Time for another episode of Bradbury 100. This time I explore Ray's dinosaur stories - which he conveniently collected together under the title Dinosaur Tales!
This volume has "A Sound of Thunder", "The Fog Horn", "Tyrannosaurus Rex" and more. Especially valuable are the illustrations, provided by some of the leading artists of the SF/fantasy world.
This is the fourth in my series of Lockdown Choices, where I seek to entertain you while in coronavirus-isolation, and remind you of Bradbury's great works in this, his centenary year.
In these posts, I cover each of Ray Bradbury's books, say something about the contents, then pick the best stories and adaptations.
Lockdown Choice #4: The Golden Apples of the Sun
First edition. Doubleday, 1953.
The Book
The Golden Apples of the Sun was Ray Bradbury's fourth book, a collection of science-fictional, fantasy, and "realistic" tales. With Bradbury, of course, "realism" can be very far from our everyday reality, but what I mean here is the type of story which does not hinge upon a science-fictional or fantastical premise.
The book collected twenty-two stories, most of which had previously been published in various magazines between 1944 and 1953. Like Bradbury's first book, Dark Carnival, the stories are presented as is, without any attempt to connect them through a linking narrative. It is therefore the first of Bradbury's Doubleday books to be allowed the luxury of being an undisguised short story collection. (Remember that editor Walter Bradbury (no relation) had asked of Ray, "We've disguised The Martian Chronicles as a novel, do you think we can somehow do the same thing with The Illustrated Man?")
As well as being "just" a collection of short stories, Golden Apples has the distinction of collecting a number of stories which had won awards or had been published in venues of some prestige. "Power House", for example, had won an O. Henry Prize; "The Big Black and White Game" had been selected for Best American Short Stories 1946; and "I See You Never" for Best American Short Stories 1948. And by now, Bradbury's short stories were being collected not just from pulp magazines, but from major-market publications such as American Mercury, Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker. Appearing in these majors brought more than just prestige: they brought better income.
Another distinctive feature of Golden Apples is the art direction. For the first time, Bradbury's work was surrounded by the work of artist Joe Mugnaini. Mugnaini provided both the cover art (see above) and a uniform series of line drawings, one for each story. Mugnaini and Bradbury became good friends, and collaborated repeatedly over the year, to the extent that many readers find the two inextricably linked. Where else might you recognise that Mugnaini style from? For a start, there's that iconic newspaper-fireman from the cover of Fahrenheit 451.
For some reason, the first UK edition of Golden Apples deleted one story, "The Big Black and White Game" - perhaps on the grounds that the baseball theme might be meaningless to British readers. Subsequent UK editions restored the full table of contents, however.
Unfortunately, Golden Apples has become somewhat confusing in more recent times. Somewhere along the line, it became part of a set of editorial mash-ups which resulted in The Golden Apples of the Sun disappearing, and being effectively supplanted by The Golden Apples of the Sun AND OTHER STORIES. This latter title (which usually has "and other stories" written as a whispering footnote) scrambles the order of the stories and mixes in others from elsewhere. And - blasphemy! - removes the Mugnaini illustrations.
For some readers, there's no problem here. It's just a collection of short stories. But to others (i.e. me), the art direction and the running order is all part of "the book". If you're a person who puts their MP3s on shuffle, you probably don't care about this. But if you like to hear, say, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with all the tracks in the right order, then this is a very big deal indeed.
In fact, according to Eller and Touponce, the visual theme of the original book was Bradbury's concept, and was his alternative way of having a consistent authorial thread running throughout the book (Ray Bradbury: the Life of Fiction, p. 367). So taking away the Mugnaini artwork would be the equivalent of removing the linking material from The Martian Chronicles.
Check the small print to see whether you have an actual Golden Apples, or an ...and other stories edition. Current paperback, HarperCollins.
Find out how The Golden Apples of the Sun finally allowed Bradbury to break out of the fantasy/science fiction "ghetto" and gain respect in the mainstream in myBradbury 101 video below. And scroll further down the page for my pick of the best stories from the book.
The Stories
Because of its eclectic nature, pulling in science fiction, fantasy and realistic stories, Golden Apples feels less coherent than any of Bradbury's previous books. But that does set a pattern which would continue through most of his subsequent short-story collections. Here are my personal story picks, perhaps heavily influenced by the fact that this is the first Bradbury book I ever read.
