Ray Bradbury dies at 91; author lifted fantasy to literary heights

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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.

By Lynell George
Ray Bradbury, the writer whose expansive flights of fantasy and vividly rendered space-scapes have provided the world with one of the most enduring speculative blueprints for the future, has died. He was 91.

Bradbury died Tuesday night, his daughter, Alexandra Bradbury, told the Associated Press. No other details were immediately available.

Author of more than 27 novels and story collections—most famously "The Martian Chronicles," "Fahrenheit 451," "Dandelion Wine" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes"—and more than 600 short stories, Bradbury has frequently been credited with elevating the often-maligned reputation of science fiction. Some say he singlehandedly helped to move the genre into the realm of literature.

"The only figure comparable to mention would be [Robert A.] Heinleinand then later [Arthur C.] Clarke," said Gregory Benford, a UC Irvine physics professor who is also a Nebula award-winning science fiction writer. "But Bradbury, in the '40s and '50s, became the name brand."

Much of Bradbury's accessibility and ultimate popularity had to do with his gift as a stylist—his ability to write lyrically and evocatively of lands an imagination away, worlds he anchored in the here and now with a sense of visual clarity and small-town familiarity.

The late Sam Moskowitz, the preeminent historian of science fiction, once offered this assessment: "In style, few match him. And the uniqueness of a story of Mars or Venus told in the contrasting literary rhythms of Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe is enough to fascinate any critic."

As influenced by George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare as he was by Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bradbury was an expert of the taut tale, the last-sentence twist. And he was more celebrated for short fiction than his longer works.

"It's telling that we read Bradbury for his short stories," said Benford. "They are glimpses. The most important thing about writers is how they exist in our memories. Having read Bradbury is like having seen a striking glimpse out of a car window and then being whisked away."

An example is from 1957's "Dandelion Wine":

"The sidewalks were haunted by dust ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up, swung them about and gentled them down in a warm spice on the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strollers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes everywhere, crusting slumberless night watchman and irritable dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spontaneous combustion at three in the morning."

Bradbury's poetically drawn and atmospheric fictions—horror, fantasy, shadowy American gothics—explored life's secret corners: what was hidden in the margins of the official family narrative, or the white noise whirring uncomfortably just below the placid surface. He offered a set of metaphors and life puzzles to ponder for the rocket age and beyond, and has influenced a wide swath of popular culture--from children's writer R.L. Stine and singer Elton John (who penned his hit "Rocket Man" as an homage), to architect Jon Jerde who enlisted Bradbury to consider and offer suggestions about reimagining public spaces.

Bradbury frequently attempted to shrug out of the narrow "sci-fi" designation, not because he was put off by it, but rather because he believed it was imprecise.

"I'm not a science fiction writer," he was frequently quoted as saying. "I've written only one book of science fiction ["Fahrenheit 451"]. All the others are fantasy. Fantasies are things that can't happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen."

It wasn't merely semantics.

His stories were multi-layered and ambitious. 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 this flair for getting to really major issues," said Paul Alkon, emeritus professor of English and American literature at USC.

"He wasn't interested in current doctrines of political correctness or particular forms of society. Not what was wrong in '58 or 2001 but the kinds of issues that are with us every year."

Benford said Bradbury "emphasized rhetoric over reason and struck resonant notes with the bulk of the American readership—better than any other science fiction writer. Even [H.G.] Wells ... [Bradbury] anchored everything in relationships. Most science fiction doesn't."

Kenny Rogers Gearing Up for Biggest Year of His Career

By Sarah Wyland

Kenny Rogers has sold more than 120 million albums and has starred both on stage and screen, but 2012 is shaping up to be the biggest year of his career yet. He’s finishing up his first autobiography, which will be full of stories from his life both on and off the stage. The book is scheduled to be released this fall.

“I have to admit I’ve had an incredible life,” Kenny said. “Once I started actually recalling some of the special moments, I was shocked as to how much fun it was for me. I would hope that as you read this book, you get a sense of where I came from, who I am, and where I’m going.”

On May 9 and 10, Kenny will perform at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum as their 2012 Artist-in-Residence. Both shows, which will take place in an intimate setting, are already sold out. He will also perform at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and CMA Music Festival. Kenny will also be heading Down Under this year for ten appearances in Australia and New Zealand.

Kenny is planning to record a new album this year with producer Dann Huff as well. His last album and first gospel project, The Love of God, became his 21^st Top 10 country album in North America. Fans can count on him to embark on his annual Christmas & Hits Tour this winter.

Kenny Rogers shares a moment with photojournalist and fan, Ray Tharaldson.

Report of first doctor to reach shot Lincoln found

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -

Researchers have found the long-lost report of the first doctor to treat President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot at a Washington theater.

