Ray Bradbury is gone. The author who gave us The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine and other marvelous, lyrical novels died in L.A. today. He was 91.
From the Official Ray Bradbury site:
“Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, ‘Live forever!’ Bradbury later said, ‘I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.’”
Most stories about his death lionize Ray as a “one of our greatest science fiction authors,” or something similar. But Ray always insisted he was just barely an SF author at all, saying only Fahrenheit 451 was actual SF; the rest of his stuff, he says – and he should know – was fantasy, because SF is about things that could actually happen. Fantasy is… fantasy. And what fantasies they were. As a young reader, I consumed everything of his I could lay my hands on. Very sad to hear of his passing.
i09 has a short remembrance; and one of their readers posted a very fine, brief tribute, pulling images from some of Ray’s masterworks.
And, finally, from Dandelion Wine:
“It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.”