"The Pedestrian" - a really simple concept, and strangely appropriate for the COVID-19 lockdown: in some unspecified future, it is illegal to walk anywhere. Instead, everyone is supposed to stay home and watch TV. Mr Leonard Mead, however, breaks the rules. He goes out (gasp!) for a solitary stroll. Of course, it being the future and everything, he is stopped by what turns out to be... Well, read it for yourself.
According to Bradbury, one day he took his pedestrian out for another stroll - and found himself writing a new story, "The Fireman", which he would later expand into Fahrenheit 451.
Mugnaini illustration for "The Pedestrian".
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" - I think this is truly the first piece of fiction I ever read which amazed me, and convinced me that words on a page could be magical and insightful. This when I was, I suppose, twelve years old. It's a simple story of a murder, except that the murderer becomes obsessed with the fingerprints he has left behind. Or probably left behind. Or must have, or possibly left behind. His gradual descent into obsession is masterfullywritten, and is another fine example of Bradbury constructing a character, even though that's something he is alleged not to be able to do. It's also full of beautifully poetic writing which is also narratively purposeful.
He has forgotten to wash the fourth wall of the room! And while he was gone the little spiders had popped from the fourth unwashed wall and swarmed over the already clean walls, dirtying them again! On the ceilings, from the chandelier, in the corners, on the floor, a million little whorled webs hung billowing at his scream! Tiny, tiny little webs, no bigger than, ironically, your - finger!
As he watched, the webs were woven over the picture frame, the fruit bowl, the body, the floor. Prints wielded the paper knife, pulled out drawers, touched the table top, touched, touched, touched everything everywhere.
"The Fruit..." was originally published with Bradbury's punning title "Touch and Go!", but he wisely switched to the title the story is now better known by. The significance of the fruit? Our murderous protagonist becomes so obsessed with fingerprints that he cleans even things he knows he didn't ever touch...
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" first appeared as "Touch and Go" in Detective Book Magazine, November 1948.
" A Sound of Thunder" - how could I not pick this story? It's one of the most anthologised short stories of all time, and one of the best known science fiction shorts. In case you don't recall this one, it's the one where people go back in time to hunt dinosaurs. Bradbury didn't originate that concept of course, and there are numerous other variations on the theme from other authors. But what Bradbury does so much better than, say, L. Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur", is create a clear connection and contrast between small, selfish actions, and large-scale consequences. And this is why I could also have said, "in case you don't recall this one, it's the one with the butterfly".
"Thunder" was rejected by The Magazine of Fantasy of Science Fiction, whose editor declared it was unbelievable because of the way it handles the time-travel paradox. But Bradbury stuck with his story, believing that the powerful imagery far outweighed any appeal to logic. The story was published instead by the mainstream magazine Collier's.
"A Sound of Thunder" first appearance. Collier's, 1952.
"The Great Wide World Over There" - proof if it were needed that Bradbury can write stories without a science-fictional or fantastical premise. This tale is of Cora, who longs to be like her neighbour and receive letters from far and wide - except that Cora can't read or write. She gets Benjy to send off for things for her. All sorts of things: a free muscle chart, a free health map, information from a detective school, anything that she can eagerly anticipate arriving.
There's a neat little plot within the story, and again a demonstration that Bradbury can craft characters who are tightly bound to his narrative and theme.
Mugnaini illustration for "The Great Wide World Over There".
"Hail and Farewell" - an often overlooked story of a boy who cannot grow up, this is an exquisite example of Bradbury taking a simple fantasy concept (Peter Pan anyone?) and finding the tragedy within it, just as he had done with the earlier story "The Martian" in The Martian Chronicles. The tragedy here comes from the fact that every time the boy (outwardly stuck at the age of twelve, but actually born forty-three years ago) finds himself a family to adopt, he must eventually walk away from them. The reason: they will eventually discover his secret, and will no longer be able to love him: "after three years, or five years, they guessed, or a travelling man came through, or a carnival man saw me, and it was over. It always had to end."
Mugnaini illustration for "Hail and Farewell".
The Adaptations
"The Pedestrian" was adapted for the stage, and later for TV, by Bradbury himself. In both of these adaptations, he was faced with a slight problem: Mr Leonard Mead does most of his walking alone among empty streets, and therefore doesn't have much to say or anyone to interact with; not exactly the most riveting of stories to perform with actors on a stage or on screen. His solution? He gives Mead a walking companion. It's not a bad piece of theatre - see for yourself in the Ray Bradbury Theatre adaptation, here - but it really turns it into a very different story, and I think I prefer the original tale.
