Dangerous Visions from BBC Radio 4

Today sees the start of BBC Radio 4's week-long season of science drama Dangerous Visions, which is topped and tailed with adaptations of classic Ray Bradbury books.

Today at 2.30pm UK time, Brian Sibley's dramatisation of The Illustrated Man gets its first airing. You can listen live online from the link below. Alternatively, you can listen on demand for seven days following the broadcast.

The BBC website has some interesting background material on the production, the dramatist and the cast, and the link for listening:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046j2jc

And if you haven't already done so, check out Brian's own blog: every day this week he has posted audio recordings of his previous Bradbury dramatisations - and very good they are, too.

BBC Bradbury

The BBC web pages for the forthcoming Ray Bradbury adaptations have started to appear. The page for The Illustrated Man by Brian Sibley is here!

My original blog post about the shows is here.

Two Years On

 It's now two years to the day since Ray Bradbury died.

Interest in his work continues, and has perhaps even intensified. Coming soon are:

• the second volume of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition, 1943-1944;
• the second volume of Jon Eller's literary biography Ray Bradbury Unbound; and
• the fourth issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review. 

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Disney is planning its second attempt to film Something Wicked This Way Comes with Seth Grahame-Smith as writer-director. And in just over a week, BBC Radio 4 will be topping and tailing its season of SF dramas with two new productions based on The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles.

In the last year we have seen academic texts about Bradbury's works:

• About the Arizona and Mars connections - Orbiting Ray Bradbury's Mars;
• About one of his most enduring novels - Critical Insights: Fahrenheit 451. 

Finally, we have seen Bradbury's office contents shipped to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies for preservation future study, and the sale of the Bradbury house on Los Angeles' Cheviot Drive.
A time of change, to be sure.

Onward!