Bradbury 100 - new episode - with David Loftus

Time for another new episodes of Bradbury 100 - and joining me this week is writer and actor David Loftus.

David has read the works of Ray Bradbury a lot. Aloud.

Yes, aloud!

In the podcast, he explains how he came to read Something Wicked This Way Comes out loud multiple times!

David also once wrote an appreciation of Something Wicked for the now-defunct Bookdrum website. Although Bookdrum is no longer with us, an archived version of the site survives on the Internet Archive, and so you can still find David's composition, preserved for the ages, at this link.

There is plenty more of David's writing on his Patreon page, here.

In the introduction to this podcast episode, I talk about Ray Bradbury's own audiobook readings of his works. Some of these are still commercially available (and many of them are available without permission on various website...). You can find a fairly detailed listing of these audiobooks on one of the oldest pages on my website, right here.

And now, enjoy the podcast!

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 23 - with actor/writer David Loftus

 

 

 

 

Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)

You can't fail to have noticed the widespread tributes to Leonard Nimoy, who died recently at the age of 83. Of course, Star Trek, and of course, Spock. But Nimoy also had an incredibly long career that spanned stage, television, film - and was recognised for his acting, teaching, writing, directing and photography.

It would be impossible for science fiction giants like Nimoy and Bradbury to have never crossed paths, and indeed their paths did cross on several occasions - but curiously the only times when Nimoy acted for Bradbury were all voice work.

Nimoy recorded a couple of spoken-word albums of Bradbury material, which included short stories chosen from The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles. Today, we would call these "audiobooks", but back in the day they were released as LPs.

Later, Nimoy put in an energetic performance as Bradbury's character Moundshroud, in the Emmy-winning animated TV film of The Halloween Tree. On this occasion, Nimoy was performing directly from a screenplay written by Bradbury himself.

It's been interesting to see the tributes to Nimoy, which have come not just from Hollywood, but from NASA, astronauts, and President Obama. He inspired people to dream of space, and of the future; much as Bradbury did. I haven't been able to locate any photos of Bradbury and Nimoy together, but I've sure they met at some point, and no doubt they would have much in common to talk about.

 

 

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!

Bradbury on Stage, Audies

Terry Pace does a good job in keeping Ray Bradbury's theatre, film and TV work in the public eye. His Pillar of Fire theatre group has a Facebook page, and is also profiled in this report (and YouTube video) on the Left In Alabama website.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports on another stage production of Fahrenheit 451... with a contemporary political viewpoint.



Nominations have been published for the 2011Audie Awards - given for excellence in spoken word production by the Audio Producers of America. Among the nominees in the short story collection category is Bradbury's Long After Midnight, narrated by Michael Prichard. See the full list of nominees here.

On the Blogs

It sometimes seems that blogs were made for lists, since so many blogs give you the 20 best or 10 worst of a given item. Well, here's another one: a list of ten books you were supposed to read in school but didn't - with a suggestion of why you really ought to read them now you're all growed up. A Bradbury title is listed - and for once it isn't Fahrenheit 451.



Less listy is writer Sierra Godfrey's post on what makes for a scary story. Naturally, Stephen King gets a mention, but so too do H.G.Wells and Ray Bradbury.



This next item is a review of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, but of an audiobook version rather than the print version. What interested me about this is the reviewer's reaction to the dialogue in Something Wicked, and their assumption that they would have taken the dialogue differently if they had seen it written down. Bradbury's dialogue is often criticised for being unrealistic - this was one of Rod Serling's excuses for not doing more Bradbury on The Twilight Zone. But Something Wicked is a fantasy AND a period piece, so what would count as realistic dialogue? And why does dialogue that works on the page become unrealistic when performed? Read the review here.