Old-Time Radio

The first time I ever heard an audio production of a Ray Bradbury story was back in the 1980s. It was a BBC radio dramatisation of Fahrenheit 451. I soon started collecting as many Bradbury recordings as I could lay hands on, either by off-air recording or by trading with other collectors. In those days I was collecting on audio cassette.

Sometime in the 1990s I switched to using miniDisc as my preferred recording format, despite the irritating 80-minute recording limit. (This has been overcome in recent times with the HD incarnation of miniDisc.)

Nowadays its much more convenient to keep everything on computer, so I have slooooooowwwwwwlllllyyy been moving over to MP3 for archiving.

I am reluctant to post complete MP3 recordings on the web, since all of the Bradbury source material is still in copyright. (Some of the older recordings - particularly the American productions - have slipped into the public domain, but the underlying Bradbury writings are still copyrighted.) But there are plenty of other people out there who either don't have my scruples, or who don't know much about copyright laws. Or who just don't care.

I recently came across a rather anonymous site called Acmesoundstation.com. It has no explanations on it of what it is meant to be, or who it belongs to. It carries a large amount of old audio material, including some of Wally K. Daly's BBC science fiction plays (particular favourites of mine for many years).

From trawling through, I have found one Bradbury item (which I already have on CD, as it happens): CBS Radio Workshop's production of 'Season of Disbelief' and 'Hail and Farewell'. This item is unusual in having an introduction written and recorded by Bradbury himself. You can find the MP3 file here, and browse the entire site here.

Bradbury for Christmas

BBC radio broadcast a little piece of Bradbury for Christmas. Late on Christmas night they broadcast a radio programme called White Nights, featuring readings of stories and poetry "to reflect the moments between waking and sleeping". One of the readings was of Bradbury's Switch on the Night. You can listen to the entire show by clicking here. To get to the Bradbury section, you may wish to fast-forward approximately 15 minutes. (BBC radio shows are usually only available online for seven days - if that link is dead, you're too late!)

Switch on the Night (1955) was written for children, as an antidote to children's fear of the dark. According to Sam Weller's biography The Bradbury Chronicles, Ray wrote it a week after the birth of his daughter Susan. The baby slept fitfully and tearfully, and reminded Ray of his own childhood fear of the dark. His original manuscript for this work was in the form of a storyboard, with Ray's own sketches to illustrate the text. The published version is professionally illustrated, originally by Madeleine Gekiere. The 1993 edition was illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Some of the Dillons' superb work can be seen by using the 'Look inside this book' feature at Amazon.com.




I was delighted to hear from Gene Beley, the author of the unauthorised biography of Ray Bradbury. Gene had seen my review comments on his book, and posted a comment on this blog. You can view our exchange of comments here.

Coming soon...

Despite the expected rapid inset of winter, here in the UK the tabloids are full of photostories about summer plants which are still in bloom. I can't say I have personally seen any roses still in flower, but I did today see some dandelion flowers (on next door's lawn).

So maybe it's not a bad time to mention that Colonial Radio Theatre's CD of Dandelion Wine is nearly ready for release. I have covered this extensively in recent months, so I'll leave you to explore the archives for the relevant stories.

Suffice it to say that Colonial have unveiled the final artwork for the CD (pictured here). Sample clips from the CD, and ordering information, can be found on Colonial's website.

Jack Williamson 1908-2006

Jack Williamson, the science fiction writer, critic and academic, died yesterday at the age of 98.

Ray Bradbury says that Williamson was one of the first professional writers to help him in his career. In a 2000 interview he said:

"Jack is a wonderful man, a terrific man. He was very kind to me when I was 19 years old. He read my stuff long before Leigh Brackett did, and it was really bad in those days...Jack started publishing in magazines when I was about 7 or 8 years old...I couldn't afford to buy the magazines, but I borrowed copies from friends on occasion, and I read Jack Williamson first."

[Interview source: SciFi.com]

There is a good account of Jack's life and works here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson

Nigel Kneale, 1922-2006

Nigel Kneale has died at the age of 84.

Kneale was one of the great British SF screenwriters, creator of the wonderful Quatermass series from the days of live TV (the greatest instalment of which was Quatermass and the Pit - get the beautifully restored original TV version on DVD, far superior to the Hammer movie remake of the late 1960s). Kneale also did a startlingly good adaptation of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four for the BBC in the 1950s, and some remarkable, prescient single plays through the '60s and 70s: "The Year of the Sex Olympics" has some uncanny resonances with today's television; "The Stone Tape" still packs a few scares and shocks.

Kneale's influence was enormous, and to a large extent he defined the limits of acceptable/respectable SF in British TV. (It's hard to imagine that there could have been a Dr Who without his trailblazing efforts for the genre.)

Like Ray Bradbury, Kneale crossed genres without hesitation. His science fiction was filled with horror, his horror often scientifically rationalised, all of it delivered with an element of fun. In the latter part of his career he even wrote a sitcom, the unusual (and, to be honest, not very funny) Kinvig.

