Shadow Show Reviewed

The most perceptive review yet of the tribute volume Shadow Show appeared this week in the Los Angeles Review of Books. SF and fantasy scholar Gary K. Wolfe - whose best known essay on Bradbury established the "frontier myth" reading of The Martian Chronicles - has written a lengthy review which not only evaluates the book itself but uses it as an opportunity to gauge Bradbury's literary influence.

Wolfe writes:

Few would consider [Harlan] Ellison and Bradbury as close siblings in any literary or stylistic sense, but [...] there’s some of the genetic material of those old pulp classics in both writers.

But such are the mysteries of literary DNA. Those old retroviruses can express themselves in unexpected ways generations later, and Bradbury was a carrier. He may have read Eudora Welty and Willa Cather and imported some of their stylistic grace into genre fiction, but by the same token he passed along some of the imaginative energy of Brackett or Henry Kuttner to the writers who followed him.

Wolfe then explores each story in the anthology in turn, considering the extent and nature of Bradbury's influence. One of his key points is that nearly every contributor to the book refers in their afterword  to discovering Bradbury at an early age, and nearly every one references Bradbury stories that were originally published prior to 1962. That was the year Something Wicked This Way Comes was published, and it seems to mark a changeover point at which Bradbury switched from "becoming Ray Bradbury" to "being Ray Bradbury", Wolfe observes, consciously echoing Jon Eller's recent biographical volume Becoming Ray Bradbury.

Shadow Show has received a lot of reviews, but many of them have been cursory and lacking in awareness of what the book truly demonstrates. Wolfe, I think, has got it spot on. I haven't read all the stories in the book yet, but his review prompts me to get on with it!

Gary K. Wolfe's full review can be read here.

The Elevator

Ray Bradbury is often thought of in connection with The Twilight Zone, partly because the series regularly dealt in distinctly Bradburyan stories, and partly because Bradbury did actually write for the series. Only one of his scripts was actually filmed, "I Sing The Body Electric!" - which is sometimes referred to as an adaptation of his short story. In reality, the script was written long before the short story was published, so it would be more correct to say that the story is an adaptation of the script.

Bradbury's experience with The Twilight Zone - or more specifically with the show's host and creator Rod Serling - was an unhappy one, due in part to Bradbury's feeling that Serling had borrowed from his work without credit, and cut Bradbury's scripts without consultation.

When The Twilight Zone was revived in the 1980s, there was no particular reason that Bradbury should be (or should want to be) involved, but he did contribute one short script to the series, called "The Elevator". Writer-producer Alan Brennert recently mentioned on Facebook how this Bradbury contribution came about:

I guess with Ray gone now I can reveal that he really, really didn't want to have anything to do with The Twilight Zone after his bad experience with Rod Serling on the old show. "The Burning Man" was a different matter, it was an existing script by J.D. Feigelson, one of Ray's literary "godsons" to which he gave his blessing. But in order to get an original script out of him, Harlan [Ellison] took him to lunch and sweet-talked him (and when Harlan wants to, can he sweet-talk!) into giving us a script, and Ray gave us "The Elevator." 

"The Burning Man" is an episode I have written about before; I consider it to be one of the best-ever adaptations of a Bradbury story.

Harlan Ellison was a creative consultant on the show, and was a longtime friend of Bradbury.

Nebula Awards

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have announced the winners of the Nebula Awards. Among the worthy winners are the following:

Ray Bradbury Award (for film/tv): Inception

Best short story: a tie between "Ponies" by Kij Johnson and "How Interesting: a Tiny Man" by Harlan Ellison.

Full details are here.

Ellison and Bradbury - take two

Further to my post back in January, it has now been confirmed that the book Live Forever will be co-edited by Sam Weller, Ray Bradbury's biographer. The tribute volume will have an introduction by Bradbury and, as I reported here, will include a new story and afterword by Harlan Ellison. The book will also include all-new tales by Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Audrey Niffenegger, Alice Hoffmann, Dan Chaon, David Morrell, Dean Koontz, Sam Weller and co-editor, seven-time Bram Stoker nominee, Mort Castle. The tentative publication date will be July 2012.

