Science fiction author Ray Bradbury dies at 91
June 8th, 2012 by faye
Ray Bradbury, best known as a science fiction author who has written “Fahrenheit 451” and “Something Wicked this Way Comes,” has passed away. He was 91.
According to reports, Bradbury died Wednesday morning, June 6, in Los Angeles at the age of 91.
Much of the work of Ray Bradbury has been adapted to film and TV. Among the science fiction author’s other works are “The Illustrated Man” and “The Martian Chronicles.”
“His legacy lives on in his monumental body of books, film, television and theater, but more importantly, in the minds and hearts of anyone who read him, because to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know,” the grandson of Ray Bradbury told the i09 science fiction blog.
The science fiction author is popularly known for criticizing the modern age and technology, opposing his own work’s conversion into e-books, saying “We have too many cell phones. We’ve got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”
Ray Bradbury attributes his success to not studying in college — instead, Bradbury read and wrote extensively.
“When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week,” Ray Bradbury said in an interview with The Paris Review. “I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school.”
The science fiction author’s best-known book, “Fahrenheit 451,” was about a dystopian tale set in the future about a society where books were banned and firefighters spent all day burning them. The Associated Press wrote that Bradbury’s novel “anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits.”
Ray Bradbury was able to sell eight million copies of his books in 36 languages. In 1999, he suffered from a stroke and lost his wife in 2003. Ray is survived by his four daughters and grandchildren.