Follow Me On Facebook

 If you're on Facebook, please make sure you like or follow my Bradbury 100 Podcast page. Not only do I use it for announcements about the podcast, but I have also started doing daily posts about Bradbury. Some of these are news items, but many of them are historical posts.

One thing I'm particularly trying to do over there is note every anniversary of every short story and book. For example, in the last couple of days I've posted about "Luana the Living", "Touched with Fire" and "Tale of the Mangledomvritch"!

New Bradbury 100 podcast episode: Chronological Bradbury!

With this new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast, I start a new occasional series: "Chronological Bradbury".

The idea is to work through Ray Bradbury's fiction output in the order of publication, discussing each item as we go.

In this first "Chronological Bradbury", I start right at the beginning, with a discussion of Ray's earliest published works, which appeared in amateur magazines in 1938.

I hope you enjoy the discussion - and do please let me know what you think. You can post a comment down below, or on the Bradbury 100 Podcast Facebook page.

In this episode I mention several useful sources:

• Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (Eller & Touponce)
• FANAC's historical fanzine collection
  
• The Earliest Bradbury (Ritter)
   

 

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 46 - Chronological Bradbury: 1938

 

 

 

 

 

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Ray Bradbury Experience Museum in Waukegan: Closure Announced

Sad news: the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum in Ray's home town of Waukegan, Illinois, has announced that it is permanently closing. This sad news follows a tough few years - including the pandemic, of course, in which the RBEM has struggled to establish and maintain its presence. This was especially true after the Museum lost its downtown exhibition space.

Waukegan's historic Carnegie Library is currently being renovated, so as to serve as the new home to the Historical Society. I understand that a section of the building's interior will feature a display of books bequeathed by Ray to the city - so there will be something for Bradbury tourists to seek out in the downtown area.

 

(And please note that the Ray Bradbury Center in Indiana is unaffected by the closure of RBEM. The two organisations (RBEM and RBC) are not connected, except in spirit.)

 

Below is the full text of the announcement from the Museum committee chair, Sandy Petroshius.

===========================

RBEM Announces Closing

 

Ray Bradbury to “Live Forever” in Green Town 

 

In 2017 a group of dedicated volunteers came together to honor Ray Bradbury in his hometown Waukegan, Illinois, with an interactive museum. As the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum Committee, we operated the museum out of a space in downtown Waukegan, donated by the Greater Waukegan Development Coalition. 

 

Now, after much consideration, the RBEM Committee has decided to officially close in May 2023. This decision followed challenging realities. COVID was a daunting obstacle. Many donors shifted their attention to other, more pressing social needs. In addition, it was immensely difficult to secure a much-needed permanent location in downtown Waukegan.

 

Over the years, we worked with museum designers to develop plans for the future museum. At the same time, the RBEM Committee and volunteers welcomed visitors to events, readings, performances, and exhibits in Waukegan and at national and regional conventions. We presented Ray Bradbury programs, online and in-person, for local and regional schools and libraries. A highlight event was the August 22, 2020, celebration of the Centennial of Ray Bradbury’s birth in Waukegan. 

 

April 2023 marked our final program. Partnering with the Waukegan Public Library and the Waukegan Historical Society and funded by an Illinois Humanities grant, we presented Explore Ray Bradbury, a weekend of multi-media and hands-on engagement with Bradbury’s classic books and themes. Excited visitors of all ages heard Bradbury stories, created Bradbury-themed crafts, invented banned book slogans and pins, and experienced a virtual reality journey to the International Space Station. 

 

While our vision of an interactive Ray Bradbury museum will not come to fruition, Ray Bradbury’s legacy is flourishing in Waukegan. “Fantastical Traveler,” the brilliant Ray Bradbury sculpture, greets everyone outside the Waukegan Public Library at 128 County Street, with Bradbury’s own typewriter on view inside. The historic Carnegie Library, currently under renovation, will open as the Waukegan History Museum. It will house Ray Bradbury’s personal collection of books. 

 

Thank you to the RBEM Committee for your boundless dedication, creativity, expertise, and generosity.

 

Thank you to our “Visionary Contributors” listed below. Your support energized all our efforts. 

