| Ray Bradbury, the sci-fi and fantasy great whose best-known works include Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes, has died in California aged 91.
“I'm not a science fiction writer,” the writer once protested, although perhaps the best screen adaptation of his work was Francois Truffaut's singular take on his sci-fi Fahrenheit 451. Truffaut cast Oskar Werner as the hero of Bradbury's novel Guy Montag, a 'fireman' who refuses to continue burning books for a repressive futuristic state when he meets Julie Christie's revolutionary.
Bradbury's scary snapshot of a future in which books were forbidden found a faithful director in Truffaut, whose counter-cultural take on the story - a kind of Fight Club in flares - chimed with the writer. Other screen adaptations of his work, including a 1980 miniseries take on The Martian Chronicles with Rock Hudson and '60s sci-fi The Illustrated Man, found less favour.
Alongside his 600 short stories, more than 30 books and countless plays and poems, Bradbury also turned out screenplays, most notably for John Huston's Moby Dick.
Bradbury is survived by his four daughters. Marguerite Bradbury, his wife of 56 years, died in 2003. | 
