Legendary American writer Ray Bradbury passed away on Tuesday night in Los Angeles, aged 91. Born in Waukegan, Illinois in 1920, Bradbury began his career contributing short tales to various sci-fi and speculative fiction fanzines in his late teens, and went on to become one of the genre’s most celebrated authors, penning classics such as The Martian Chronicles (1950), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and The Halloween Tree (1972) in a career that spanned in excess of 70 years.
In addition to writing over 600 stories, the prolific Bradbury also earned a host film and television credits. Several of his tales were adapted by Hollywood, most notably François Truffaut’s 1966 adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, while he also contributed to numerous television anthology series such as Suspense, Playhouse 90, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and The Ray Bradbury Theatre. Bradbury was also responsible for writing the screenplays to John Huston’s 1956 screen adaptation of Moby Dick and the Academy Award-nominated animated short Icarus Montgolfier Wright (1962), and in 1994 he received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program for his adaptation of The Halloween Tree (1993).
