Science fiction legend Ray Bradbury dead at 91: grandson

LOS ANGELES - Agence France-Presse

This Jan. 29, 1997 file photo shows author Ray Bradbury at a signing for his book "Quicker Than The Eye" in Cupertino, Calif. AP photo

Ray Bradbury, the science fiction legend who penned "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles," has died at the age of 91, his family said Wednesday.
 
"The world has lost one of the best writers it's ever known, and one of the dearest men to my heart. RIP Ray Bradbury (Ol' Gramps)," tweeted his grandson Danny Karapetian.
 
Ray Bradbury's fiction served as cautionary tales about perilous futures.
 
His most-remembered work, "Fahrenheit 451" (1953), was a Cold War-era work about the evils of censorship and thought control in a totalitarian state and reached a worldwide audience as a film adaptation by Francois Truffaut in 1966.
 
"The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me," he said in 2000.
 
"The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12," he said on his 80th birthday.
 
In all, the award-winning writer penned nearly 600 short stories and 30 books, including "The Martian Chronicles" about human attempts to colonize Mars and the unintended consequences.
 
International fame followed the 1950 publication of the "Chronicles," a novel assembled from a stack of short stories.