 

Thank you to so many others not listed, who supported RBEM’s vision and work over the years by contributing thousands of hours volunteering, professional expertise, in-kind donations of goods and services, and communications. You made everything possible.

 

Thank you to Ray Bradbury for your lifelong passion for writing and your hundreds of stories. Your imagination inspired us from the very beginning. 

 

Ray, “live forever” in your beloved Green Town!

 

With heartfelt gratitude,

Sandy

 

Sandra Sarsha Petroshius, RBEM Committee Chair

====================================

New Bradbury 100 podcast episode: Rescuing SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

Last time on the Bradbury 100 podcast, we looked at the origin of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, and its peculiar history as a film script that became a book, and then became a film script again.

In this new episode of the show, I continue the story, examining how the film - disastrously previewed in 1982 - was rescued through some re-writing, re-shooting and re-editing. Ray claimed that he "directed" or "edited" the film doing this re-make period, rescuing it from the clutches of director Jack Clayton. But is this really true?

Join me as I dig into the archives, and look for evidence of what really went on.

This picture up above, by the way, is a publicity still showing Ray Bradbury and actor Royal Dano (who took the pivotal role of the Lightning Rod salesman in the film).

Before listening to the pod, you might want to re-watch this short video clip from 2017, where I talk about finding Ray Bradbury's personal copy of the preview version of Something Wicked: 

 

...and here's the podcast, also available via your podcast app:

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 45 - Rescuing SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

 

 

Please subscribe to the Bradbury 100 podcast - it's totally free on all platforms. Where to find it:

 

 

Main platforms:

 
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Other platforms: 

Amazon Music - Audible - Bullhorn - Castbox - Deezer - Listen Notes - Player FM - Pocket Casts - Podbean - Podcast Addict - Podcast Index - Podcast Republic - Podchaser - Podfriend - Podlink - Podtail - Stitcher - TuneIn

New Podcast Episode: Film/Book/Film: Writing SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

It's forty years since the film version of Something Wicked This Way Comes was released!

So in this new episode of Bradbury 100, I take a detailed look at the origins of SWTWC, going all the way back to the short story "The Black Ferris" (1948) and working through to the shooting of the film.

Bradbury wrote the screenplay, and the film was directed by his good friend Jack Clayton (director of Room at the Top (1959) and The Innocents (1961). So everything must have worked out really well... 

Listen and find out:

 

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 44 - Film/Book/Film: Writing SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

 

 

 

 

Please subscribe to the Bradbury 100 podcast - it's totally free on all platforms. Where to find it:

 

 

Main platforms:

 
Apple Podcasts  - Google Podcasts - Soundcloud - Spotify

 

 

 

Other platforms: 

Amazon Music - Audible - Bullhorn - Castbox - Deezer - Listen Notes - Player FM - Pocket Casts - Podbean - Podcast Addict - Podcast Index - Podcast Republic - Podchaser - Podfriend - Podlink - Podtail - Stitcher - TuneIn

Unnecessary Rewrites: John Mortimer (1923-2009)

100 years ago today, writer John Mortimer was born. He's best remembered for his Rumpole of the Bailey stories and TV series. But did you know that he was an uncredited contributor to the screenplay of Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)?

Ray Bradbury wrote the original Something Wicked script, but the film's director Jack Clayton commissioned a re-write from Mortimer - without telling Ray. This caused a serious rift in their working relationship. Ray and Jack came to the film as friends, but departed as strangers.

 

[Update for clarity:

 

Having read Bradbury's screenplay drafts as well as the Mortimer/Clayton version which was filmed, it's clear to me that Bradbury needed no re-writing. What underpinned these shenanigans was a difference of philosophy between Bradbury and Clayton. Bradbury rightly believed that fantasy stories need plotting that carefully builds, and this can include partial repeating of, or reminders of, events that have gone before. Clayton on the other hand believed that it was wrong to have repetition in a script, and that scares and suspense required constant novelty. He repeatedly expressed this as "a mouse doesn't come out of the same hole twice".]

Ironically, two years earlier Mortimer was himself a victim of an uncredited rewrite, when his scripts for the award-winning Brideshead Revisited TV series were scrapped by director Charles Sturridge. Mortimer retained the sole script credit for Brideshead (and, presumably, entitlement to any royalties), just as Bradbury retained the sole credit for Something Wicked.

