Harlan Ellison story dedicated to Ray Bradbury

Harlan Ellison, who turned 80 just a few weeks ago, has a new short story in the online Subterranean Press Magazine. Titled "He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes", the story alludes to both  Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League" and Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder". The story is also dedicated to the memory of Bradbury. Read the story here.

Harlan is also one of the latest additions to the Archive of American Television's oral history programme, with a video interview conducted in early 2013, covering most of the steps in Ellison's screenwriting career. Interviews in this series are usually continuous and chronological, but for some reason this one has been broken into short, top-and-tailed segments. While this has created some fun sections, it doesn't seem quite as carefully controlled as the rest of the series, and the sense of chronology is sometimes lost - as when Harlan talks about The Twilight Zone from the 1980s in between his comments on the 1960s series Ripcord and The Flying Nun. You can watch the interview here.

Nemo!

I recently received my copy of Nemo! It's a new hardcover from Subterranean Press, containing a complete screenplay by Ray Bradbury. I would recommend that you buy it - but it's a limited edition, and is already sold out*.

Nemo! is another one of those unfilmed Bradbury screenplays, but this one is slightly different as it's based on characters and stories by someone else, the cartoonist Winsor McCay. Bradbury was a frequent self-adaptor, but only rarely did he adapt the work of others.

Nemo! was written in the early 1980s for producer Gary Kurtz (of Star Wars fame), but the film spent years in development hell. It's based on McCay's early twentieth-century comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, and although it uses McCay's characters and premise, it apparently takes off into a free-flowing narrative which is as much Bradbury as it is McCay. (I say all this based on what I have heard; I haven't yet had time to read Nemo! from cover to cover, and nor have I read all of McCay's original strip!)

Eventually a film based on Little Nemo was released, ten years after Bradbury began work on the screenplay: Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. Virtually nothing of Bradbury's screenplay ended up in the completed film, but he did receive a credit for the screen concept.

This convoluted production history is not mentioned in the Subterranean book. Although it is a beautifully produced volume, it is completely devoid of any of the introductions, forewords, afterwords or contextual essays I have come to expect from this publisher. Nor does it have any illustrations or any visuals from McCay's strip. Maybe that would have blown the budget. It does have a delightful cover, which gives a tempting suggestion of what a Bradbury-McCay animated feature film might have looked like.

Subterranean's page for the book is here, and if you want to explore McCay's original adventures of Nemo, you can find a collection of them at The Comic Strip Library.



*Update: it has been brought to my attention that, although Subterranean has sold out of this book, Amazon currently has stock. Details are here.

The One That Got Away

It's common knowledge (or received wisdom) that for every film that gets made, the are 5000 screenplays that get left on a shelf; some because they are awful, but a goodly proportion for no particular reason other than being the wrong script at the wrong time.

Even a writer with an established reputation - Ray Bradbury, to pick an example at random! - can suffer this same fate. Although Bradbury has more than a handful of credits on completed feature films (Moby Dick, Something Wicked This Way Comes to name but two), he has his name on a large number of unfilmed scripts. Some of these have begun to appear in print in limited edition volumes from Gauntlet and Subterranean.

I have recently been studying Bradbury's unfilmed screenplays for The Martian Chronicles. Two of these have been published in the so-called The Martian Chronicles: the Complete Edition - these are a script from c.1965 which was written for Alan J. Pakula and Robert Mulligan, and a script from 1997 which was written for Paramount. The Complete Edition won't give you any of these details. Nor will it tell you that Bradbury wrote at least two other script version of The Martian Chronicles. Far from being "complete", that volume gives merely an (unexplained) glimpse at a substantial amount of script work Bradbury carried out between approximately 1958 and 1997.

I will be presenting a paper on these unpublished and unfilmed screenplays at a conference in a couple of weeks. The conference theme is the "invisible" nature of the screenplay, and my paper is titled "I Live By The Invisible: the Published and Unpublished Screenplays of Ray Bradbury". You can find my abstract on the conference website.

In case you are thinking a script is a script is a script, I can report that Bradbury seems to treat The Martian Chronicles differently each time he adapts it. Sometimes this may be because of the medium and format - a TV mini series will offer different opportunities than a two-hour feature film - and sometimes because of external factors. And in case you are still thinking a script is a script is a script, take a look at this delightful article on how strange (and terrible) some great movies could have been, if early drafts of the script had been used.

Rocket Summer

That excellent blog for all things Mars-related, Marooned - Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books on Mars, is embarking on a story-by-story exploration of the "new" materials in The Martian Chronicles: the complete edition, recently published by Subterranean and PS (and already sold out). It's something I should be doing for my own website, but alas I don't have time at the moment.

Marooned also alerts us to this LA Times blog post, which says that the film rights to The Martian Chronicles have been newly optioned. Of course, this doesn't mean there will actually be a new film. The Chronicles has been optioned countless times, and Bradbury himself has written at least four different screenplay versions over the years. There's no indication yet that this new option will be any different. Fingers crossed, though...

