Phil Nichols - Bradburymedia

Monday, September 02, 2024

Something Wicked: Exaggerated Claims Resurface...

An article about the 1983 film Something Wicked This Way Comes is doing the rounds, and perpetuates the myth that Ray Bradbury directed the film. Regular readers of Bradburymedia and listeners to Bradbury 100 will know that this claim - originating with Ray Bradbury himself - is at best a wild exaggeration of the truth, and at worst an outright falsehood.

Something Wicked suffered at the hands of a preview audience, and producers at Disney decided it needed substantial re-shoots to make it work, delaying the release for about a year. Bradbury was involved in devising some new material to rescue the film, and late in life Ray's own recounting of these events gradually shifted with each re-telling from the plausible "I helped with the re-shoots and re-edit" to "I more or less directed the re-shoots" to the preposterous "I directed Something Wicked". (These are not exact quotes; I'm paraphrasing.)

The problem with the article at CBR.com is that it relies on a single account, that given by Sam Weller in 2005's The Bradbury Chronicles, who in turn merely repeats what Ray has told him.

Let's set the matter straight.

I thoroughly researched the making of Something Wicked for my 2017 PhD thesis, which examined Bradbury as a screenwriter. From primary research using the Bradbury papers (held at the Ray Bradbury Center at Indiana University Indianapolis), I was able to reconstruct the timeline of the re-shooting and re-editing of Something Wicked, and I determined that Bradbury's claim to have directed the film is false.

True, Bradbury was present during some of the re-shooting - but so was the film's credited director Jack Clayton. However, true artistic control over the film during this re-shoot phase was vested in neither Bradbury nor Clayton, but in the Disney special effects department (with Lee Dyer supervising on set, and Tom Wilhite overseeing production).

I have written and lectured extensively on this topic. You can find a brief account on this very website, here: https://bradburymedia.blogspot.com/2020/05/lockdown-choice-something-wicked-this.html

You will also find my detailed podcast episode on the "re-making" of Something Wicked here: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/bradbury-100-episode-45-rescuing-something-wicked-this/id1521151939?i=1000613486403

Finally, the full account of my findings can be found in chapter 4 of my Liverpool University PhD thesis, available here (third download link): https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3009310/

Friday, August 23, 2024

Bradbury 100 LIVE: 2024 Edition!

On Thursday 22 August 2024 - what would have been Ray Bradbury's 104th birthday! - I went live once again with my Bradbury 100 podcast.

I talked about the "Chronological Bradbury" series of episodes, and went through all the steps I usually take in putting together such an episode: the books I consult, how I compare different versions of the same story, and how to track down the rarer Bradbury stories.

I also showed some of the statistics about Ray's stories, went into questions about copyright, and looked at some of the Bradbury books which have come out in the last twelve months.

The livestream was via my Facebook page, and the recording can still be viewed there: https://www.facebook.com/bradburymedia/videos/476381738570690

The livestream was also relayed to my YouTube channel, and the recording can still be viewed there (https://www.youtube.com/@bradburymedia100) - and also here:

...and the audio from the livestream is also available as a conventional audio podcast episode (without pictures, of course). Check your podcast app, and you should now find it available to listen. Or you can listen right here:

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 57 - Bradbury 100 LIVE for 2024

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Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Staying up to date with the Bradbury 100 podcast

To make it easier to discover my Bradbury 100 podcast, you'll periodically see this page, which gathers all the episodes and shows together.

Bonus Video Episode - video of my public lecture on Fahrenheit 451 at seventy (extended, lavishly illustrated, video version of podcast episode 42)

Bonus Video Episode - video of my public lecture on The Illustrated Man at seventy (extended, lavishly illustrated, video version of podcast episode 27)

Bonus Video Episode - video of my public lecture on The Martian Chronicles at seventy (extended, lavishly illustrated, video version of part of podcast episode 17)

Bonus LIVE Video Episode - writer Steven Paul Leiva returns as we celebrate Ray's 101st birthday

Episode 56 - Ray's first book, Dark Carnival, available in paperback for the first time

Episode 55 - Chronological Bradbury: Ray's stories published in 1942

Episode 54 - Bumper Christmas Q&A special!

Episode 53 - Ray's personal fanzine, Futuria Fantasia

Episode 52 - Chronological Bradbury: Ray's stories published in 1941

Episode 51 - Review of some new Bradbury product

Episode 50 - Chronological Bradbury: Ray's stories published in 1940

Episode 49 - Reviewing Ray Bradbury: All about the journal The New Ray Bradbury Review

Episode 48 - Chronological Bradbury: Ray's stories published in 1939

Episode 47 - Bradbury 100 Live - 2023 edition

Episode 46 - Chronological Bradbury: Ray's stories published in 1938

Episode 45 - Rescuing the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes after a disastrous preview

Episode 44 - How Ray wrote the book and movie Something Wicked This Way Comes

Episode 43 - Books that never were: proposed Bradbury books that didn't come into being

Episode 42 - Fahrenheit 451 at Seventy (live talk)

