Guesting on Podcasts

As well as producing my own podcasts (Bradbury 100 and Science Fiction 101), I've guested on quite a few pods and radio shows over the years. But it occurred to me that I don't have one place where all those appearances are gathered together.

Until now.

So here's all the audio shows which have been kind enough to invite me on, listed in sort-of chronological order. I do hope I haven't missed any...

If you have a podcast or radio show which would benefit from my dulcet tones discussing Ray Bradbury, science fiction, screenwriting, film, TV, radio drama, or related topics, please get in touch!

Take Me To Your Reader

August 2015 - "A Sound of Thunder" (Bradbury)
August 2016 - Fahrenheit 451 (1966 movie; Bradbury)
May 2018 - Fahrenheit 451 (HBO movie; Bradbury)
October 2018 - The Halloween Tree (Bradbury)
September 2019 - The Illustrated Man (Bradbury)
January 2022 - Rendezvous With Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
October 2022 - Something Wicked This Way Comes (Bradbury)
August 2023 - "The Crystal Egg" (H.G.Wells)

 

The Ray Harryhausen Podcast

May 2016 - Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen

 

Radio Free Acton

May 2018 - Fahrenheit 451 (book and HBO film)

 

Imaginary Worlds

June 2018 - Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury - episode also features Neil Gaiman)

  

BBC World Service: The Forum 

August 2020 - Ray Bradbury

Hugos There

January 2022 - The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C. Clarke) 

 

Words to Write By

March 2022 - Zen in the Art of Writing (Bradbury) 

 

Continuum Drag

April 2022 - The Martian Chronicles  (TV miniseries; Bradbury)

Ray Bradbury discussion - BBC Forum

Here it is: the BBC World Service Forum radio programme about Ray Bradbury. A few weeks back, I took part in the discussion of Bradbury's life and career, with Jonathan R. Eller and Miranda Corcoran.

Each contributor recorded at home while in isolation, and our contributions were recorded down the line by the BBC. (We also submitted recordings we made locally, so the editors would have more control over the sound quality.)

What we didn't get at the time of recording were the various clips of Ray speaking, the readings from his work, and other played-in contributions. So listening to this programme is, even for me, like listening to something new. I'm quite impressed with how much they've been able to cram in to forty minutes!

Click here to listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszjvr

BBC Discussion on Bradbury: The Forum

Coming up in a week's time - 13th August -  the BBC World Service radio programme The Forum will be all about Ray Bradbury.

The Forum is a round-table discussion, and this edition features Bradbury biographer Jon Eller, editor of a book on Bradbury's supernatural fiction Miranda Corcoran - and some fellow called Phil Nichols...

We recorded the programme quite a few weeks ago, and it is being released now to (roughly) coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of Ray Bradbury's birth. The Forum is broadcast on the BBC's World Service radio channel, and episodes are made available to listen online after the broadcast. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed to get episodes delivered straight to your preferred listening device.

Look here for more information as it becomes available.

KALEIDOSCOPE returns...

Following hot on the heels of Brian Sibley's radio dramatisation of Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope" (as part of The Illustrated Man for Radio 4's Dangerous Visions season), the archive radio channel BBC Radio 4Extra is today broadcasting a 1991 production of the same story. 4Extra's web page thinks it's a new production, but it isn't.

"Kaleidoscope" is a classic SF short story, in which a group of astronauts find themselves flung aimlessly through space when their spaceship is destroyed; each one of them faces a slow, isolated death. As I have noted elsewhere, the premise seems to have inspired part of John Carpenter's movie Dark Star and Alfonso Cuaron's recent Gravity.

This 1991 radio adaptation is unusual, because the script is by Bradbury himself. It's a modified version of his stage play, and based on his own original short story. It was only the second BBC production to have used a Bradbury script (the first was Leviathan '99, which I reviewed here.).

The 1991 "Kaleidoscope" was directed by Hamish Wilson, who later co-produced the Bradbury series Tales of the Bizarre. It was also the first BBC production to use digital sampling technology in a drama production: they used a Synclavier to create the complex soundscape.

As with most BBC Radio broadcasts, the show will be available for streaming on the web for seven days, and should be accessible from anywhere in the world. Here's a direct link to the web page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0499l5n

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Today is also the 91st birthday of science fiction writer, critic and historian James Gunn. I met Jim last year, as I recounted in this blog post.  He's still going strong, and last year published a well-received novel, Transcendental.

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.

Exclusive: New BBC Radio Productions of Bradbury Stories

Next month, BBC Radio 4 launches a new week of science fiction drama, starting and ending with dramatisations of two of Ray Bradbury's most celebrated works.