Dr. Charles Leale rushed to the presidential box and found Lincoln leaning against his wife. Leale ordered brandy and water be brought to the president immediately.

The eyewitness report of the first physician to reach the mortally wounded president at Ford's Theater in April 1865 was discovered in a box at the National Archives.

It was found by a researcher for the Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project, which is dedicated to finding and saving all documents written by or about the 16th president during his lifetime.

Director Daniel Stowell says the report is remarkable because it's straightforward and lacks sentimentality.

Jackson Browne cools on Obama

Labels: WRLTHD Music News

By CAITLIN MCDEVITT 
(Photo Credit: AP)
Jackson Browne will vote for President Obama in November, but he’s not excited about it.
“It wouldn’t and shouldn’t be a f---ing surprise to anybody that I’m going to vote for Obama,” the singer recently told The Wrap. “But honestly Obama once again has joined the ranks of the lesser of two evils. The great parade of people that the progressives get to vote for who are the lesser of two evils and who don’t really represent what I believe in any overwhelming balance.”
Browne, who backed Obama in 2008, is feeling disenchanted with the president these days.
“Look, Obama told me in a personal conversation that he wasn’t up for any new [nuclear] plants. Obviously, he changed his mind at some point. But what a surprise that one of his main supporters is the energy company, Exelon -- which has nuclear plants -- and that he would suddenly change his policy,” Browne said. “I don’t know what we would expect. He’s just as a beholden to the people who put him in office as any of the Republicans would be. But what’s a mystery to me is how he installed pretty much the exact same infrastructure in his administration that deals with finances as the administration that we thought we voted out. That’s really a shocker.”
Browne said he remains “involved politically” but won’t raise money for any presidential candidate this election cycle.
“It's a game of chicken. So I’m not going to participate,” he said. “Every day it’s like a fever. Like, ‘Oh  my God, if we don’t have $27,000 by tonight the DCC won’t think we’re being effective.’ I mean I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Al-Qaida Leader Killed In Drone Strike

By the CNN Wire Staff

His death marks one of the most significant blows to al-Qaidasince the U.S. military killed Osama bin Laden in a daring nighttime raid in Pakistan a year ago.

Al-Libi was second-in-command behind al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took the helm after bin Laden's death.

"There is no one who even comes close in terms of replacing the expertise (al-Qaida) has just lost," said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Al-Libi "played a critical role in the group's planning against the West, providing oversight of the external operations efforts," the official told CNN.

"Zawahiri will be hard-pressed to find any one person who can readily step into Abu Yahya's shoes," the official said. "In addition to his gravitas as a longstanding member of AQ's leadership, Abu Yahya's religious credentials gave him the authority to issue fatwas, operational approvals, and guidance to the core group in Pakistan and regional affiliates."

The Monday strike was the third such deadly attack in as many days and the 21st suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan this year. At least six missiles were fired at a militant compound near the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan region near the Afghanistan border.

Reports emerged a couple of years ago that al-Libi was slain, but they proved to be incorrect.

After bin Laden's death, Ayman al-Zawahiri became al-Qaida's leader and al-Libi was elevated to No. 2 in the terror organization.

Al-Qaida's leadership has been so thinned by the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan that these men were the only two real leaders of the organization left, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, according to CNN Security Analyst Peter Bergen. Al-Qaida offshoots in other parts of the world, such as the group's affiliate in Yemen, have meanwhile become more potent and worrisome to the United States.

An Islamic scholar and high-ranking member of the group, al-Libi frequently appeared in Internet videos. He gave many videotaped speeches praising al Qaeda leaders, urging resistance and trying to recruit new members.

"Al-Libi is a key motivator in the global jihadi movement and his messages convey a clear threat to U.S. persons or property worldwide," said a "Wanted" statement posted on the website of the U.S. State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program, which offers rewards for information about suspected terrorists.

"Al-Libi is believed to be in hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan," said the website, which offered a reward of up to $1 million for the 49-year-old Libyan.

Al-Libi purportedly was among al-Qaida leaders working in Libya since last year to establish a presence there.

In a video message to fellow Libyans distributed on jihadist forums in December, al-Libi said: "At this crossroads you have found yourselves, you either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah."

Al-Libi was captured in 2002 and imprisoned at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. government, but he escaped in 2005.

In 2008, a statement posted on radical Islamic websites known to carry messages from al-Qaida described how four "military leaders" including al-Libi escaped from the prison, but the statement said then that one of the escapees, Abu Abdallah al-Shami, had been killed in a U.S. airstrike.

The statement said that among those escaping with al-Shami was key al-Qaida figure Omar al-Faruq, who died in a British airstrike after the escape.

