New BRADBURY 100 Podcast Episode: Reviewing Ray Bradbury

This time on Bradbury 100 I talk about The New Ray Bradbury Review, the online journal I edit on behalf of the Ray Bradbury Center.

But I lead into the discussion by examining the ancestry of the journal - which stretches way back to 1952, and William F. Nolan's original fan publication, called simply Ray Bradbury Review.

I also pay tribute to Nolan as the first person to really study Ray's work, and I discuss his ongoing engagement with Ray as both a friend and a colleague.

You can download a free PDF copy of Nolan's ground-breaking original Ray Bradbury Review here, courtesy of FANAC: https://fanac.org/fanzines/1950s_One_Shots/ray_bradbury_review_nolan_1952.pdf

And you can find the modern equivalent - The New Ray Bradbury Review - online for free, here: https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/nrbr

The other William F. Nolan books I discuss in the podcast are The Ray Bradbury Companion and Nolan On Bradbury. 

Here's the episode. Enjoy!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 49 - Reviewing Ray Bradbury

 

 

 

 

Please subscribe to the Bradbury 100 podcast - it's totally free on all platforms. Where to find it:

 

 

Main platforms:

 
Apple Podcasts  - Google Podcasts - Soundcloud - Spotify

 

 

 

Other platforms: 

Amazon Music - Audible - Bullhorn - Castbox - Deezer - Listen Notes - Player FM - Pocket Casts - Podbean - Podcast Addict - Podcast Index - Podcast Republic - Podchaser - Podfriend - Podlink - TuneIn

 

Ray Bradbury Miscellanea

Courtesy of fjp, here's a photo of Ray Bradbury with writer William F. Nolan. Nolan is best known as a novelist, short story writer, biographer and screenwriter. He also produced the first studies of Bradbury's work: the original Ray Bradbury Review and The Ray Bradbury Companion. More recently he put together Nolan on Bradbury, a compilation of his best Bradbury-inspired writings.

(As always, click images to embiggen.)

Books on Bradbury, new and forthcoming

It's nearly a year since Ray Bradbury died, but interest in his work continues, as evidenced in a number of books newly released or announced.

Searching for Ray Bradbury is a slim, inexpensive volume from Bradbury's friend and collaborator Steven Paul Leiva. It collects Steven's writings on Ray, previously published in various newspapers, magazines and websites. I'm currently reading this book, and will be reviewing it here in the near future. For now, I'll just say that it captures some of the spirit of celebration of the events Steven co-ordinated in recent years, such as Los Angeles' Ray Bradbury Week and the dedication of Ray Bradbury Square.

Nolan on Bradbury is William F. Nolan's return to writing about his lifelong friend. A highlight of Nolan's early career was his publication of The Ray Bradbury Review, the first study of any aspect of Bradbury's work. Nolan would soon develop a career as a creative writer which paralleled Bradbury's, with work in the fields of SF, fantasy, horror and crime fiction, and with significant excursions into screenwriting. Nolan's list of significant books includes the novel Logan's Run (written with George Clayton Johnson) and the scrapbook-style The Ray Bradbury Companion. Now Nolan on Bradbury promises to collect "sixty years of writing" about Bradbury, and is adorned with a Joe Mugnaini rendering of Bradbury's "The Pedestrian". I hope to review this book soon.

Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury: Spectral Journeys is William Touponce's latest study, attempting to map Lovecraft's notion of spectral literature as "literature that involves the gothic themes of the supernatural found in the past but also concerned about modern society and humanity", and showing how his tradition or mode of writing developed through the twentieth-century. Bill's previous work on Bradbury is extensive, including the study Ray Bradbury: the Life of Fiction (written with Jon Eller) and directing the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies from 2007-2011. This book is listed for publication in October... the ideal month for Bradbury.

Finally a brief note on The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: a Critical Edition, Volume 2. I am pleased to report that I have been appointed as a consultant on this volume, which is currently approaching it's final shape. The contents of the volume are more or less settled, with just a few items of the critical apparatus still to be completed. I'll give more details when I can. (Volume 1, of course, is already available.)

Logan's Run - audio dramatisation

I've been listening to another Colonial Radio production: Logan's Run - Last Day.

It's a full-cast dramatisation of various story elements from the Logan books, although I gather it is more directly adapted from the comic book series from Bluewater Productions.

I haven't read the comics, so I can't comment on this aspect of the adaptation, except to say that the radio dramatisation has a breathless pace which is rather like a comic book.

Logan's Run began life in 1967 as a novel, written by two friends and colleagues of Ray Bradbury: William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. (Nolan had previously been known for his Ray Bradbury Review, and Johnson had been known for his Bradbury collaboration Icarus Montgolfier Wright... and an association with The Twilight Zone, Star Trek and Ocean's Eleven.)

I don't think it's a coincidence that Logan's experience has some parallels with Montag from Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: both are responsible men in neo-military organisations in a dystopian future, who come to a realisation that there is more to the world than they had imagined... and who both find like-minded others when they go off searching for a kind of sanctuary. It's actually a good template for a science-fictional story, and Bradbury, Nolan and Johnson were neither the first nor the last to exploit it.

