October: Bradbury Season!

 Halloween is upon us once more, that most Bradburyan of seasons. 

By way of celebration, here's another chance to listen to the Bradbury 100 podcast episode I put out last Halloween, in which I discuss what October meant to Ray Bradbury, and interviewed the remarkable actor Bill Oberst Jr, the man dubbed "the King of Horror"!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 15 - with actor Bill Oberst Jr

Facelift

Bradburymedia has had a very slight facelift (the old template was getting almost impossible to modify, so I had to switch to a new one). Rest assured that the old content is still here.

I haven't posted much lately, since I'm busily trying to put my PhD thesis together. If you feel starved of Bradbury-related posts, don't forget to take a look at the Facebook page of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, which I also administer. There's usually a couple of quick posts a day on there.

Happy Halloween, and: Onward!

Belated Halloween...

As the days, weeks, months go flying by I somehow managed to miss blogging anything about Bradbury on Halloween. If there is one month of the year that is Bradbury's, it is undoubtedly October: the month that figures centrally in at least three of his books:

• The October Country - where it is right there in the title; a collection of his weird tales, derived from Bradbury's earlier (out of print) collection Dark Carnival
• Something Wicked This Way Comes - where October is right there in the opening line ("First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.")
• The Halloween Tree - which is all about the history and traditions of Halloween

Fortunately, others kept Bradbury visible this Halloween. For example...

Bradburymedia's friend Brian Sibley reminded us once again how a blog post should be done, with his excellent account not only of the creation of Bradbury's Halloween Tree, but of his friendship with the late author, and of the spreading tradition of the Halloween Tree concept. You can read Brian's post here.

Radio Station KPFK re-broadcast an archive programme which includes a performed reading of The Halloween Tree - including Ray Bradbury himself as one of the readers. This show is currently available in the stations online archive, but I expect it will only be there for a short while, as don't think they archive everything forever. So, listen while you can, but make sure you allow yourself a full three hours. Here's the direct download link.

That Was October...

Of all months, October is the one most associated with Ray Bradbury. He wrote The October Country and The Halloween Tree, and set Something Wicked This Way Comes in the month of October. As a consequence, there are more references to Bradbury on the web at this time of year than at any other time. Now it's over(!), here's a few notable pieces which appeared recently:

Claire Thompson uses The Halloween Tree as a way into a fascinating discussion of how Americans (and, presumably, the rest of us) can evaluate their neighbourhoods. With its discussion of trick-or-treating and "walkability", it taps into more than one of Bradbury's recurring concerns.

The blog Too Much Horror Fiction gives a detailed appreciation of both Dark Carnival and The October 
 Country, with some good illustrations

The Lake County Sun-Times has a photo-gallery report on this year's Waukegan Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival.

Happy Halloween!

Breaking my recent silence to wish everyone a most Bradburyan
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Bits and/or Pieces

Halloween moves ever closer. It holds little personal interest for me in real life, but I appreciate a good Halloween depiction in literature or film. So, too, does this Guardian book blog, one of the few general Bradbury appreciations I have seen in the British press.

Out of sync with the season, I today received my copy of Summer Morning, Summer Night. This is the missing link between Dandelion Wine and its sequel Farewell Summer. Literally. Bradbury conceived of one large work, but back in the '50s decided to publish only half (DW). Just recently the second half (FS) was published, and as a follow up SM, SN is now available from Subterranean Press - but order soon, as it sounds like stocks will sell out.

Just over a half of SM, SN is material previously published in short story form. The remainder is material previously unpublished, mostly in the form of short fragments, episodes that somehow didn't fit into the text of either of the other two books. There are some longer stories, however, and I have enjoyed the tiny amount of the book I have read so far. However, it feels like a book that will only make sense to a completist, someone already familiar with both DW and FS.

Last weekend I saw the Catherine Wheels/National Theatre of Scotland production of Something Wicked This Way Comes. A splendid production of one of Bradbury's most awkward stage plays. If you get the chance to see this production, I highly recommend it. However, abandon your preconceptions of what SWTWC should be like, and be prepared for a fun, energetic and inventive piece of theatre. I hope to post a full review soon.

More Bradbury Celebrations

Any day now is the official start of Autumn. At least, if you live in the northern hemisphere. And abide by the astronomical definition of the seasons.