Speaking of Bradbury, Ellison and other greats, courtesy of Richard on the Bradbury message board, here is a signed photo from a 1973 Los Angeles Science Fiction Fantasy Society meeting. What a gathering: Robert Bloch, Sherwood Springer, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, A.E. Van Vogt, Wendayne Ackerman (Forry's wife), and Forrest J. Ackerman.

Photo courtesy Richard Kaminsky. Click to enlarge.

Update on VISIONS OF MARS

The book Visions of Mars is approaching publication. Its a collection of essays and articles which are mostly derived from the 2008 Eaton Conference, which was subtitled "Chronicling Mars". The book looks at the way Mars has been depicted in literature, film and popular culture.

The table of contents is now online. I see my chapter "Re-Presenting Mars: Bradbury’s Martian Stories in Media Adaptation" is smack in the middle of the volume. There is one other paper specifically about Bradbury, from Eric Rabkin, and also a transcript of a roundtable discussion between Bradbury, Fred Pohl and George Slusser. I'm sure there will many other passing references to Bradbury, as my recollection of the conference is that his name came up again and again.

The volume is quite expensive (40USD for a softcover version), but this is an academic volume and they tend to be pricey. Release date according to the publisher is now May 2011. (I notice that Amazon still shows the original release date, and also has a higher price than McFarland publishers!)



I see that Harlan Ellison has been nominated for a Nebula Award from SFWA (the SF and Fantasy Writers of America) for his short story "How Interesting: a Tiny Man". The story was first published in February last year in Realms of Fantasy magazine, copies of which can be ordered from the magazine's own website.

Ellison is no stranger to the Nebulas. He was the first ever recipient in the Short Story category, for "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman" in 1965. His last Nebula win was 1977's "Jeffty is Five". His most recent nomination (before "Tiny Man") was in 2003 for "Good-Bye To All That".

"How Interesting: a Tiny Man" is a beautifully clear piece of writing, but is deceptively more complex than it appears on first reading.

A Wanderer Returns

I'm just back (a couple of days ago) from the Eaton Conference in Riverside, California, where I presented a paper on a different writer for a change: Harlan Ellison. My paper was titled "Living in a Limited World: Omniscience and Point of View in the Works of Harlan Ellison", and in it I discussed some of the ways Ellison has used point of view to get across the emotional and/or intellectual impact of his stories and screenplays. Among the works I discussed were Ellison's screenplay Phoenix Without Ashes (recently adapted for a comic book series) and his classic short stories "The Deathbird" and "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore" (soon to be re-published in a new, revised edition of Deathbird Stories from Subterranean Press).

Harlan was originally expecting to be attending some of the conference events, but ill health unfortunately forced him to cancel. He was due to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Eaton Conference/Eaton Collection, so he asked his friend Steve Barber to accept it on his behalf. I was able to spend some time with Steve, and Steve kindly offered to give Harlan a copy of my paper.

A couple of days later, Harlan posted the following on his website:

"[...] Steve Barber and Cris got the Eaton proclamation to me, it is as big as Austria, and we have it propped up in the dining room. Steve also delivered Phil Nichols's paper on me (the original, with all the defamatory parts pencilled out) and I must say that while I am completely oblivious to the two academic papers cited (Royle and Rimmon-Kenan), had Phil answered the phone when I called him at Riverside, I would've had some effulgent praise for his notice of, and appreciation for, the use of cinematic expansion&contraction sans voiceover or dialogue that apparently I was autodidactically smart enough to use at the end of PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES. In short, Phil, I was much put a-smile by your observations on my efforts. I would've liked to have heard it live, then debated it with you. [...]"

That latter part - about debating it with me - would have probably turned me to jelly. The same goes for the phone call, which I apparently missed.

Here's the Eaton proclamation, in the hands of Barber the Ellison stand-in. It's not literally as big as Austria, it's just that Harlan is what we call a creative writer.

Click on photo to enlarge.
Left to right: Melissa Conway, Rob Latham (conference organisers, University of California Riverside); Steve Barber, Ellison substitute; Ruth Jackson (head librarian, UCR).

Off to a Conference

The Eaton Conference is about to begin in Riverside, California. I will be there to present a paper, although for once I will not be talking about Bradbury.