Colonial's production is fun and not too taxing. The pseudo-historical back story for Logan's world is, I believe, modified and updated from what appeared in the novel (as, presumably, is the case in the comic-book). I didn't find it quite as profound as some of their work with Bradbury stories, but it doesn't really need to be.

I was hoping for was something that was better than both the old Logan's Run TV series and feature film. I was not disappointed.

Ordering information for the audio version of Logan's Run - Last Day is here. And for the comic book, click here!

SoCal Sorcerers, Waukegan Dinos

Ray Bradbury has a lot in common with Richard Matheson. Both writers belong to the "Southern California" school of SF and fantasy writers, both have written extensively for film and television as well as print, and both have seen their finest works celebrated (and occasionally trashed) in adaptations created by others.

In 1979, by some quirk of fate, Matheson wrote the teleplay for Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles - which, in the hands of director Michael Anderson and producer Charles Fries, turned out to be one of those occasional trashings.

I see that Matheson's works as adapted for screen come under scrutiny in a new book by Matthew R. Bradley. Bradley has a blog, which has recently featured a great piece on another Matheson/Bradbury associate, William F. Nolan. Nolan also features in an interview here, where the secrets of his success and longevity are spelled out.


Please don't ask me why I was reading a web page for "seniors"... but I ran across this article about walking, which references Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian", and also repeats an amusing anecdote about Bob Dylan.



I'm sure Bradbury would be pleased to know that the public library in his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, now has dinosaurs - watch the new promo video:

Exclusive! Preview of the new journal

Courtesy of William Touponce, director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University, comes this exclusive sneak preview of the forthcoming new journal The New Ray Bradbury Review:


The cover artwork (click on it to enlarge) is by Bradbury himself. Inside is a collection of articles by various Bradbury scholars, most focusing on this issue's topic of "adaptation". Here's the table of contents:

Among the contributors (click to enlarge) you may notice Profs Eller and Touponce (co-authors of Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction), David Mogen (author of Ray Bradbury), Terry Pace (who has long been associated with Bradbury's work in theatre), and film scholar John C. Tibbetts. Oh, and yours truly has managed to sneak in there with some material on Bradbury's work in the audio media.

The eagle-eyed reader may notice that, although this is a brand new journal, the cover indicates it as "Volume 2". This, says Bill Touponce, is a nod to William F.Nolan, who published the pioneering original Ray Bradbury Review some years ago, and who contributes the preface to this new journal.

As yet, there is no information on how to obtain the journal. As soon as this is decided, I will post the information here.

The Birthday Bash

John Sasser very kindly sent me some photos from Ray Bradbury's 87th birthday celebration. When I get a bit of spare time(!), I will add them to the photo gallery. For now, though, here is a pic of Mr B with his dinosaur-themed cake! (Click the photo to enlarge.)

Present at the bash, among others, were Ray's friends and fellow writers William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Nolan presented Ray with his Pulitzer Prize Special Citation.

Early Bibliography

I wonder how many Bradbury readers are familiar with William F. Nolan. A successful writer in his own right, Nolan is probably best known as the co-creator of Logan's Run, the popular SF novel (and film, and TV series, and series of books).

But Nolan (pictured left with Forry Ackerman and Ray Bradbury in 1953) was also one of the first to begin keeping detailed bibliographical records of Ray Bradbury's work. In the 1950s, he launched a fanzine/journal called The Ray Bradbury Review. Twenty-odd years later he published a collation of much of this work in a book, The Ray Bradbury Companion. For years, this was the most detailed book on Bradbury's publishing history, and in many respects it is still unsurpassed. Nolan's vast collection of Bradbury materials has been donated to Bowling Green University, Ohio, where it is is accessible to researchers.

Just the other day I stumbled across one of Nolan's earliest Bradbury biblographical pieces, onthe web. FANAC, dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history and publications of SF fandom, has uploaded a 1953 fanzine called Shangri-LA, which includes Bill Nolan's "Ray Bradbury Index".

This particular bibliography is fascinating to me because it captures Bradbury at the peak of his early success: by this time, he had broken out of genre publications and into the "slicks"; he had several books behind him; he had had works adapted for radio and early TV; and he was just breaking into movies. (For more on Bradbury's early experiences of film, see the Spaceman article here.)

"The Ray Bradbury Index" is also remarkable for its detail and accuracy. It gave me cause to cross-check the detail on my own website.

Bill Nolan is still active, and has his own website at www.williamfnolan.com. Last year he was named as Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. And he has been named a member of the Advisory Board of the proposed new Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University.

Center for Ray Bradbury Studies

The website of the new Center for Ray Bradbury Studies is now live. The Center is being set up by Bill Touponce of the University of Indiana. As some of you may know, Bill is one of the leading Bradbury scholars. He was responsible, with his Indiana colleague Jon Eller, for the remarkable Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, which gave a whole new set of insights into Bradbury's work.

I am delighted (and flattered) to have been invited to act as an adviser to the Center, alongside the far more illustrious Bradbury scholars David Mogen, Robin Anne Reid and William F. Nolan.