Sci-fi author Bradbury dead at 91

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Adam Latham/Zuma Press Writer Ray Bradbury, pictured in 2009, attended literary events and book signings even after a stroke confined him to a wheelchair. (TRIBUNE MEDIA MCT)

LOS ANGELES -- Ray Bradbury, the science fiction-fantasy master who transformed his childhood dreams and Cold War fears into telepathic Martians, lovesick sea monsters, and the high-tech, book-burning future of Fahrenheit 451, has died. He was 91.

He died Tuesday night, his daughter said Wednesday. Alexandra Bradbury did not have additional details.

Although slowed in recent years by a stroke that meant he had to use a wheelchair, Bradbury remained active into his 90s, turning out new novels, plays, screenplays and a volume of poetry.

His writings ranged from horror and mystery to humour. Bradbury also wrote for The Twilight Zone and other TV programs, including The Ray Bradbury Theater, for which he adapted dozens of his works.

"What I have always been is a hybrid author," Bradbury said in 2009. "I am completely in love with movies, and I am completely in love with theatre, and I am completely in love with libraries."

Bradbury broke through in 1950 with The Martian Chronicles, a series of stories that satirized capitalism, racism and superpowers as it portrayed Earth colonizers destroying an idyllic Martian civilization. It has been published in more than 30 languages.

The Martian Chronicles prophesized the banning of books, a theme Bradbury would take on fully in the 1953 release Fahrenheit 451. Inspired by the Cold War, the rise of TV and the author's passion for libraries, it was an apocalyptic narrative of nuclear war abroad and empty pleasure at home, with firefighters assigned to burn books instead of putting blazes out (451 F, Bradbury had been told, was the temperature at which texts went up in flames).

A futuristic classic often taught alongside George Orwell's 1984, Bradbury's novel anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits.

Although involved in many futuristic projects, including the New York World's Fair of 1964 and the Spaceship Earth display at Walt Disney World, Bradbury was deeply attached to the past. He refused to drive a car or fly, telling the AP that witnessing a fatal traffic accident as a child left behind a permanent fear of automobiles. In his younger years, he got around by bicycle or roller-skates.

"I'm not afraid of machines," he told Writer's Digest in 1976. "I don't think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we're fools."

Bradbury's literary style was honed in pulp magazines and influenced by Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, and he became the rare science-fiction writer treated seriously by the literary world. In 2007, he received a special Pulitzer Prize citation "for his distinguished, prolific and deeply influential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy." In 2000, he received an honorary National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement.

His fame even extended to the moon, where Apollo astronauts named a crater "Dandelion Crater," in honour of Dandelion Wine, his coming-of-age novel.

Born Ray Douglas Bradbury on Aug. 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Ill., the author once described himself as "that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all." He claimed to have total recall of his life.

Nightmares that plagued him as a boy also stocked his imagination, as did his youthful delight with the Buck Rogers and Tarzan comic strips, early horror films, Tom Swift adventure books and the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

"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," he said.

Bradbury's family moved to L.A. in 1934. He became a movie buff and a voracious reader. "I never went to college, so I went to the library," he said.

He tried to write at least 1,000 words a day, and sold his first story in 1941. He submitted work to pulp magazines until he was finally accepted by such upscale publications as The New Yorker. Bradbury's first book, a short story collection called Dark Carnival, was published in 1947.

He was so poor during those years that he didn't have an office or even a telephone. "When the phone rang in the gas station right across the alley from our house, I'd run to answer it," he said.

He wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the UCLA library, on typewriters that rented for 10 cents a 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.

A dynamic speaker with a booming, distinctive voice, he could be blunt and gruff. But Bradbury was also a gregarious and friendly man, approachable in public and often generous with his time to readers as well as fellow writers.

Until near the end of his life, Bradbury resisted one of the innovations he helped anticipate: electronic books. But in late 2011, as the rights to Fahrenheit 451 were up for renewal, he gave in and allowed his famous novel to come out in digital form. In return, he received a great deal of money and a special promise from Simon & Schuster: The publisher agreed to make the e-book available to libraries, the only Simon & Schuster e-book at the time that library patrons were allowed to download.

Bradbury is survived by his four daughters. Marguerite Bradbury, his wife of 56 years, died in 2003.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 7, 2012 D4