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Ray Bradbury, literary genius and acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, died late Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.
His grandson, Danny Karapetian, shared the news:
If I had to make any statement, it would be how much I love and miss him, and I look forward to hearing everyone’s memories about him. He influenced so many artists, writers, teachers, scientists, and it’s always really touching and comforting to hear their stories. Your stories. 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.
Bradbury had suffered a stroke in recent years that left him confined to a wheelchair. But he continued to write novels, plays, screenplays, and a volume of poetry late in life.
“What I have always been is a hybrid author,” Bradbury said. “I am completely in love with movies, and I am completely in love with theater, and I am completely in love with libraries.”
In fact, Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the UCLA library, on typewriters that he rented for 10 cents per half hour. He carried a sack full of dimes to the library and completed the book in nine days, at a cost of $9.80.
“I never went to college, so I went to the library,” he said. “The great thing about my life is that everything I’ve done is a result of what I was when I was 12 or 13.”
I stumbled on this news today while scrolling through facebook on my phone in the break room at work. I'm crushed.
I read Fahrenheit 451 in my sophomore year in high school and was completely entranced. I finished it in days. Way ahead of the rest of the class. I remember staying after class and discussing the book with the teacher. I bought the DVD of the movie, just for the interview with him.
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