Episode 41 - Ray's "ghost writer" friends

Episode 40 - The "Rocket Summer" you probably don't know

Episode 39 - Ray Bradbury and Christmas

Episode 38 - Ray and EC Comics

Episode 37 - Bradbury's dinosaur tales

Episode 36 - The tragic death of Ray's Uncle Lester

Episode 35 - Bradbury's October

Episode 34 - Bradbury's advice to writers

Episode 33 - Bradbury's story "The Exiles"

Episode 32 - Dandelion Wine live talk

Episode 31 - August 2022 update

Episode 30 - Ray Bradbury's other Mars stories

Episode 29 - Ray Bradbury and the question of "style"

Episode 28 - the best Martian Chronicles films never made

Episode 27 - The Illustrated Man at Seventy (also available in extended, illustrated, video form - see Bonus Video episodes at the top of this list)

Episode 26 - tracking down "The Lonely One"

Episode 25 - with Bradbury scholar Phil Nichols!

Episode 24 - with writer and Bradbury scholar Steve Gronert Ellerhoff

Episode 23 - with writer and actor David J. Loftus

Episode 22 - with filmmaker and visual effects artist Christopher Cooksey

Episode 21 - with Russian author Pavel Gubarev, webmaster of the Russian Ray Bradbury website

Episode 20 - April 2021 update

Episode 19 - introducing my new podcast, Science Fiction 101!

Episode 18 - with science fiction writer and scholar Howard V. Hendrix, on Bradbury's influence and legacy

Episode 17 - with highlights from two centenary events: Bradbury 100 Live and The Martian Chronicles at Seventy (both of these events are also available in extended video form - see Bonus Video episodes at the top of this list)

Episode 16 - with writer and friend of Ray, Gregory Miller

Episode 15 - with Emmy-winning actor Bill Oberst Jr, who appears as Ray in a one-person show

Episode 14 - with writer and scholar Jeffrey Kahan on how Bradbury's fiction works

Episode 13 - with storyteller Megan Wells on performing Bradbury's stories and characters

Episode 12 - with writer/director/actor Jerry Robbins, who adapted many Bradbury works for Colonial Radio Theater

Episode 11 - with writer and editor Charles Ardai, who edited the new Bradbury crime story collection Killer, Come Back To Me

Episode 10 - with Ray Bradbury Theatre composer John Massari

Episode 9 - with scholar Miranda Corcoran, talking about Ray's "Elliott family"

Episode 8 - the second part of my interview with award-winning dramatist Brian Sibley, talking mostly about adapting Bradbury for radio

Episode 7 - with writer and broadcaster Brian Sibley, talking mostly about Disney

Episode 6 - continuing my interview with Jonathan R. Eller, Bradbury biographer and scholar

Episode 5 - with Jonathan R. Eller, Bradbury biographer, whose latest book Bradbury Beyond Apollo completes his biographical trilogy

Episode 4 - with photographer Elizabeth Nahum-Albright, who has a current exhibition on Ray Bradbury's house

Episode 3 - with Sandy Petroshius of the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum

Episode 2 - with Jason Aukerman of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies

Episode 1 - with author Steven Paul Leiva, creator of Ray Bradbury Week in Los Angeles

The best way to never miss an episode is to subscribe for free with your podcast app/service of choice. See the list of links below!

And you can also follow Bradbury 100 on Facebook.

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Thursday, March 14, 2024

New BRADBURY 100 episode: DARK CARNIVAL New Edition

Today is a special day for Bradbury fans. For the first time in 23 years, there is a new edition of Ray's first book, Dark Carnival.

This also marks the first time that Dark Carnival has ever been available as a paperback or an e-book. You can get it from all good bookshops, including Amazon UK.

To celebrate, here's a new episode of Bradbury 100 where I detail the various editions of Dark Carnival and explain why it isn't the same book as The October Country!

For reasons unknown (to me), these new editions are only available in the UK, but in the episode I give advice on how to get it shipped to the US (or anywhere outside of the UK).

For more information on Dark Carnival - including photos and a video I made about the book - check out this previous blog post: https://bradburymedia.blogspot.com/2020/03/lockdown-choices-issue-1-dark-carnival.html

And if I've left you confused about the differences between Dark Carnival and The October Country, here's a previous blog post where I attempt to map the differences between the two books: https://bradburymedia.blogspot.com/2020/05/from-dark-carnival-to-small-assassin.html

And here's the podcast episode. Enjoy!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 56 - Dark Carnival Paperback and Ebook First Editions

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Wednesday, January 17, 2024

New BRADBURY 100 Episode - Chronological Bradbury: 1942

Time for another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast, and it's another one of the occasional "Chronological Bradbury" series. This time, we hit 1942, the year when Ray broke through to the two leading science fiction and fantasy pulp magazines of the time: Astounding Science Fiction and Weird Tales.

It's actually a fairly quiet year, as Ray only published two stories in 1942. (But he was evidently busy writing, because the following years will be full of professional appearances.)

The two stories I cover today are "Eat, Drink and Be Wary", from July 1942, which you can read in full here...

