Late last year Ray Bradbury reluctantly allowed his classic novel Fahrenheit 451 to be published in ebook form, which was initially problematic but later resolved nicely.
Today we learn that the famed author has died at age 91 after decades of creating amazing stories and characters and visions of potential futures based on the human-technology interaction. He is best known for Fahrenheit 451, but through his short stories and collections he painted visions of the future based on the realities of the world around him:
Bradbury broke through in 1950 with “The Martian Chronicles,” a series of intertwined stories that satirized capitalism, racism and superpower tensions as it portrayed Earth colonizers destroying an idyllic Martian civilization.
Like Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” and the Robert Wise film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” Bradbury’s book was a Cold War morality tale in which imagined lives on other planets serve as commentary on human behavior on Earth. “The Martian Chronicles” has been published in more than 30 languages, was made into a TV miniseries and inspired a computer game.
He had been confined to a wheelchair for several years due to a stroke, but had continued writing and publishing works of fiction, essays and poetry right until the end.
For some it was ironic that a futurist author resisted ebooks for so long, but to him the very ‘realness’ of print books was lost in the electronic form, a sentiment heard from many authors and musicians.
Either way, he was an insightful and entertaining author whose works remain true and relevant today because the core ideals driving people don’t change. And he will be missed.
Source: San Jose Mercury News