New Podcast Episode: The Bradbury Books That Never Were

Time for another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast!

This time I dig into the Bradbury files held by the Ray Bradbury Center in Indianapolis, and uncover a 1960 file in which Ray lays out his book publishing plans for the following couple of years.

Alongside familiar titles (Something Wicked This Way Comes, Farewell Summer), we find some totally unfamiliar ones. Listen to the pod (below - or via your podcast app) for all the details.

One of Ray's proposed books was an anthology to be called God On Tomorrow Morning. Something of a follow-up to his two previous anthologies (Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow and The Circus of Dr Lao), this would have been themed around the relationship between science, humanity and religion.

Although the book never came to exist, we do have a proposed table of contents, which I have reproduced in full below, with detail added on where each story originated. You could seek out these stories, and assemble the anthology for yourself!

 

 

God On Tomorrow Morning, to be edited by Ray Bradbury: Suggested Contents

Three Stories by Bradbury: The Fire Balloons, The Man, If Sun and Moon Should Doubt

Stories by others:

 

	Short Story	Author	From
1	For I Am A Jealous People	Lester Del Rey	Star Short Novels (anthology, ed. by Frederik Pohl), 1954
2	Subterfuge	Robert Silverberg	Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1960
3	Up The Mountain Or Down	Sylvia Jacobs	Universe Science Fiction, September 1953
4	Postscript	Eric Frank Russell	Science Fiction Plus, October 1953
5	Saint Julie And The Visgi	Robert F. Young	If: Worlds of Science Fiction, January 1955
6	The Quest For Saint Aquin	Anthony Boucher	New Tales of Space and Time (anthology, ed. by Raymond J. Healy), 1951
7	Many Mansions In The Sky	Koller Ernst	Super-Science Fiction, August 1958
8	A Demon At Devotions	Jane Roberts	The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1958
9	The Star	Arthur C. Clarke	Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955
10	The Pure Observers	B.J. Rogers	If: Worlds of Science Fiction, October 1958
11	The Funnel Of God	Robert Bloch	Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, January 1960
12	Every Work Into Judgement	Kris Neville	The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Winter-Spring 1950
13	Last Rites	Charles Beaumont	If: Worlds of Science Fiction, October 1955
14	The Sons Of Japheth	Richard Wilson	Infinity Science Fiction, December 1956
15	The Guest Rites	Robert Silverberg	Infinity Science Fiction, February 1957

[Update: since I wrote this post, I read the following in chapter 25 of Jonathan R. Eller's biographical volume Ray Bradbury Unbound: 

"[Bradbury's God on Tomorrow Morning] surviving list of fifteen titles were all published in the 1950s, mostly in the few genre digests that he still occasionally read: If, Infinity Science Fiction, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Ballantine’s Star anthology series of new stories."

Eller is slightly incorrect regarding the 1950s, since two of the stories appeared in magazines dated as 1960. However, it is conceivable that those magazine issues appeared on news stands at the very end of 1959.]

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 43 - Bradbury Books That Never Were

 

 

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New Bradbury 100 podcast episode: "The Exiles"

Here's another new episode of my Bradbury 100 podcast. It's a short episode, focusing on a single short story - although, as you will discover, it's really two or three different stories...

"The Exiles" started life as "The Mad Wizards of Mars", and you can easily find two or three different versions of the story. All of them are basically the same, but the characters - most of them based on real-life authors - are different between one version and the next.

To find out what the heck I'm talking about, listen to the pod!

 

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 33 - The Exiles

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Bradbury 100 - April 2021 update

I've produced another brief episode of my audio podcast Bradbury 100, intended to bring you up to date with some things in the Bradbury universe. Listen to the episode below, or through your podcast app.

Bradbury 100 · B100 - episode 20 - April 2021 update

 

Show Notes

My Bradbury 101 Youtube channel is here.

Orty and Sandy on Ray Bradbury & Comics, and Ray's Waukegan can be viewed here. 

Listen to Bradbury biographer Jon Eller on Ray and the FBI on the Dead Writer Drama podcast from American Writers Museum.

Listen to Bradbury Center director Jason Aukerman and RBEM's Patrick Mullins on the Nation of Writers podcast from American Writers Museum.

 

A World Ray Bradbury Tried To Prevent...

A couple of weeks ago, there was a terrific discussion of Ray Bradbury's work, organised by Zócalo Public Square.  

Author Lilliam Rivera, Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination professor Michael Bennett, and Jonathan R. Eller, Director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University, discussed what Bradbury would make of 2020, and what his work can teach us in the current moment - inspired by the famous Bradbury quote, "I don't predict the future so much as try to prevent it." The event was preceded by an introduction from actor/director Joe Mantegna, once the star of Ray's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.

The discussion was recorded, and is available to view on Facebook:

 https://www.facebook.com/zocalopublicsquare/videos/590854361596920