On this occasion, I will be speaking about Harlan Ellison's work. It is one of two papers on Ellison, who is also due to receive the 2011 Eaton Award for lifetime achievement in fantastic literature. The other paper will be from Rob Latham of University of California Riverside.

Harlan has announced that he intends to be present for the award presentation on Saturday, and that he will also attend the Friday night screening of Erik Nelson's excellent documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth.

If you happen to be in Riverside for the conference or related events, please say hello. I'll be the Brit with the fixed grin, if the photo of me on the conference webpage is anything to go by...

Harlan's Typewriter - Sold!

Best-selling novelist Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, has outed himself as the purchaser of Harlan Ellison's typewriter. You may recall that Harlan decided to do a Cormac McCarthy and put one his early-career typewriters up for auction. (If the story is new to you, read my earlier blog post on the topic. I wait here for you while you read this link.)

You can read Jamie's account of his purchase on his blog, here.

Bradbury and Ellison

On Monday, Harlan Ellison mentioned on his website that he has completed a story called "Weariness", and sold it to an upcoming Ray Bradbury tribute book called Live Forever! along with an 1100-word afterword. I don't think I have heard of this book before (if I have, I've forgotten all about it). Shortly thereafter Robert Morales, evidently the editor of said volume, wrote that "the afterword about you and Bradbury [...] is so staggeringly SWEET and funny and poignantly saturated with history".

The image on the left, from 1973, is one of the few online photos to show Bradbury and Ellison together, and is taken from the Los Angeles Science Fiction Fantasy Society website. Bradbury is in the back row, second from left, partially obscured by Ellison.

Random thought: one of the (many) things that connect Ellison and Bradbury is Los Angeles' famous Bradbury Building. Though not named after Ray, the Bradbury Building is featured prominently in the opening credits to The Ray Bradbury Theatre, as Ray (actually a body double!) is shown arriving at his office...which was actually in a totally different building elsewhere in LA:





The Bradbury Building also stars in "Demon with a Glass Hand", an episode of The Outer Limits written by Harlan Ellison. When writing the script, Ellison personally researched a key scene in which his protagonist races an elevator. He hurt his leg in the process, as the final leap to hit the ground before the elevator was rather a long jump. Robert Culp (or perhaps a stunt double) replicates the jump in the finished episode.

There are some good photos of the Bradbury Building today on the Bladezone website, as part of a Blade Runner-themed tour of LA.

Another connection between Bradbury and Ellison is that they are both recipients of the J.Lloyd Eaton Award: Bradbury was the first, in 2008; Ellison is the fourth, and will receive his award at next month's Eaton Conference in Riverside, California.

An Unlikely Friend

Ray Bradbury, it seems, has met almost everyone. Katherine Hepburn? Yes. George W. Bush? Yes. Aldous Huxley? Yes.

Bertrand Russell? Actually, yes.

Superman? Well, apparently, yes!

At least, according to David Surridge, posting on Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature. Surridge reviews the movie tie-ins and other writing of Elliot S. Maggin, author of Miracle Monday (1981), in which Ray Bradbury appears - fleetingly - as a fictional character, along with his late wife Maggie and a certain Walt Disney.

I thought Harlan Ellison's recent screen appearance alongside Scooby Doo was amazing, but it seems Bradbury got there first, appearing alongside a fictional character nearly thirty years ago!

True to Type

We all know about Ray Bradbury's first typewriter. One of those toy dial devices, where you painstakingly line up a pointer with the letter you want to print. This isn't the exact model, but I believe Ray's is something like this:

He still owns the Deluxe Toy Dial machine, but probably hasn't written with it for over seventy years. Of course, Ray didn't ever do any professional work with this device, but he supposedly wrote an Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired novel on it when still at a tender young age. In later years he progressed to more sophisticated machineries, some of them electrical.

And has even been known to Skype:


All right, he has some help when he does this, but it proves he's not quite the luddite some people would have you believe.

What of other writers? Where did they first tap out their tales?

Harlan Ellison began on something rather more professional than Bradbury: a portable Remington, bought for him by his mother when he was fifteen years old. He wrote his earliest stories on this machine, and produced his fanzine Dimensions on it up to about 1954.

