Bradburyesque... 2

Some current and forthcoming books with a touch of Bradbury about them:




Old Mars, edited by George R.R. Martin and Garner Dozois, is an anthology of new stories set on the old red planet. Not, Martin says, the pre-Mariner real Mars, but the pre-space age, science-fictional Mars. The book is released in October from Bantam... and a sequel, Old Venus is already in the works.

Contributors include Phyllis Eisenstein, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian McDonald, Michael Moorcock, Melinda Snodgrass and Howard Waldrop.

On her Facebook page, Melinda Snodgrass wrote "It's a very retro book. It's Mars as it was imagined by the pulp writers. Oddly, I ended up writing the Bradburyesque story." So there you have it: while some of the stories might be more aligned with Edgar Rice Burroughs or even H.G. Wells, at least one of them is officially Bradburyesque!

Another book with some Bradbury content is "50 Girls 50" and Other Stories from Fantagraphics. This collects a number of comic strips by Al Williamson, originally published in the old EC Comics. The contents include Williamson's adaptations of  Bradbury's “I, Rocket” and “A Sound of Thunder”. It's not the first time these have been published in book form, but it's good to see them being made available again.

RIP Al Williamson (1931-2010)...and Ballard on Bradbury

You have probably heard by now that Al Williamson has passed away. Williamson was a legendary comic artist who first came to prominence through EC Comics, which is where he did some great work with adaptations of Ray Bradbury stories.

If you do a Google search, you will find plenty of obituaries of Williamson, but I found this one the most interesting because it is full of illustrations chosen from across Williamson's career. There's even a Bradbury in there.



Over on Ballardian.com is an essay by James Pardey on J.G.Ballard's early SF novels and illustrator David Pelham. It includes Ballard's thoughts on Ray Bradbury as a pioneer of "inner space", a label which is frequently attached to Ballard's own works.



And finally... Fahrenheit 451-style book-burning in the age of the iPad...