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" was adapted by Ilona Ference for a British series, Television Playhouse, in 1963 with Leonard Rossiter in the role of the nervous killer, and adapted by Bradbury himself for an early episode of Ray Bradbury Theater, with Michael Ironside and Robert Vaughn.
"The Meadow" is something of a reverse adaptation: Bradbury wrote the short story first, then adapted it for radio for World Security Workshop. But the radio adaptation appeared in 1947, and the short story in 1953, giving the impression that the story is an adaptation of the play.
"Hail and Farewell" was also adapted for Ray Bradbury Theatre, albeit as a rather non-memorable instalment.
But Golden Apples' biggest stories are the two creature features. Both "The Fog Horn" and "A Sound of Thunder" feature prehistoric creatures, and both have had a long afterlife in media adaptation. "The Fog Horn" was originally published in the Saturday Evening Post under the title "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", and served as the inspiration for Ray Harryhausen's first solo animation feature under that name, and arguably inspired the similarly themed original Godzilla. "Thunder" was not quite so lucky.
"A Sound of Thunder" has been adapted for radio quite successfully, as in the NPR series Bradbury Thirteen, and even the Ray Bradbury Theater version scripted by Ray was OK (apart from the pre-Jurassic Park rubber monster). But it was also the basis of a dodgy feature film directed by Peter Hyams in 2005; Hyams got the job after Bradbury allegedly had an earlier director fired from the project for trying to remove the butterfly from the story. The story also inspired a segment of The Simpsons!
I've taken part in a number of podcasts over the years, discussing various Ray Bradbury works in film, television, theatre and radio. I thought it was time to put links for them all in one handy place.
So, without further ado, I give you Phil's podcasts!
A Sound of Thunder - short story, film and other adaptations - Take Me To Your Reader
Fahrenheit 451 - novel and 1966 film - Take Me To Your Reader
Yesterday I posted a brief announcement that the Take Me To Your Reader podcast about "A Sound of Thunder" was now live. Today, I thought I would post some convenient links for anyone who wants to find out more about the story and the media adaptations.
The Ray Bradbury short story is still copyrighted, so shouldn't really be out there on the web. But it is one of the most reprinted stories in history, and it is quite ubiquitous online. Here is just one of many finds that Google led me to.
The Ray Bradbury Theater episode is a quite faithful adaptation of the story, and although it shows its age (and lack of budget), it's still a pretty good presentation of the Bradbury original - and has a script by Bradbury himself. Watch it on YouTubehere. And if you want to know more, read my review of the episode.
The much-maligned 2005 film version has some entertainment value, but as we all agreed in the podcast, you really have to leave your critical faculties at the door, since the expansion of the story to feature-length has been done without much intelligence, logic or scientific understanding. Not that science fiction has to be scientifically accurate - but if you expect to fool the viewer into believing the impossible, you need to do it without insulting their intelligence. Watch it on YouTubehere.
If you want to do the right thing, here are links for purchasing some of the above. These links are "Amazon.com affiliate links": each purchase made after following these links will generate a small donation to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, to help preserve and promote the legacy of Ray Bradbury.
Last night I joined the regular team of the podcast Take Me To Your Reader to record an episode devoted to Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" and two media adaptations of the story.
The idea behind Take Me To Your Reader
is that the presenters will read a science-fiction book or short story,
and then watch the film(s) based on the story. Previous topics have
included Planet of the Apes (in all its filmic incarnations), Carl Sagan's Contact, and Jurassic Park -
and many, many others. I've listed to maybe six or seven episodes
previously, and always found them enjoyable for their careful but
accessible analysis of how stories adapt from one medium to another.
"A
Sound of Thunder" is unusual in being a quite short story which has
been adapted into a full-length feature film, necessarily entailing the
invention of a lot of new material. The film,
directed by Peter Hyams and released in 2005, went out into the world
almost unnoticed: it had a limited release, and then went quietly to DVD
with a minimum of publicity. It didn't help that the company behind it
went bust, and it almost never got finished.
The earlier screen adaptation was from Bradbury's own script, for Ray Bradbury Theater. I've always quite liked this version, although it has its flaws - you can read my review of the episode here.
I won't pre-empt the conclusions of the Take Me To Your Reader
episode, but let's just say that all of us involved in the recording
found the movie to be hilarious in places... but it is, alas, not
intended to be a comedy...
We spoke via Skype, with one
end of the conversation being recorded in Oregon and my end being
recorded in the UK, so the episode now needs to be edited to make a
seamless whole. It should be ready by the end of the month. I'll post a
link as soon as it goes live.
