Ray Bradbury ist gestorben

Der 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, geborene US-amerikanische Schriftsteller und Drehbuchautor Ray Bradbury (Bild) legte seine Schwerpunkte auf Science-Fiction, Horror und Phantastik. Er ist gestern Dienstag in Los Angeles gestorben.

Foto: Alan Light, 1975, Wikipedia

«In a career spanning more than seventy years, Ray Bradbury has inspired generations of readers to dream, think, and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and close to fifty books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

His groundbreaking works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He wrote the screen play for John Huston’s classic film adaptation of Moby Dick, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television’s The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree.

In 2005, Bradbury published a book of essays titled Bradbury Speaks, in which he wrote: In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

(…)

Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, and commanded, Live forever! Bradbury later said, I decided that was the greatest idea I had ever heard. I started writing every day. I never stopped.»

http://www.raybradbury.com/

Ganze Generationen der Nachkriegszeit beeinflusst

«Zu Bradburys grössten Erfolgen zählen ‚Die Mars-Chroniken‘ und die Erzählsammlung ‚Der illustrierte Mann‘. Unerreicht war aber ‚Fahrenheit 451‘. Der Roman von 1953 wurde 1966 von François Truffaut verfilmt, mit Oskar Werner und Julie Christie in den Hauptrollen. Buch und Film wurden Klassiker, die ganze Generationen der Nachkriegszeit beeinflussten.»

http://www.derbund.ch/kultur/buecher/Ray-Bradbury-ist-tot/story/23452505

«Ray Bradbury’s more than 27 novels and 600 short stories helped give stylistic heft to fantasy and science fiction. In ‚The Martian Chronicles‘ and other works, the L.A.-based Bradbury mixed small-town familiarity with otherworldly settings.»

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-ray-bradbury-20120607,0,5622415.story

«By many estimations Mr. Bradbury was the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream. His name would appear near the top of any list of major science-fiction writers of the 20th century, beside those of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and the Polish author Stanislaw Lem.»

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/b/ray_bradbury/index.html

«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.»

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/06/ray-bradbury-sci-fi-author-dies

Der zeitlose Jahrmarktszauberer

«Die Unschuld, sein Lebensthema, wird bei Bradbury – das allein macht sein Vermögen aus, den Unglauben des Publikums ans Phantastische zu überwinden – stets ihrem Gegenteil abgerungen, vor dem seine Landsleute bis heute Angst haben: Der bösen Intellektualität von Technokraten, der Unberechenbarkeit der Zukunft, dem Verfall, der Unverständlichkeit dessen, was ausserhalb des Gewohnten liegt, und den modernen Lügen der eben nicht mehr, wie bei Bradbury, handgemachten, sondern kommerziell berechneten Magie, zu der es gerade die glitzerndsten, ambivalentesten, sinnlichsten Titel in Bradburys Werk unwiderstehlich hinzieht, vom buchstäblich jahrmarktsverwunschenen ‚Something Wicked This Way Comes‘ (1962) bis zur bösen Hollywood-Satire ‚A Graveyard for Lunatics‘ (1990).»

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/autoren/zum-tod-von-ray-bradbury-der-zeitlose-jahrmarktszauberer-11776380.html

«Begrabt mich auf dem Mars!»

Der Schriftsteller Ray Bradbury über Medien, Ausserirdische – und ein erfülltes Leben.

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/literatur/ray-bradbury-begrabt-mich-auf-dem-mars/1305042.html