Bradbury, Bradbury everywhere

There are some potentially interesting materials to help with the use of Fahrenheit 451 in the classroom at the website Shmoop, here. Some parts of it are unlockable only by paying money, but other parts are free. From a cursory glance, it's not clear to me what age range they are assuming, but it may be useful to some teachers.




I gave up watching the TV series Lost a couple of years ago, and have been amused at the amount of blogosphere coverage the series finale has garnered. I was more amused by this Los Angeles Times review which suggested how Ray Bradbury might have enlivened proceedings...




At the Huffington Post, a "college English instructor in Northern California" gives high praise to Ray Bradbury.




I finally received my copy of The Martian Chronicles: the Complete Edition. This large volume from Subterranean Press collects (supposedly) all of Bradbury's Mars stories, both the ones from the original Martian Chronicles and the ones that were published elsewhere. It also includes two complete Bradbury screenplay adaptations of the book. For my research into Bradbury's media work, this volume is a godsend; previously I had to make a trek to Indianapolis to inspect Bradbury's screenplays at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies.

I said "supposedly" above, not to question the editorial completeness of the Subterranean volume, but simply because I expect Bradbury has some more Martian tales lying around somewhere.

The Martian Chronicles: the Complete Edition is a handsome book, but there is little point in me trying to persuade you to save up to buy a copy... because it's already sold out!

The Chronicles of Ray

Reviews continue to appear for the new Everyman edition of The Stories of Ray Bradbury. One that caught my eye for its insight and accuracy is this one from Slate.

Meanwhile, Subterranean Press have confirmed that The Martian Chronicles: the complete edition is about to start shipping any day now. This volume, you may recall, is a dreadfully expensive limited edition of the Chronicles with copious additional material, such as previously un-chronicled Martian tales and various screenplay adaptations by Bradbury himself. The book has been years in the making, after an abortive first attempt to bring it to market by another publisher. Subterranean's shipping announcement is here, and their page about the book is here.

Collectibles

Like Fahrenheit 451's book-people, I value the content of a book more highly than its physical presentation. But even I was stopped in my tracks by this first edition of Dark Carnival being auctioned on eBay. The price tag of $3500 soon persuaded me to keep moving, nothing to see here...

If you are interested in collecting Bradbury collectibles, you should read the interesting little page on Abebooks. I don't have any of those really exotic editions, but I do have a few of the Gauntlet and Subterranean limited editions. I bought them to read, however; not as an investment!

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.

The Golden Apples of the Sun

I received my copy of Subterranean Press's new hardcover of The Golden Apples of the Sun recently. At the current dollar/sterling exchange rate, it was quite cheap (as limited editions go).

I was disappointed to discover that Joe Mugnaini's original art is limited to the cover, and isn't continued inside the book. His line drawings have always been synonymous with The Golden Apples of the Sun, and I was hoping to see them in this edition.

The main reason I was persuaded to buy this edition is the inclusion of a couple of bonuses: two plays by Ray, based on stories in the book, and published here for the first time. And while these are good, I would have liked some contextual information.

For example, when were they written? Were they ever performed, in this form or any other? Is "The Fog Horn" a RADIO treatment (because it certainly reads like one)? And why is the play of "En La Noche" so excessive in stage/actor directions? Had Ray never seen a play written down?

At the very least, they should have given an explanation of why "The Fog Horn" is incomplete. (The dust jacket says the book includes two plays, not one play and one fragment of a play.)

So, while it's a handsome enough volume in its own right, it could have been so much better if they had thought it through.

I have since found out that "The Fog Horn" is indeed a radio treatment. However, I remain somewhat mystified about "En La Noche" - it apparently dates from 1960, and while it is one of Bradbury's earliest stage plays, he was certainly an experienced dramatist by this point.

Fahrenheit 451 - Moscow style. Herman Melville - Bradbury style.

The Moscow Times has published a review of a new Russian stage adaptation of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It's not clear whether this is a translation of Bradbury's own play, or a completely new adaptation. Read John Freedman's review here.

Subterranean Press, which has produced some excellent limited edition versions of Bradbury books, has announced the first book publication of Moby Dick - Ray Bradbury's original screenplay for the 1956 feature film directed by John Huston. This is an important publication, since it finally gives us a chance to see what Bradbury brought to the adaptation, without the distortions imposed by Huston, Huston's friends, and others such as Orson Welles.

Why does it matter? For at least three reasons. First, Huston grabbed co-script credit from Bradbury, and somehow managed to overturn a Writer's Guild of America ruling on script credit which had gone in Bradbury's favour. Second, because the innovations in Bradbury's version of Moby Dick are so powerful that many of them have been carried over into more recent adaptations of Melville's novel, as if Bradbury's text were superior to Melville's. Third, because (as I have argued elsewhere) Bradbury's experience on the Moby Dick project had a major influence on the next fifty years of his development as a writer: through his Irish stories and plays, his endless wrestling with the Melville tribute Leviathan '99, his novel Green Shadow, White Whale, and much else.