Meanwhile, if you're interested in SF adaptations, why not check out some of the earlier episodes, here.
During the recording, I recommended that newcomers to Bradbury's fiction should start with one of the compendium volumes, either The Stories of Ray Bradbury or Bradbury Stories. The two books are completely complementary, with no overlap at all in their contents. Each book contains a wide range of story types, and each one makes a perfect introduction to Bradbury.
Below is an Amazon link. If you click on this link, any Amazon purchase you make will generate a small donation to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.
At long last, we have a publication date for a book containing one of my
essays. Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/Novelizationis due out
on 16th September 2013. The book originated in the 2009 conference of the same name, which was held at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
My chapter is about Ray Bradbury's short
story "A Sound of Thunder" and the ways it has been treated in
difference media adaptations. I wrote it so long ago that I can barely
remember what it's about (and so long ago that I will probably cringe at
some of the things I say in it). I do recall that I refer to the story; to Bradbury's own TV dramatisation of the story; to Peter Hyams' disappointing film expansion of the story; and to several illustrators' treatment of the story's imagery.
Interestingly, the book's editors (Thomas Van Parys and I.Q.Hunter) or publishers (Gylphi Press) have chosen
to use another Bradbury adaptation to illustrate the
cover: Fahrenheit 451. It shows Cyril Cusack as Fire Chief Beatty warming his hands over some
burning books while Oskar Werner looks on.
The Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert will screen episodes of the anthology series The Ray Bradbury Theater in conjunction with the upcoming exhibition Across Dimensions: Graphics and Sculpture from the Permanent Collection. Just
as the artists in the gallery investigate concepts in two-dimensional
and three dimensional artworks, beloved science-fiction author Ray
Bradbury seized an opportunity to adapt some of his short stories to the
small screen exploring new dimensions of storytelling.
Sounds like a slightly tenuous connection to me... Anyway, it gives Palm Springs residents and visitors an opportunity to see the episodes "A Sound of Thunder" and "A Touch of Petulance" on 27th June at 5pm. More details here.
Someone over on IMDB has posted a list of their top ten episodes of Ray Bradbury Theatre. It's an interesting list, and inevitably got me thinking about my favourite episodes.
In some cases, "best episode" would coincide with "best story" - but in other cases, this simple equation doesn't hold. There are great stories that made good episodes, such as "The Long Years" and "A Sound of Thunder"... but also great stories that didn't turn out so well on screen, such as "Skeleton" (which I tend to think is almost unfilmable), "The Man Upstairs" (just too badly made) and "Tyrannosaurus Rex" (please don't make me watch that one again).
The best episodes strike a happy balance of fulfilling our memory of the story, but surprising us with something unexpected in the plotting, shooting or - more often than not - in the casting or performances. I quite like "Gotcha" and "The Crowd", although they both look quite dated. "The Small Assassin" never fails to hold my attention, largely thanks to Cyril Cusack's turn as the doctor. "Mars is Heaven!" is just about as good as it could be on TV - although I think radio is capable of doing this story more effectively. And "Emissary" and "By the Numbers" are always watchable.
Looking over the entire episode list again, I am reminded that Ray Bradbury Theatre started with great promise - look at the cast list: William Shatner, Jeff Goldblum, Drew Barrymore! It then shifted in subsequent seasons into a really mixed bag of international co-productions, with dreadfully variable production values. But toward the end, it hit its stride, and produced some strong, consistent episodes.
New Scientist magazine has a mini-feature about SF, inspired by the British Library exhibition on the subject. H.G.Wells gets a couple of mentions, and so does Bradbury's classic short story "A Sound of Thunder". Read the feature and enjoy the wonderful imagery here.
I'm recently returned from Belgium, where I presented a paper at the "Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/Novelisation" conference. My paper, entitled "Adaptive Behaviours", was another in my series exploring ways in which Bradbury's prose fictions adapt to other media. This time I focused on the short story "A Sound of Thunder" and discussed key adaptations for TV and film, as well as various graphic adaptations. It was an elaboration of some ideas I first considered in this post.
Also presenting at the conference was Aristea Chryssohou of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who did an excellent analysis of Francois Truffaut's film version of Fahrenheit 451.
There were additional delights of being in Belgium, one of which was the opportunity to visit the iconic Atomium. Although this has no direct connection to Bradbury, there are certain thematic connections, which I hope to blog about soon.
