peace, Mr. Bradbury. :rose:

I love your books. Have not read them all...yet. :blush:
 
I am so sad. He was my favorite writer. What a genius!
 
Another fine obit, this one from the Guardian: Ray Bradbury.

And it's accompanied by an article:

Ray Bradbury, writer who captivated a generation of sci-fi fans, dies at 91
Despite the exhortations of Mr Electrico, a carnival sideshow act with an electrified sword who demanded that a 12-year-old Ray Bradbury "live forever!", one of the most well-loved and highly-regarded modern writers of the fantastic has died.
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It was Bradbury's encounter at that Labor Day carnival in his home town that set him on the path of becoming a writer, and laid the groundwork for his unique brand of sometimes creepy, sometimes folksy, often slyly subversive fantastical Americana of whispering winds, sinister circuses, fretting about modern life and how humanity copes – or not – with relocating to distant worlds.

After being told by Mr Electrico that he was the reincarnation of the showman's friend who died in France in the Great War, Bradbury ruminated on his website in 2001: "Why did he say that? I don't know. Was there something in my eagerness, my passion for life, my being ready for some sort of new activity? I don't know the answer to that. All I know is that he said, "Live forever" and gave me a future and in doing so, gave me a past many years before, when his friend died in France.

"Leaving the carnival grounds that day I stood by the carousel and watched the horses go round and round to the music of Beautiful Ohio. Standing there, the tears poured down my face, for I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr Electrico.

"I went home and the next day traveled to Arizona with my folks. When we arrived there a few days later I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago."
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more, with reader comments, at links above
 
RIP Ray Bradbury. He was a good friend of a large Community College in Southern California where i worked until my retirement. He came year after year to a literary festival and judged students writings and awarded prizes. He made himself available for hours to any of the students who wanted advice. He was a wonderful man.
 
Dusk in Illinois: Revisiting Ray Bradbury’s backyard universe (avclub.com)
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In an account of 17th-century science, The Clockwork Universe—a book with a distinctly Bradburian title—author Edward Dolnick notes, “We think of scientists as chucking out old ideas when something newer and more plausible comes along, but that is not the usual pattern. More often, scientists take up the new but cling to the old as well.” Bradbury understood this. Better yet, he transplanted it from science to science fiction. Rather than being monolithically utopian or dystopian, gleaming or grim, his visions of the future blur together today and tomorrow. It made these visions more accessible, but more deeply, it tapped into the notion Dolnick puts his finger on: that the present isn’t a time unto itself, but an overlap of the past and the future.
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much more at link above
 
Such an amazing man and prolific writer! He was an absolute master of my favorite genre-- the short story. Thank you Ray, rest in peace and bask in your glory. :candle:
 
He was my favorite writer while growing up! There will never be anyone else like him.

Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered
....Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass....
Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine.

RIP
 
The world lost a beautiful mind. RIP
 

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