...and "The Candle", from November 1942, which is available here.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 55 - Chronological Bradbury 1942

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Friday, December 22, 2023

New BRADBURY 100 Episode - Bumper Question-and-Answer Show for Xmas!

Seasons greetings!

Here's a special, bumper, double-length Christmas episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast in which I answer questions about Ray Bradbury and his works.

The questions were submitted by members of the "Science Fiction Book Club" Facebook group. And there are some excellent questions here, and in some cases I have to do a bit of thinking and/or digging to come up with a suitable answer.

Members of the Facebook group (which you can ask to join here) also get to see a written version of my answers, but the audio version in the podcast has some extra detail. In the audio version, I've anonymised the question-askers, and used a cast of highly-trained AI helpers to voice them.

It will take you nearly two hours to get through this episode, but feel free to break up the journey with rest breaks for Xmas pudding or left-over stuffing!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 54 - Q&A Special

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Friday, December 08, 2023

New Bradbury 100 Episode - Ray's Fanzine, Futuria Fantasia

In this new episode of the Bradbury 100 podcast, I explore Futuria Fantasia - the fanzine that Ray Bradbury produced when he was a teenage science fiction fan.

The first issue of Futuria Fantasia, published when Ray was eighteen years old, catches him just before he heads off to New York for the first-ever World Science Fiction Convention. In that first issue, he is very much focused on "Technocracy", a movement which promised to turn science fiction into political reality. The issue includes an essay on Technocracy by Bruce Yerke, followed by an early piece of Ray Bradbury science fiction: "Don't Get Technatal", a satirical look at how boring it will be to live in a utopia!

"Don't Get Technatal" was Ray's third piece of published fiction, although he hid behind the pseudonym of Ron Reynolds. I read it in full in the podcast, along with Ray's other contributions to FuFa No. 1. (I also read selections from the writings of the other contributors.)

If you want to read the whole magazine, it's freely available, since the copyright on FuFa expired decades ago. The best place to find it - and the other three issues that Ray published - is via the links at science fiction history site FANAC.

So, come with me now to the world of 1939, where fans of "scientifiction" enthusiastically support the bright future offered by the Technocracy movement, perhaps oblivious to the impending likelihood of world war...

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 53 - Ray's Fanzine, Futuria Fantasia

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Friday, November 24, 2023

New BRADBURY 100 Episode - Chronological Bradbury: 1941

Time for another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast - and it's another in my occasional series, "Chronological Bradbury".

It's 1941, and the year that Ray Bradbury makes the breakthrough as a professional writer!

In this year, Bradbury had six stories published: three amateur pieces published in fanzines; two semipro pieces (published in a fairly prestigious magazine, but he got paid with free copies of the magazine); and at year's end, his first professional sale, to the pulp science fiction magazine Super Science Stories.

In the podcast episode, I go through each story in turn, giving a brief summary and a review. If you want to read the stories for yourself, you can find some of them online. Some of them are only available in books, though. And one of them is, alas, not available anywhere that I can find.

Here's a list of the stories covered, with direct links where there are online copies:

“How Am I Today, Doctor?”
“The Trouble With Humans Is People”
“Wilber and his Germ” - I haven't been able to find this story anywhere. Let me know if you have a copy!
“Tale of the Mangledomvritch”
“To Make A Long Story Much Much Shorter”
“Pendulum”

Stories which can't be found online are usually found in The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition, Vol. 1, or in The Earliest Bradbury.

Here's the episode. Please let me know what you think of these stories!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 52 - Chronological Bradbury 1941

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Friday, November 10, 2023

New Bradbury 100 Episode - Reviewing some new Bradbury product

Here's another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast. This time I review three new Bradbury-related products which I've recently received. Here are ordering links for the three:

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, 1980 TV miniseries on Blu-ray: order from ViaVision Entertainment

Phoenix 451, a collection of Ray's own dramatisations of Fahrenheit 451: order from Gauntlet Press

It Came From Outer Space, 1953 film written by Ray, on 4K HDR Blu-ray: order from Amazon US - or order from Amazon UK

Here's the pod. Enjoy!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 51 - Some Recent Bradbury Product

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Saturday, October 28, 2023

New BRADBURY 100 Podcast Episode: Chronological Bradbury, 1940

Can you believe it? My Bradbury 100 podcast has reached its fiftieth episode! And it's another in my "Chronological Bradbury" strand - this time covering the year 1940.

Ray published nine stories in 1940, nearly all of them in fanzines (and one of them in a semi-prozine). Here's a list, with links to online versions of the stories, where they exist.

"The Fight of the Good Ship Clarissa"
"The Maiden of Jirbu"
"The Tale of the Tortletwitch"
"Luana the Living"
"The Piper"
"The Last Man"
"The Tale of the Terrible Typer"
"It's Not The Heat, It's The Hu-!"
"Genie Trouble"

In the podcast, I say more about where you can find these stories. So without further ado, here it is:

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 50 - Chronological Bradbury: 1940

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