Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury, a master of Science fiction whose imaginative and lyrical evocations of the future reflected both the optimism and the anxieties of his own postwar America, died on Tuesday in LosAngeles. He was 91. 
His death was confirmed by his agent, Michael Congdon. 
By many estimation Mr. Bradbury was the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literarymainstream. He wrote 27 novels and over 600 short stories. More than eight million copies of his works, published in over 36 languages, have been sold around the world. His name would appear near the top ofany list of major science fiction writers of the 20th century, beside those of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and the Polish author Stanislaw Lem. His books are still being taughtin schools, where many a reader has been introduced to them half a century after they first appeared. Many readers have said Mr. Bradbury’s stories fired their own imaginations. 
More than eightmillion copies of his books have been sold in 36 languages. They include the short-story collections “The Martian Chronicles,” “The Illustrated Man” and “The Golden Apples of the Sun,” and the novels“Fahrenheit 451” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” 
Though none of his works won a Pulitzer Prize, Mr. Bradbury received a Pulitzer citation in 2007 “for his distinguished, prolific and deeplyinfluential career as an unmatched author of science fiction and fantasy.” 
His writing career stretched across 70 years, to the last weeks of his life. The New Yorker published an autobiographical essay byMr. Bradbury in its June 4 double issue devoted to science fiction. There he recalled his “hungry imagination” as a boy in Illinois. 
“It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm afterone hysteria after another,” he wrote, noting, “You rarely have such fevers later in life that fill your entire day with emotion.” 
Mr. Bradbury sold his first story to a magazine called Super...