In this BBC Archive clip, John Mortimer talks about his father and Rumpole: https://twitter.com/i/status/1649331741155262464

Follow Me On Facebook

Just a short post to say:

I'm making a renewed effort to keep a flow of Ray Bradbury news on my Bradbury 100 Podcast  Facebook page. Most days, you will find at least one brief post with a link - and I'm also going to try to mark significant (and not so significant) anniversaries. Find it at https://www.facebook.com/bradburymedia

By the way, this should be seen as an extra rather than as a replacement for Bradburymedia, which will continue right here as normal!

 

New Podcast Episode: The Bradbury Books That Never Were

Time for another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast!

This time I dig into the Bradbury files held by the Ray Bradbury Center in Indianapolis, and uncover a 1960 file in which Ray lays out his book publishing plans for the following couple of years.

Alongside familiar titles (Something Wicked This Way Comes, Farewell Summer), we find some totally unfamiliar ones. Listen to the pod (below - or via your podcast app) for all the details.

One of Ray's proposed books was an anthology to be called God On Tomorrow Morning. Something of a follow-up to his two previous anthologies (Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow and The Circus of Dr Lao), this would have been themed around the relationship between science, humanity and religion.

Although the book never came to exist, we do have a proposed table of contents, which I have reproduced in full below, with detail added on where each story originated. You could seek out these stories, and assemble the anthology for yourself!

 

 

God On Tomorrow Morning, to be edited by Ray Bradbury: Suggested Contents

Three Stories by Bradbury: The Fire Balloons, The Man, If Sun and Moon Should Doubt

Stories by others:

 

	Short Story	Author	From
1	For I Am A Jealous People	Lester Del Rey	Star Short Novels (anthology, ed. by Frederik Pohl), 1954
2	Subterfuge	Robert Silverberg	Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1960
3	Up The Mountain Or Down	Sylvia Jacobs	Universe Science Fiction, September 1953
4	Postscript	Eric Frank Russell	Science Fiction Plus, October 1953
5	Saint Julie And The Visgi	Robert F. Young	If: Worlds of Science Fiction, January 1955
6	The Quest For Saint Aquin	Anthony Boucher	New Tales of Space and Time (anthology, ed. by Raymond J. Healy), 1951
7	Many Mansions In The Sky	Koller Ernst	Super-Science Fiction, August 1958
8	A Demon At Devotions	Jane Roberts	The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1958
9	The Star	Arthur C. Clarke	Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955
10	The Pure Observers	B.J. Rogers	If: Worlds of Science Fiction, October 1958
11	The Funnel Of God	Robert Bloch	Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, January 1960
12	Every Work Into Judgement	Kris Neville	The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950
13	Last Rites	Charles Beaumont	If: Worlds of Science Fiction, October 1955
14	The Sons Of Japheth	Richard Wilson	Infinity Science Fiction, December 1956
15	The Guest Rites	Robert Silverberg	Infinity Science Fiction, February 1957

[Update: since I wrote this post, I read the following in chapter 25 of Jonathan R. Eller's biographical volume Ray Bradbury Unbound: 

"[Bradbury's God on Tomorrow Morning] surviving list of fifteen titles were all published in the 1950s, mostly in the few genre digests that he still occasionally read: If, Infinity Science Fiction, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Ballantine’s Star anthology series of new stories."

Eller is slightly incorrect regarding the 1950s, since two of the stories appeared in magazines dated as 1960. However, it is conceivable that those magazine issues appeared on news stands at the very end of 1959.]

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 43 - Bradbury Books That Never Were

 

 

Please subscribe to the Bradbury 100 podcast - it's totally free on all platforms. Where to find it:

 

 

Main platforms:

 
Apple Podcasts  - Google Podcasts - Soundcloud - Spotify

 

 

 

Other platforms: 

Amazon Music - Audible - Bullhorn - Castbox - Deezer - Listen Notes - Player FM - Pocket Casts - Podbean - Podcast Addict - Podcast Index - Podcast Republic - Podchaser - Podfriend - Podlink - Podtail - Stitcher - TuneIn