Reading, Short and Deep - podcast series

Reading, Short and Deep is a long-running podcast about short fiction. It's co-hosted by Jesse Willis and the noted science fiction scholar Eric Rabkin, and in each episode they pick a single short story to discuss. They usually also provide an online link, so that you can read the story under discussion.

I met Eric at a couple of conferences in the last decade, and had the honour of writing a chapter for a book he co-edited, Visions of Mars (McFarland, 2011).

Given Eric's background, its perhaps no surprise that a good number of episodes discuss works of fantasy and SF, including stories by Jack London, Clark Ashton Smith, Shirley Jackson and Robert Sheckley.

And, of course, Ray Bradbury.

Here are direct links to the Bradbury episodes (although you can also subscribe to the podcast on any podcast app):

Zero Hour

The Wind

Morgue Ship

The Pendulum (Bradbury with Henry Hasse)

I, Mars (aka Night Call, Collect)

Frederik Pohl (1919-2013)

I just heard that Fred Pohl has passed away. He was a major figure in twentieth-century American SF, as editor, agent, novelist and short-story writer. He edited pulp-magazines before the Second World War, rubbing shoulders with other founding figures of the genre as we know it today. He wrote satirical novels and short stories in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth in the 1950s. He edited Galaxy magazine in the 1960s. In the 1970s he had what for many people would be a late-career flourish with a string of award-winning novels such as Gateway, Man Plus (probably my favourite of his works) and Jem.

But that late-career flourish in his 50s turned out to be mid-career, as he continued working right through to his 90s. His authobiography, The Way The Future Was, consequently turns out to be a rather incomplete work as it was published in 1978 when Fred was a mere 58 years old! In recent years, he effectively extended the book by becoming a prolific blogger with his The Way The Future Blogs.

I met Fred in 2008 at the Eaton Conference in Riverside, California. He appeared on a panel with guest of honour Ray Bradbury. I had a chance to talk to him briefly about his work, telling him that I had re-read Man Plus on the flight from the UK, and found that it held up well for a thirty-year-old book. I have a few photos from the event, including one of me talking to Fred, but my favourite is this shot of him looking pensive. In the background, Larry Niven (standing) is sharing a joke with Ray Bradbury; and further back is SF scholar Eric Rabkin (seated), talking to Fred's wife Elizabeth Anne Hull.

Conferring on Bradbury

On Friday 29 June I will be presenting a paper at the SFRA (Science Fiction Research Association) conference in Detroit, Michigan. My paper is about the way Bradbury used the end of the world as a device in The Martian Chronicles screenplays, and in comparison with his original book. When I initially proposed the paper, I envisaged writing about all sorts of other Bradburyan apocalypses, but when it came to drafting it, it became obvious that a twenty-minute paper wouldn't allow room.

Joining me on the Bradbury-themed panel will be Jon Eller of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University, and Adam Frisch of Briar Cliff University (a past-president of SFRA).

The conference guest of honour is Eric Rabkin, who has himself written and lectured about Bradbury in the past.

The last scheduled panel in the conference (on Saturday afternoon) will be a "Bradbury memorial". I will be moderating this session, and will be showing a selection of rare Bradbury video clips.

Full details of the SFRA conference can be found here.

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.

Spring Miscellanea

I've been away from the blog for a while, as I have been bogged down with writing. In February I turned in a paper for a book, a substantially re-written version of a paper I originally presented at the 2008 Eaton Conference at University of California, Riverside. It's about the Martian Chronicles story "And The Moon Be Still As Bright" in its various media incarnations. As part of my research, I thought I should go back to the original story, so I bought the 1948 issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories in which it appears. The book is likely to be called Chronicling Mars, and is being edited by George Slusser, Eric Rabkin and Howard V. Hendrix. I have no publication details just yet, but I expect that it will be released some time in 2010.

Immediately after finishing that paper, I started on another. This one is looking at images in selected Bradbury short stories. I feel the need to stop, and emphasise that I said IMAGES rather than IMAGERY. By which I mean that the paper looks at Bradbury's use of PICTURES such as photos, paintings and tattoos.

While I've been busy with that, a few Bradbury-related items have come to my attention which I haven't yet flagged up. So, by way of catching up with the backlog...

From Macmillan books comes a PDF teacher's guide to accompany the new graphic novel version of Fahrenheit 451. Just because Bradbury's novel has turned into a comic, it doesn't mean it can't still be used in the classroom!

I don't know what the provenance is of this next item, but it seems to be a transcript of a speech or presentation that Bradbury gave in 1969. It is held on the website of Caltech, but whether that means Bradbury delivered the presentation there I simply don't know. It has some nice photos of Ray in his ice-cream suit doing his inspirational speaker bit. I don't think it really contains anything I haven't read elsewhere, but it is clearly from the time of the first moon landing, so it has certain historical charm. See for yourself, here.

I noticed in the knew Knopf catalogue that there is a new edition of The Stories of Ray Bradbury. No new content (although this one has an introduction that I don't recall seeing in the original edition), but a new cover - not the best I have ever seen, but a bit more modern than the original design that seems to have remained in print since the 1980s. The Knopf catalogue is here, Bradbury is on page 135.

Finally, from Halloween 2007 comes LAWP Newsflash - a publication of the Los Angeles Writing Project. On page 3 is the story of one person's encounter with Ray Bradbury.