Harlan is now looking to sell this historic item, and the current asking price is a sweet $40,000. In case you doubt the significance of Ellison the writer, I remind you that this man has won (deep breath):

• 8-and-a-half Hugo Awards from the World Science Fiction Convention
• 3 Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America
• 5 Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers' Association
• 2 Edgar Awards from the Mytery Writers of America
• a George Melies Award
• a Silver Pen Award for Journalism
• 4 Writers Guild of America Awards for screenwriting

He is, without doubt, one of the most significant 20th-century American writers of the literature of the fantastic. That old Remington may not be the machine upon which he wrote of the Harlequin, or Jeffty, or Vic & Blood; but it's the machine that first allowed him to unleash his astonishing literary muse.

Have a spare 40k? What a magnificent Christmas gift this would make:



Read more about Harlan and his typewriter at the official Harlan's Typewriter For Sale site.

Dubious honours

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on the British website Good Show, Sir! which collects - parades might be a more appropriate word - the most laughable examples of science fiction and fantasy book cover art. Unicorns, cat people, bare-breasted ladies... and centaurs... seem to be among the most frequent visual elements on display there.

I took a look over my shelves to see which book covers I could offer to the site, and came up with an awful Bradbury cover, plus a few others. Little did I know that the 1969 British Corgi paperback edition of I Sing the Body Electric! would end up being the highest rated cover on the whole site.

Click here to see the cover, and the witty responses it garnered from the site's visitors.

I also posted this Harlan Ellison cover, which prompted a response from Mr Ellison himself.

Libraries, Kuttner

I keep seeing Ray Bradbury referred to in campaigns to stop library closures. The image to the left is from a library in Charlotte, North Carolina. There is information about the local campaign here.


Henry Kuttner was an important formative influence on Ray Bradbury's early writing career, but Kuttner's work is little known today. Most recently, the so-so movie The Last Mimzy drew upon Kuttner's best known work, the short story "Mimsy Were The Borogoves" (written as Lewis Padgett). The bizarrely named blog Two-Fisted Tales of True-Life Weird Romance gives a neat biography of Kuttner, referencing Bradbury. The blog post also includes a complete Kuttner story, "Bells of Horror", taken from the pulp magazine Strange Stories. An earlier post in the same blog included some Thrilling Wonder Stories pages that contain biographies of 1940s pulp writers, including Kuttner.


In another blog, at Coilhouse, David Forbes contributes an excellent essay about how science fiction literature shifted from a position of technological optimism to a more bleak view. Forbes uses some excellent examples, taking us from early Heinlein and Astounding Stories magazine, through Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and Thomas Disch. It's a very thought-provoking essay, and a reminder that although Bradbury has only occasionally been an SF writer, his position in the genre is solid, thanks largely to the apparently anti-technology stance of his short story collection The Illustrated Man. We can argue all day about whether Bradbury is really anti-technology, and whether any of his work is really science fiction, but his influence on the field and genre of SF is unquestionable.

Talking about Ray

In June (told you it was a busy month!) I also presented a paper on Ray Bradbury to the Science Fiction Research Association Conference in New York State. I've been to academic conferences before, but this was my first presenting stint. Thankfully, the audience wasn't so huge as turn me to jelly.

The paper was the one mentioned earlier, on Leviathan '99. I have submitted the paper for possible publication in the conference book.

Funding for my trip was provided by my employer, the University of Wolverhampton, to whom I am immensely grateful.

Apart from the presenting, the highlight of the conference was listening to Norman Spinrad, the science fiction writer and critic. Although I think I may have upset him a bit by asking what had happened to the proposed film version of his novel Bug Jack Barron.

"Didn't Harlan Ellison write a screenplay for it?" I ask.
"Ellison wrote a screenplay," Spinrad replies.
"Was there more than one?"
"Ellison wrote a screenplay, I wrote a screenplay, Peter Weir wrote half a screenplay. Universal Studios now owns the whole damned thing, forever."

I also met Andy Sawyer of the Science Fiction Foundation and the University of Liverpool's SF Hub. Many years ago I used to write book reviews and type copy for Paperback Inferno, which Andy edited - and yet we never met, until SFRA 2006 in New York.