Ray Bradbury: R.I.P.

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 and the Martian Chronicles.. and a lot more, has died at the age of 91. So very sad. Ray Bradbury was an icon in the literary world. When I met him several years ago, I was in awe. He quickly led me into a discussion on mysteries and actually seemed to care what I was saying. I know I babbled. I've read just about everything he's written.

Not only was Ray Bradbury a great writer, but he was a great supporter of other writers, libraries, movies and human kind. He was an inspiration to so many. His writing was in so many different genre including horror, mystery, as well as science fiction and speculative fiction. He wrote 1000 words a day and sold his first story in 1941.

From the AP obituary:

“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 in 1982.

Bradbury’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1934. He became a movie buff and a voracious reader. “I never went to college, so I went to the library,” he explained.

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 said he carried a sack full of dimes to the library and completed the book in nine days, at a cost of $9.80.

Read the Washington Post Obit HERE.

Ray Bradbury had a wonderful essay in the New Yorker last week (June 4, 2012). Read it HERE.

Read a recent interview (although started in the 70s) with Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction in the Paris Review.