Another escapee, Abu Nasir al-Qahtani, was captured in Afghanistan in 2006. Al-Shami's death left al-Libi as the only remaining member of that escape who had not been killed or captured.

President Barack Obama's administration recently justified its use of unmanned drones to target suspected terrorists overseas in a rare public statement, with John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, saying the strikes are conducted "in full accordance with the law."

The program uses unmanned aerial vehicles, often equipped with Hellfire missiles, to target suspected terrorists in remote locations overseas, with many such strikes occurring in Yemen and Pakistan, despite some internal opposition within the latter country.

Brennan said the United States "respects national sovereignty and international law" and is guided by the laws of war in ordering those attacks.

The Pakistani border area is widely believed to be the operating base for the Haqqani network and other militant groups that have attacked international troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Richard Dawson Host of 'Family Feud' dies at 79

Labels: WRLTHD Entertainment news

NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show "Family Feud" has died. He was 79.

Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney POW Cpl. Peter Newkirk on "Hogan's Heroes," died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, his son Gary said.

The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as "What do people give up when they go on a diet?

He made his hearty, soaring delivery of the phrase "Survey says..." a national catchphrase among viewers.

Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him "the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on 'You Bet Your Life.'" The show was so popular it was released as both daytime and syndicated evening versions.

His swaggering, randy style (and British accent) set him apart from other TV quizmasters. He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed "somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000."

"I kissed them for luck and love, that's all," Dawson said at the time.

One of them he kissed was Gretchen Johnson, a young contestant who appeared with members of her family in 1981. After a decade together, she and Dawson wed in 1991. They had a daughter, Shannon.

Dawson reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film "The Running Man," playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners stalk them. "Saturday Night Live" mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.

The British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk in "Hogan's Heroes," the CBS comedy that starred Bob Crane and mined laughs from a Nazi POW camp whose prisoners hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves.

Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971.

"We ran six years," Dawson once quipped, "a year longer than Hitler."

Both "Hogan's Heroes" and "Family Feud" have had a second life in recent years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network.

On Dawson's last "Family Feud" in 1985, the studio audience honored him with a standing ovation, and he responded: "Please sit down. I have to do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry."

"I've had the most incredible luck in my career," he told viewers, adding, "I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them." That triggered an unexpected laugh.

Producers brought out "The New Family Feud," starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season. Steve Harvey is the current host.

Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England. When he was 14 he joined the Merchant Marines, serving three years.

He first got into show business as a stand-up comedian, playing clubs in London's West End including the legendary Stork Room. It was there, in the late 1950s, he met blond bombshell Diana Dors, the film star who became known as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe. They married in 1959 and divorced in the late 1960s.

Dawson landed roles in U.S. comedy and variety shows in the early 1960s, including "The Steve Allen Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Then his performance as a military prisoner in the 1965 film "King Rat" led to his being cast in "Hogan's Heroes," which truly made him a star to American audiences.

After that, he was a regular on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" and "The New Dick Van Dyke Show."

Meanwhile, he became a frequent celebrity contestant on game shows, including both daytime and prime-time versions of "The Match Game."

While still a panelist on "The Match Game," he began hosting "Family Feud," where his popularity grew to such levels that he was mentioned as a frontrunner to win the "Tonight Show" host chair to succeed Johnny Carson, who at the time was considering retirement. Though Carson stayed put, Dawson made appearances as a guest host.

Dawson is survived by his widow, Gretchen, their daughter Shannon, two sons, Mark and Gary, from his first marriage, and four grandchildren.

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report

WWII veteran buried in cardboard box in Florida cemetery sparks outrage

BUSHNELL, Fla. –  The discovery of a World War II veteran buried in a cardboard box at Florida National Cemetery has triggered outrage in Congress.

Workers made the discovery after they removed a headstone at the cemetery in Bushnell during routine maintenance, myFOXtampabay.com reported Saturday.

The veteran named Lawrence Davis Jr. died in 2004 and had no loved ones to make funeral arrangements for him. He was buried in a shallow grave with no casket.

The medical examiner sent Davis' remains in a cardboard box, and they were buried in the same box.

Veterans Affairs manager Maurice Roan said, "We usually bury the container they come in as long as it's sealed. We make every effort to make sure they get a dignified burial."

He added that the department goes out of its way to show dignity and respect.

Florida National Cemetery holds a special service for all veterans who are buried without family present. Their names are read in a service that takes place four times a year. But giving it the power to purchase caskets for deceased veterans would take an Act of Congress.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said, "We're not going to treat the veterans of this country that way. We're going to ensure there is a dignified burial."

Nelson and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both support a new bill called The Dignified Burial of Veterans Act of 2012. It would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to review its burial standards and would authorize it to purchase caskets or urns for all veterans in our national cemeteries.