WRITER RAY BRADBURY DEAD AT 91

Famed science-fiction/fantasy writer Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes) has died in Los Angeles at age 91. Dozens of his more than 600 short stories were adapted for television, many by himself. His The Ray Bradbury Theater aired on HBO from 1985-1992. Bradbury’s first TV drama, for the early suspense TV series Lights Out, was broadcast live in 1951. He also adapted Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for the screen, although he reportedly clashed with the film’s director, John Huston, repeatedly and 41 years later wound up writing a novel, Green Shadows, White Whale, about the experience. (The hero/narrator is a writer sent to Ireland to work on a Moby Dick screenplay with a director named John.) While generally tagged as a science-fiction writer, he had always rejected the designation, maintaining that Fahrenheit 451 was his only sci-fi work. “All the others are fantasy,” he said. “Fantasies are things that can’t happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.”