Halloween is coming.

And on release now is Colonial Radio Theatre's latest Bradbury dramatisation, The Halloween Tree. Officially it's out on 1st October, but Amazon and other suppliers have actually been shipping it for a couple of weeks.

So now, as promised, here is my review of the new CD.

Meanwhile, the Scottish National Theatre/Catherine Wheels stage production of Something Wicked This Way Comes previews in Glasgow tonight. The Scotsman recently published this article about the production, which includes an interview with the director and some interesting detail on some of the technical details of the staging. I hope to be seeing the play when it begins touring in a couple of weeks. I will post my review shortly afterwards.

Bradbury continues to be presented with all manner of honours and awards. Last night the library of UCLA unveiled a plaque at a special dinner, commemorating Bradbury's use of the typewriter rental facility to create his masterpiece Fahrenheit 451. There are pictures from the event at the official Bradbury message board, thanks to jkt who was there with his camera.

Finally, an anonymous poster to this blog has reminded me that Bradbury will be honoured with a lifetime achievement award at the forthcoming Ojai Film Festival in California.

Bradbury Season

October is a rare month for boys... according to the opening lines of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, at least. But it's far from a rare month for Bradbury. As Halloween approaches, it always feels like Bradbury Season.

To help make it so this year, two significant adaptations are on their way. In audio, Colonial Radio Theatre's production of The Halloween Tree - scheduled for a 1st October release - is now available on CD via Amazon. (And this isn't just a theoretically-available item, they really are shipping it now.) I have been writing a review of this lavish production, but have been caught on the hop by its early, unheralded release. Watch this space for my review, which is coming real soon now, honest.

And on stage, the National Theatre of Scotland in conjunction with Catherine Wheels Theatre Company will shortly be touring (mostly Scotland, but one venue in England) with a new production of Bradbury's own stage play version of Something Wicked. I hope to catch the play when it makes its brief visit south of the border.

Halloween!

The folks at Colonial Radio Theater have released a trailer for The Halloween Tree, their latest Bradbury audio adaptation. This one has apparently been over a year in the making, and is due for release in time for Halloween 2008.

Regular readers will know that I rate Colonial's Productions very highly, and so I am greatly looking forward to hearing this latest production.

Incidentally, the forthcoming inaugural issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review will contain an extended version of my review of Colonial's Dandelion Wine.

Halloween

That friend of Bradburymedia, the writer Brian Sibley, has blogged about his friend Ray Bradbury once more.

If you visit Brian's blog, you can read the true history of Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, and read Brian's review of this autumnal classic.

Storyteller

Bradbury, we are often told, is a storyteller at heart. Of course, people say this about many writers. There are, I think, three things that make this a particularly appropriate characterisation of Bradbury.

First is that Bradbury's writings are mostly in the short form. Like the storytellers of old, seated around the camp fire, he keeps things short and to the point. He favours short stories. Short poems. One-act plays. Thirty-minute TV dramas. Yes, he has written plenty of novels, some poetry of epic length, and many full-length screenplays. But even his longest works are really quite short, and nearly all are highly episodic.

Second is that Bradbury likes to re-tell his stories. All good camp-fire stories are ones that have been refined, embellished and enhanced through repeated telling to different audiences. All the great stand-up comedians do this, and some of them keep the same comic tales spinning for years, always adjusting the narrative, delivery and timing for optimum delivery. Bradbury re-tells his stories in many ways. He constantly adapts and re-adapts from one medium to another: short story, play, TV script, novel chapter. And in his interviews and public-speaking engagements, he invariably re-tells familiar anecdotes, like the one about Mr Electrico, or the one about how he remembers being born.

Third is that Bradbury is (or has been until recent years, when his health has got the better of him) a great performer of his own stories. He has recorded audio books of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and many others of his works. Although he's not one of the world's greatest actors, he has been one of the best performing writers.

This autumn, Bradbury's home town of Waukegan, Illinois, is staging a storytelling festival in Bradbury's honour. A small town, and a small event. But the emphasis on storytelling is surely correct. This format seems an ideal way to celebrate his works - and to usher in the Bradbury season of Halloween.

Bradbury won't be attending in person, but he is filming a contribution in California.