Ray Bradbury has died, at the age of 91. He was a giant of literature.
Instapundit singles out Dandelion Wine. Let me add Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree. And just about everything else he ever wrote.
I thought this site had praised Bradbury several times. Nope. Only in passing, though in a post that owes all to him. And again there are tears in my eyes as I write.
Will add a NSFW link later, when not…you know, at work. If you can’t wait it’s probably on YouTube, search F*** Me, Ray Bradbury. Now that’s a fan! There’s also a vid of Mr. Bradbury watching that vid, somewhere.
Goodbye, sir. Tell Roger Zelasny that we still miss his darkness and light, as well.
UPDATE–Though disputing Ms. Bloom’s claim that he’s the greatest sci-fi writer in history (he was a fantasy writer above all) her enthusiasm is not in doubt.
Language Alerrrrrrrrrrrt!
His reaction seems about right:
World's Only Rational Man 
Never read anything from him. I saw the Fahrenheit movie once, and I was less then unimpressed. Maybe because I was still a teen and pretty much a Trek War-er (aka Star Trek and Star Wars), until I got into Babylon 5, which did away with all the naive nonsense Star Trek threw around and showed a future not much different from today.
And these days I prefer a totally different sci-fi approach.
Something along…
“It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants — and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.”
Well, if you can adjust for different eras, I’d say you’re more an E.E. “Doc” Smith kind of guy. He went cosmic about 50 years before anyone else.
Though your intro is a most suitable descendent of Smith’s over-the-top scale of action.
Nothing over the top there good sir.