(Newser)
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A sampling of the salutes being directed toward Ray Bradbury, who has died at age 91:
- Gerald Jonas, New York Times: "By many estimations Mr. Bradbury was the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream."
- Lynell George, Los Angeles Times: "Bradbury was far less concerned with mechanics—how many tanks of fuel it took to get to Mars and with what rocket—than what happened once the crew landed there, or what they would impose on their environment." He had a knack for getting to the "really major issues," says one English professor.
- Tom McCarthy and David Barnett, the Guardian: "One of the most widely read authors of his generation, Bradbury published a string of titles in the early 1950s—The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451—that captured the political fears of a generation and fueled renewed interest in futurist literature."
- Laura Tillman, BusinessWeek: "Bradbury’s prose stood out for its ability to bring a human warmth and nostalgia to the fantasy genre. While many of his colleagues pursued the possibilities of science, Bradbury used his imagination to depart from the ordinary only to return to the values that remain irrevocably human."
- Bradbury himself: “I wasn’t trying to predict the future,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2003. “I was trying to prevent it.”
