Truffaut's FAHRENHEIT 451

I will be guest-editing a forthcoming issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review, devoted to the Francois Truffaut film adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. The issue will be published in 2016, timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the film's release.

Truffaut happens to be one of my favourite film-makers, so this was a natural theme for the issue. However, I consider Fahrenheit 451 to be one of his weakest films. I attribute this to the peculiar circumstances in which the film was made: it was Truffaut's first and only film in English... a language which Truffaut struggled to learn, and never really mastered. The film was made with a British crew, and Truffaut had to address them through an interpreter. Fortunately, his cinematographer, the legendary Nic Roeg, was fluent in French, so Truffaut was at least able to converse with this one key collaborator.

The New Ray Bradbury Review is a scholarly journal, published by Kent State University Press and produced at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies (Indiana University). But it has always been an accessible journal, not full of obscure academic language. If you feel you have something to say about the Truffaut film, I would welcome you submitting a proposal. Proposals will be considered on their merits, not on the basis of the academic track-record of the writer.

If you're interested in contributing, please read the call for papers here.

Anthony Boucher; F451 on stage again

The blog of Indiana University's Lilly Library has a recent post on Anthony Boucher, the famed (and pseudonymous) editor and writer. In SF circles, Boucher is probably best known as founding editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. However, he had a long career as an author in several genres, and also dabbled in writing for radio and television.

The Lilly Library's connection to Boucher is its collection of his manuscripts and correspondence which includes missives exchanged with Bradbury and many others.



According to the Washington Post September 2011 will see a one-month run of a new production of Bradbury's stage play of Fahrenheit 451. This production, it claims, "takes things that Bradbury could only write about and made them 'manifest onstage with the new technology.' " I wonder whether this means parlour-wall screens for Millie, a Mechanical Hound, or some other marvel.