I recently returned from Orlando, Florida, where I presented at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. The conference theme was "Time and the Fantastic", and my paper was on Ray Bradbury's use of time.
Before writing the paper, I doodled a spider diagram containing as many Bradbury stories I could think of which had a significant, fantastical use of time. Every couple of days I would remember another story with a time theme and add to my arachnid scrawl.
From the doodle, I eventually chose to focus on four major recurring uses of time in Bradbury stories:
SF-style time travel (as in "A Sound of Thunder" and "The Fox in the Forest"
Time travel in service of wish-fulfillment (as in "The Kilimanjaro Device")
Fantastic evocation of the past (as in "A Scent of Sarsaparilla")
Encounters with the younger or older self (as in "A Touch of Petulance", and the stage play of Dandelion Wine
Of course, by choosing this topic I was opening one enormous can of worms...nearly every Bradbury story makes use of time in some fantastical way. However, it has given me plenty of material for future study and has already suggested further papers.
Speaking of which, I have another paper to present at "SF Across Media", a conference to be held at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Fortunately, the conference is in English - my Flemish isn't up to much!
In this paper, I will be looking at adaptations of "A Sound of Thunder" in various media.
A question on the official Ray Bradbury Message Board got me looking at illustrations of the short story "A Sound of Thunder" (1952). This, you may recall, is Bradbury's classic dinosaur-hunting tale: travel back in time and enjoy the thrill of hunting T.Rex. (Image is by Richard Corben, from The Ray Bradbury Chronicles.)
This is a compelling fantasy. So much so that other writers have trodden the same ground, most famously L. Sprague de Camp in "A Gun for Dinosaur".
Bradbury makes the tale slightly different, by bringing in one of those time paradoxes that the true science fiction fan will happily spend hours debating. Bradbury's twist is that one of the time-travellers steps on a butterfly and screws up the subsequent course of evolution.
Now many have criticised the story for its logical flaws - most famously the editors of Fantasy and Science Fiction who rejected the story on those grounds. (Bradbury didn't care - he sold the story to a 'slick' magazine instead, and made a whole lot more money.) However, defenders of the story, myself included, will tell you that the details of the time travel don't matter one jot. It's the symbolism that's important. Bradbury seems to be saying that little things are important: the way he sets the story up, the fate of the dinosaur is trivial; it's the butterfly that really matters.
Looking at various visual interpretations of "A Sound of Thunder", I find that most illustrators have gone for the big picture. They show the T.Rex, sometimes dwarfing our time-travellers. That's certainly true of Frederick Siebel, the original illustrator of the Collier's magazine version of the story (June 1952, above). Notice that Siebel gives us the thrill of the hunt. He does also show the all-important pathway which our heroes must stick to - and one of the hunters fatally stepping off the path.
Franz Altschuler, who illustrated the story for Playboy (June 1956, above) follows the same idea, although the chrononauts don't seem quite so concerned in his vision.
Even the Game Boy game (above) bearing the title of Bradbury's story lingers on the hunt.
The poster and publicity for the recent film version (not a film I recommend you rush out and see) did get one thing right: emphasising the butterfly. I think this adds to the intrigue of the advertising campaign, especially when the movie trailer hints at sub-Jurassic Park dinosaur CGI. (Image shows the movie poster graphic used on a re-issue of a Bradbury short story collection.)
[For the record, I find the low budget adaptation for TV's Ray Bradbury Theatre to be vastly superior to the Peter Hyams movie. And the radio production for Bradbury 13is pretty good as well.]
Full marks go to Joe Mugnaini, the quintessential Bradbury illustrator, for achieving such a perfect balance in his line-drawing. Created for The Golden Apples of the Sun, the short story collection that first contained "A Sound of Thunder", his illustration (above) seems to focus on the dino hunt - and his composition uses the pathway as a flourish that frames the tyrannosaur. But look again. See how the butterfly, all translucent wing, dominates the scene.
This, for me, is precisely why Mugnaini worked as Bradbury's best illustrator. He found a way of getting narrative into a single frame, and always gives a new way of looking at a story.
Brian Sibley, who I mentioned yesterday, has posted a delightful blog about his long friendship with Ray Bradbury. Like me, Brian first encountered Bradbury through The Golden Apples of the Sun - which is, in fact, an excellent place to start, since it contains "The Fog Horn", "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" and "A Sound of Thunder", all essential reading.
Brian's blog also links to an excellent interview he conducted with Ray in 2004.
