Ray Bradbury dead at 91

[Guardsman Bass]

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 died Tuesday night, his daughter, Alexandra Bradbury, told the Associated Press. No other details were immediately available.

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.

PHOTOS: Ray Bradbury | 1920 - 2012

"The only figure comparable to mention would be [Robert A.] Heinleinand then later [Arthur C.] Clarke," said Gregory Benford, a UC Irvine physics professor who is also a Nebula award-winning science fiction writer. "But Bradbury, in the '40s and '50s, became the name brand."

Much of Bradbury's accessibility and ultimate popularity had to do with his gift as a stylist—his ability to write lyrically and evocatively of lands an imagination away, worlds he anchored in the here and now with a sense of visual clarity and small-town familiarity.

The late Sam Moskowitz, the preeminent historian of science fiction, once offered this assessment: "In style, few match him. And the uniqueness of a story of Mars or Venus told in the contrasting literary rhythms of Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe is enough to fascinate any critic."

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

As influenced by George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare as he was by Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bradbury was an expert of the taut tale, the last-sentence twist. And he was more celebrated for short fiction than his longer works.

"It's telling that we read Bradbury for his short stories," said Benford. "They are glimpses. The most important thing about writers is how they exist in our memories. Having read Bradbury is like having seen a striking glimpse out of a car window and then being whisked away."

An example is from 1957's "Dandelion Wine":

"The sidewalks were haunted by dust ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up, swung them about and gentled them down in a warm spice on the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strollers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes everywhere, crusting slumberless night watchman and irritable dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spontaneous combustion at three in the morning."

Bradbury's poetically drawn and atmospheric fictions—horror, fantasy, shadowy American gothics—explored life's secret corners: what was hidden in the margins of the official family narrative, or the white noise whirring uncomfortably just below the placid surface. He offered a set of metaphors and life puzzles to ponder for the rocket age and beyond, and has influenced a wide swath of popular culture--from children's writer R.L. Stine and singer Elton John (who penned his hit "Rocket Man" as an homage), to architect Jon Jerde who enlisted Bradbury to consider and offer suggestions about reimagining public spaces.

Bradbury frequently attempted to shrug out of the narrow "sci-fi" designation, not because he was put off by it, but rather because he believed it was imprecise.

"I'm not a science fiction writer," he was frequently quoted as saying. "I've written only one book of science fiction ["Fahrenheit 451"]. All the others are fantasy. Fantasies are things that can't happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen."

It wasn't merely semantics.

His stories were multi-layered and ambitious. Bradbury was far less concerned with mechanics—how many tanks of fuel it took to get to Mars and with what rocket—than what happened once the crew landed there, or what they would impose on their environment. "He had this flair for getting to really major issues," said Paul Alkon, emeritus professor of English and American literature at USC.

"He wasn't interested in current doctrines of political correctness or particular forms of society. Not what was wrong in '58 or 2001 but the kinds of issues that are with us every year."

Benford said Bradbury "emphasized rhetoric over reason and struck resonant notes with the bulk of the American readership—better than any other science fiction writer. Even [H.G.] Wells ... [Bradbury] anchored everything in relationships. Most science fiction doesn't."

Bradbury was part of a fantastic generation of Science Fiction authors, a group that included Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip Dick, and Poul Anderson. Now almost all of them are dead - I think the only ones from that group that are still alive are Richard Matheson and Brian Aldiss. It's almost the end of an era for SF.

[The Yosemite Bear]

most sad, I think it must have been the firemen, or something wicked this way has come....

===edit===
by firemen I'm refer to the ones in ferenhite 451.

[Guardsman Bass]

The "live" and "dead" groups are bigger than I'd written down. Jack Vance and Ursula Le Guin are both still alive, but Hal Clement and Marion Zimmer Bradley are both dead.

[D.Turtle]

Sad, but this reminds me of a fitting tribute (NWS video!) already done, which he had the pleasure to see.

[Irbis]

The "live" and "dead" groups are bigger than I'd written down. Jack Vance and Ursula Le Guin are both still alive, but Hal Clement and Marion Zimmer Bradley are both dead.

And to give justice to the other side of Iron Curtain, ones like Kir Bulychev, Arkady Strugatsky, or Stanislaw Lem. Sad to see them go

[K. A. Pital]

Lem & Bradbury among the recent sci-fi author deaths trouble me most. They were great visionaries.

[The Yosemite Bear]

well they wwere also part of the "Greatest Generation" too, they survived the depression and killed Hitler, don't fuck with them, but it seems that the reaper doesn't care about hat bonofide.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

That's bad. We're mourning a luminary today even though he was, well, kind of a dick.

Do you think any of the modern sci-fi authors can be called 'great'? Not right now, of course, just your predictions (and your fan wank, if you like, I don't mind).

[Ahriman238]

He wrote lots more that those two books, those are just the more famous one. Let's kill Catherine, Graveyard for Lunatics, the Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, the day it rained forever, at least 3 or 4 short story anthologies...

He will be missed. One more for the road?

[The Yosemite Bear]

That's bad. We're mourning a luminary today even though he was, well, kind of a dick.

Do you think any of the modern sci-fi authors can be called 'great'? Not right now, of course, just your predictions (and your fan wank, if you like, I don't mind).

erm, the dick of classic sci-fi is now and always has been darth Ellison.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Eh. Well... Ellison quite is. I was just saying about Bradbury because of that incident when he punched a guy for making a somewhat weird analysis of Farenheit 451.

[The Yosemite Bear]

dude that's one incident, you should see what happens when moon landing conspiracy theorists meet Buzz Alderin....