Born Ray Douglas Bradbury on Aug. 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Ill., the author once described himself as "that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all." He claimed to have total recall of his life, dating even to his final weeks in his mother's womb.
His father, Leonard, a power company lineman, was a descendant of Mary Bradbury, who was tried for witchcraft at Salem, Mass. The author's mother, Esther, read him the "Wizard of Oz." His Aunt Neva introduced him to Edgar Allan Poe and gave him a love of autumn.
His childhood nightmares stocked his imagination, as did his youthful delight with the Buck Rogers and Tarzan comic strips, early horror films, Tom Swift adventure books and the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. He sold his first story in 1941 and published his first book, a short story collection called "Dark Carnival" in 1947.
Bradbury was so poor during those years that he didn't have an office or even a telephone. He wrote "Fahrenheit 451" at the UCLA library, on typewriters that rented for 10 cents a half hour. He said he carried a sack full of dimes and completed the book in nine days, at a cost of $9.80.
Although some academics doubted that account, saying he could not have created such a masterpiece in such a rapid, seemingly cavalier fashion, Bradbury maintained in several interviews with the AP over the years that that was exactly how he did it.
Until near the end of his life, Bradbury resisted one of the innovations he helped anticipate: electronic books, likening them to burnt metal and urging readers to stick to the old-fashioned pleasures of ink and paper.
In late 2011, as the rights to "Fahrenheit 451" were up for renewal, he gave in and allowed his most famous novel to come out in digital form. In return, he received a great deal of money and a special promise from Simon & Schuster.
The publisher agreed to make the e-book available to libraries, the only Simon & Schuster e-book at the time that library patrons could download.
A dynamic speaker with a booming, distinctive voice, Bradbury could be blunt and gruff, but he was also a gregarious and friendly man, approachable in public and often generous with his time to readers as well as fellow writers.
In 2009, at a lecture celebrating the first anniversary of a small library in Southern California's San Gabriel Valley, he exhorted his listeners to live their lives as he said he had lived his: "Do what you love and love what you do."
"If someone tells you to do something for money, tell them to go to hell," he shouted to raucous applause.
Bradbury is survived by his four daughters, Susan Nixon, Ramona Ostergren, Bettina Karapetian and Alexandra Bradbury. Marguerite Bradbury, his wife of 57 years, died in 2003.
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Associated Press writer Robert Jablon contributed to this report.
