SF writers tend to get less critical acclaim than their contemporaries, but Bradbury was certainly an exception to that rule, and even if he wrote nothing else, Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles will permanently secure his literary reputation.

Kudos to you DR for resisting the temptation to title the thread "Ray Bradburied".

Lovely tribute from Neil Gaiman here.

I've never read anything by him (only half of my degree was in literature, and whilst most of that department's students had to read Farenheit 451, I didn't do that module). I also didn't know until today that he was a sci-fi writer. One of those things has now been remedied, and I think the other is likely to be pretty soon - today I discovered that he's very famous in Argentina, because almost everyone had to read The Martian Chronicles at school.

My girlfriend is the only person I know who's as big a fan of Borges as I am, and her Facebook status when she heard the news was that Ray Bradbury was one of the writers who'd taught her the pleasure of reading. I can't think of much higher praise than that.