Ray Bradbury, the author of more than 27 novels and 600 short stories, who described the outer reaches of our universe with an imagination that was no less expansive, has died aged 91.
His death in Los Angeles was confirmed by Bradbury family and biographer Sam Weller.
Bradbury was best known for Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian vision of a world where books have been outlawed. In reality the novel became feature of school reading lists around the world and launched countless new sci-fi fans into the atmosphere.
Born in Illinois in 1920, Bradbury grew up devouring the works of Edgar Allan Poe, H. G Wells, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, feeding an imagination that would eventually turn him into one of the most prolific and adored science fiction writers of modern times.
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A staunch supporter of libraries, Bradbury once claimed that he ‘didn’t believe in colleges and univeristies’ having attended neither.
Instead, he claimed, his local library ‘raised him’, and it was in a small corner of a library in the University of California that he wrote the original version of Fahrenheit 451, a shorter story called The Fireman.
After settling into his writing career in Los Angeles, Bradbury made successful attempts to write in several genres including horror, mystery and humour.
He also wrote for the big screen, penning the 1956 version of Moby Dick and contributing to the famous Twilight Zone series in the 50s.
Bradbury’s last full novel was 2006’s Farewell Summer, a sequel to the semiautobiographical Dandelion Wine.
He suffered a stroke in 1999 that forced him to use a wheelchair, but that didn’t stop Bradbury from continuing to write and attend occasional bookstore events around his home city, particularly fundraisers for his beloved public libraries.
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