Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury claimed he didn’t really write science fiction, but it seemed to me he did. It wasn’t largely to my taste (with a few exceptions), but it’s hard to say that The Martian Chronicles doesn’t fit the genre. Admittedly, his work was short on bug-eyed monsters and hyperspace, but it explored the social aspects of speculation that are just as much part of SF as space opera.  Just as important, his popular acceptance brought a respectability and gravitas to science fiction that had been sorely lacking. For a long time, he was one of the few SF authors that the mainstream could admit to reading, and in that way, he helped to create some commonality between mainstream readers and SF fans, a process that writers like Kurt Vonnegut helped further.