It’s a sad day for writing and for science fiction. Legendary and iconic author Ray Bradbury has died at the age of 91. We should count ourselves fortunate that we had him for so many years, firing the imaginations of children and adults worldwide. I will never forget reading his ‘Martian Chronicles,’ ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ and ‘The Illustrated Man.’ I recently re-read 451 after many decades and thoroughly enjoyed it to the same extent that I had as a teenager. He was one of those writers more interested in the life of the imagination than in hard-core science fiction. He wrote not about the spaceship, but more about how one thought about a spaceship.
He provided much material for the movies, including the peculiar and not entirely successful Francois Truffaut adaptation of ‘Fahrenheit 451.’ He will be sorely missed and probably never equaled.
Here is a 1963 television documentary about Bradbury produced by David L. Wolper. It contains a film version of one of his short stories called ‘Dial Double Zero.’
