The long-running audio drama version of
The Twilight Zone will shortly feature a dramatisation of "I Sing the Body Electric!", the only episode of the original TV series to be scripted by Ray Bradbury. According to the
TZ Radio Drama blog, Dennis Etchison has written the new version to take into account not just the original episode, but some of Bradbury's ideas which didn't make it to screen.
"I Sing..." is actually one of the strangest items in Bradbury's back catalogue. The short story is quite well known - from the
eponymous short story collection first published in 1969 - but not many people know that the story first saw light of day as the
Twilight Zone episode, which Bradbury scripted c.1960. This puts "I Sing..." in the same category as
The Halloween Tree and
Something Wicked This Way Comes: a Bradbury media creation which only later became a literary text.
Here's an item to file under "wish I'd been there" heading: on 17 March in Fresno, California, there was a
two-day symposium on Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. The event tied in with the
Big Read campaign. The event was moderated by writer and academic
Howard V. Hendrix, who I met in 2008 at the Eaton Conference where we both presenting papers on Bradbury's
The Martian Chronicles. Fresno seems
quite keen on F451...
It looks as if the ghastly cover of
The Stories of Ray Bradbury, in print in hardcover from Knopf since 1980, is soon to vanish, replaced by this new cover with the Everyman label. As far as I know, this is all that's changed about the book, apart from (possibly) a new introduction. The publisher's page for this new edition is
here.
To tie in with the new edition, the
Wall Street Journal has a
new interview with 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.