On Saturday 14th June at 2.30pm, The Illustrated Man opens the series. This all-new production is written by award-winning radio dramatist Brian Sibley, whose previous works include the 1990s series Ray Bradbury's Tales of the Bizarre as well as the classic BBC Radio adaptations of Lord of the Rings, Gormenghast and The History of Titus Groan. Brian knew Ray personally, and tells me he is particularly pleased that the new production airs forty years to the week since he received Ray's first letter. (Brian is also a doodler, as you can see from this "Sibleytoon" of Ray.)

Of course, The Illustrated Man is not a novel, but a collection of short stories linked loosely together with the framing device of a tattooed man whose tattoos have a life of their own. As with previous adaptations, due to limitations of time it has been necessary to select which stories to adapt. Brian has chosen (in this order): 'Marionettes Inc', 'Zero Hour' and 'Kaleidoscope'  - and has managed to also include passing references to other stories in the collection, as well as the separately published short story 'The Illustrated Man'.

Studio recordings were completed last week, with Ian Glenn playing The Illustrated Man and Jamie Parker the Youth who meets him and hears his story. The drama is currently in post-production.

The broadcast launches a short season of dramas entitled 'Dangerous Visions' that runs for the week with a two-part classic serial (beginning on Sunday 15th June) of Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and five thematically-linked afternoon plays from Monday to Friday (details yet to be announced)

And to end the season: The Martian Chronicles will be aired on Saturday 21st June at 2.30pm. Unlike the in-house BBC production of The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles is an independent production created by B7, the team behind the radio adaptation of Blake's Seven. The dramatisation is by Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle, produced by Patrick Chapman and directed by Andrew Mark Sewell. While I don't have full details on this production yet, early notes on the dramatisation suggest that the stories selected from Bradbury's book will include: '...And the Moon be Still as Bright', 'The Off Season', 'The Long Years' and 'The Million Year Picnic'.

These new productions, acting as bookends to such a major new series, promise to add to the already impressive BBC Radio track record for Bradbury productions (as you can see from my Bradbury radio list). Radio 4 streams live on the web, and can be accessed from anywhere in the world - and their shows usually remain online for catch-up listening for seven days after broadcast. The Radio 4 web page is here.

Something Wicked

The BBC has a surprise Halloween treat this Saturday: a new radio dramatisation of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

All I know about the production is what is on the BBC web page.

SWTWC has been dramatised a few times. There was a film scripted by Bradbury (and an uncredited John Mortimer) in 1982, a play by Bradbury in 1988, and a radio production by Colonial Radio Theater a couple of years ago. Brian Sibley, co-writer of a number of Bradbury adaptations for radio and writer of the recent BBC Gormenghast adaptations, tried to raise interest in SWTWC as a "classic serial" production a few years ago, but without success.

This new production is written by Diana Griffiths, a playwright with a long list of credits for original works and adaptations. Her CV includes several items in the fantasy and SF genres, so she would appear to be an excellent choice.

You can listen to the play live on the BBC Radio 4 website at 2.30pm BST on Saturday 29th October 2011. It should then be available for catch-up listening for seven days. There is usually no geographical restriction on accessing BBC Radio broadcasts on the web.

There Will Come Soft Rains, Bradbury Speaks

In 1976 there was a modest BBC Radio adaptation of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles story "There Will Come Soft Rains". It combined simple reading and performance with some remarkable creative audio effects, and remains one of the most effective Bradbury media adaptations.

Until recently, all I knew about the production barely filled a couple of paragraphs, as you can see from my page about the programme. Even the BBC Written Archives - one of my favourite places for doing research - was unable to help me find more information, for the simple reason that they only make pre-1970 files available to researchers.

Now, to the rescue comes Dave Tompkins. His new book How to Wreck a Nice Beach tells the story of the Vocoder, a legendary piece of studio equipment that allowed the human voice to modulate a non-human sound, producing a variety of otherworldly effects. Without the Vocoder, BBC science fiction productions of the 1970s and onwards would have been much more mundane.

Dave has a blog to accompany the book. He has also given BoingBoing.net permission to publish a lengthy extract from the book, which details the making of "There Will Come Soft Rains". He was in contact with the show's producer Malcolm Clarke before Malcolm's untimely death, and had access to some of Clarke's out-takes and experiments for the production.



On YouTube, CBC has posted a film of Bradbury speaking about his ideas in 1969. It's from the time of the making of the film The Illustrated Man - and it is probably excerpted from the "making of" featurette for the film, which is available on some DVD versions (I say "probably" because (a) I recognise it from somewhere but (b) haven't had time to compare it to the DVD featurette!). Here's the clip: