Thursday, January 20, 2022

New Bradbury 100 podcast - Ray Bradbury's OTHER martian stories

In the latest Bradbury 100 podcast episode, I discuss Ray Bradbury's other martian stories - stories set on Mars which are not part of The Martian Chronicles.

These stories have only once been all collected together, and that was in the limited-edition book The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition (2009). I've mentioned this book before, and have also mentioned my love-hate relationship with it. On the one hand, the book was a great idea, but on the other hand, it turned out to be far from "complete".

One section of that book is titled "the other martian tales of Ray Bradbury", and is based on a selection of stories originally collated by Marc Scott Zicree, writer of the famous Twilight Zone Companion. Zicree figured out which other Mars-related stories Bradbury wrote, and also dug around in Ray's archives to find any that remained unpublished. Zicree's proposed book didn't happen, but the selection of stories was absorbed into the Complete Edition. Actually, not everything Zicree collated ended up in the book; the editors of the Complete Edition decided to only include stories set on Mars, and to eliminate any that were set elsewhere. A reasonable choice... except not all of The Martian Chronicles is set on Mars... so they hadn't thought it through...

Here's the list of "other Mars stories" used in the so-called Complete Edition, which I work through in the podcast episode (UPDATE: I somehow missed "The Martian Ghosts" of this list - but I've added it now):

  1. The Lonely Ones
  2. The Exiles
  3. The One Who Waits
  4. The Disease
  5. Dead of Summer
  6. The Martian Ghosts
  7. Jemima True
  8. They All Had Grandfathers
  9. The Strawberry Window
  10. Way in the Middle of the Air (included in the "other" section, because the Complete Edition contains a version of The Martian Chronicles which deliberately omits this story)
  11. The Other Foot
  12. The Wheel
  13. The Love Affair
  14. The Marriage
  15. The Visitor
  16. The Lost City of Mars
  17. Holiday
  18. Payment in Full
  19. The Messiah
  20. Night Call, Collect (aka I, Mars)
  21. The Blue Bottle
  22. Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed (aka The Naming of Names)

Anyone who is expecting any major revelations in this list will be disappointed. It is mostly a list of (a) stories which are easily available in Bradbury's other books; (b) unfinished stories; and (c) tiny fragments and bridging material, pages or paragraphs left on the cutting-room floor. The only truly interesting find here is "They All Had Grandfathers".

Please listen to the episode, where I go through the intricacies of these stories, and explain how a couple of the fragments such as "The Wheel" and "The Disease" reveal something of Bradbury's process of assembling The Martian Chronicles. 

 

 

Thursday, January 06, 2022

New Bradbury 100 podcast episode - A Question of Style

Another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast!

I've been putting off doing this one, but finally decided to bite the proverbial bullet.

What makes Ray Bradbury's writing distinctive? The usual answer is "style".

But what exactly is style? In the podcast I address this question while trying not to be too academic. Although some of my academic friends might quibble with my definitions and my argument...

 

Sunday, January 02, 2022

A Plethora of Pods...

Happy New Year - although I'm acutely aware that 2022 is the year in which the events of Soylent Green take place...

As the new year begins, you can catch me on three different podcasts. Yikes! You can currently hear me on:

  • Bradbury 100 - talking about Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles screenplays, and on...
  • Science Fiction 101 - reviewing the Christmas 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, and on...
  • Hugos There (where I discuss Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise with host Seth Heasley)