He will be missed.

Wikipedia has a good biography of Kneale, and this obituary from The Independent reminds me that Kneale made significant non-genre contributions to British film, with work on Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer.

Dandelion Wine

Just when you thought you had the seasons all figured out; just when the dandelions have died back; just when you have said Farewell Summer, celebrated autumn with The Halloween Tree and contemplated celebrating further with a re-read of Something Wicked This Way Comes...

It's summer again! When? Just after Christmas. New Year.

Confused? Then I'll explain.

On 1st January 2007, Colonial Radio Theatre releases its CD audio production of Dandelion Wine. Taken from Bradbury's stage play, rather than directly from his novel, it brings Doug Spaulding, Tom, Colonel Freeleigh and co to life in a lavish audio production. You can hear some clips from the CD on Colonial's web site.

Colonial were kind enough to send me a review copy, so I have written a review which you can read here.


Meanwhile, back in the real world of (post-) Halloween, Utah-based radio station KUER-FM has recently broadcast a live dramatic production of Bradbury's short story "Zero Hour". Staged and performed by Plan B Theatre Company, this production used Anthony Ellis' 1955 Suspense script, which can be viewed online here, courtesy of Generic Radio Workshop.

"Zero Hour" was presented as part of the RadioWest show on KUER, as second half of a double-bill with Lucille Fletcher's "The Hitch-Hiker". You can listen to/download an MP3 recording of the entire show here. (I don't know how long KUER keep their archived shows, so best to listen now while it's still there!)

Halloween

That friend of Bradburymedia, the writer Brian Sibley, has blogged about his friend Ray Bradbury once more.

If you visit Brian's blog, you can read the true history of Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, and read Brian's review of this autumnal classic.

Farewell Summer

I haven't got my copy yet - I have to wait for it to cross the Atlantic, so I'm holding out for strong westerly winds - but Farewell Summer, Bradbury's new novel is out now.

The LA Times published a favourable review yesterday - click here to view it. There are links to other reviews in my earlier post.

It has become clear that Bradbury's two other forthcoming titles, Leviathan '99 and Somewhere a Band is Playing will be published together in a single volume. Although Bradbury and others have described them as novels, it looks as if they are really novellas, and too short to justify mass-market publication as separate volumes.

Green Town, Illinois

I've been listening to a review copy of Colonial Radio Theatre's forthcoming CD dramatisation of Dandelion Wine (which is beautifully done, by the way). That, and thinking about the imminent release of Bradbury's new book Farewell Summer, got me curious about the relationship between Bradbury's fictional Green Town - home of Ray's alter ego Doug Spaulding - and his real home town of Waukegan Illinois.

In Eller and Touponce's Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction there is a sketch of Green Town that Bradbury drew in the 1950s. At the suggestion of his publisher, he drew the layout of the town and also wrote out a cast of characters. All this was to help him get a grip on the material, and to help him see one of the problems with his draft of Dandelion Wine, which was that it was really an assembly of short stories, nearly all of them dealing with different characters. The publisher was afraid that the reader wouldn't be able to keep track of what was going on. (This, of course, was well before the coming of 'blockbuster' or 'bestseller' novels, with their casts of thousands.)

Bradbury's sketch shows the layout of fictional Green Town (see below - click on image to enlarge).

What is striking is that if you look at the real Waukegan from the air - courtesy of Google Earth - you get a very similar image (again, click on image to enlarge):


...especially when you realise that the Bradbury family lived on the intersection of Washington Street ('grandpa' on the Green Town sketch) and South St James Street ('Doug and Tom' on the Green Town sketch). Note the similarity of the ravine in both images. The area around the ravine between Sherman Place and North Park Avenue is nowadays called Ray Bradbury Park. This seems to correspond exactly with the bridge over the ravine that Lavinia Nebbs uses to walk Helen Greer home before her encounter with... the Lonely One...

Walloon has reminded me that there is more information on Bradbury's Waukegan (with lots of excellent links) on this thread of the Bradbury Message Board.

More theatrical productions

Bradbury's plays continue to find a home in small theaters across the US. Fahrenheit 451 - his best piece of stage writing in my view - remains a popular choice, probably because of the continuing relevance of its themes of censorship and the dangers of the decline of literacy. An Oregon production is reviewed here.

[ Added 19 Oct 2006: Another production of F451 (in Florida) has been widely reviewed in the local press. One of the lengthier reviews is here. Unfortunately, the reviewer obviously hasn't read Bradbury's novel, otherwise he would know all about the Mechanical Hound... ]

Bradbury's own Pandemonium Theatre Company, which he founded in 1964 with director Charles Rome Smith, is the author's main outlet for premiering his plays. The company is currently presenting Ray Bradbury's Autumn People, which actually consists of two almost unrelated plays: 'Pillar of Fire' and 'Touched with Fire'. This South Pasadena production is reviewed here. Nard Kordell, who tirelessly attends many of Bradbury's productions and public appearances, has some great photos from the show.