Ray Bradbury, 91 years young is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. His more than five hundred published works — short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse — exemplify the American imagination at its most creative.
Once read, his words are never forgotten. His best-known and most beloved books, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 and my personal favorite, Something Wicked This Way Comes are masterworks that readers carry with them over a lifetime. His timeless, constant appeal to audiences young and old has proven him to be one of the truly classic authors of the 20th Century and the 21st.
Amen.
Ray Bradbury strongly influenced the course of my life. I was a young high school student when, at the suggestion of the librarian, I read “Fahrenheit 451″ a dramatic allegory that set for me the divide and struggle between the free mind and the authoritarian. Being young I loved the story, and later read all of Ray’s novels as they appeared on the shelves.