An uncontested legend, science fiction author Ray Bradbury died 5 June 2012, in Los Angeles, aged 91.
Born 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury published his first story in 1938, and over the incredible career that followed he wrote 27 novels and over 600 short stories including such heavyweight classics as 1950’s Martian Chronicles and 1953’s Fahrenheit 451.
Over the years his short stories were adapted into anthology shows like Tales Of Tomorrow, Lights Out, Out There, Suspense, CBS Television Workshop, Jane Wyman’s Fireside Theatre, Star Tonight, Windows, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and as movies by the likes of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen and Who’s Afraid Of Baby Jane? screenwriter Harry Essex.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg stated that Bradbury was his ” muse for the better part of [his] sci-fi career…. On the world of science fiction and fantasy and imagination he is immortal”.
Writer Neil Gaiman felt that “the landscape of the world we live in would have been diminished if we had not had him in our world”, and author Stephen King released a statement on his website saying, “Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was called ‘A Sound Of Thunder.’ The sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant’s footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty.”
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