A science fiction blog featuring science fiction book reviews and with frequent ramblings on fantasy, computers and the web.
At what temperature do eBooks burn? The pyro-curious can now find out when William Morrow begins releasing Ray Bradbury’s back catalog in eBook format this month.
Check out the press release for the details…
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Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer is an illuminating TV documentary that was produced by David L. Wolper and aired in 1963.
The documentary also includes a dramatization of Bradbury’s story “Dial Double Zero”, about the emergence of an artificial intelligence.
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Worldbuilders, a non-profit organization founded by Patrick Rothfuss, is raising money for their cause by offering a 2013 Fantasy Pin-Up Calendar. All proceeds from the sale of the calendar will go to Worldbuilders in support of Heifer International.
Each month the calendar will feature a pin-up based on a different author’s works and/or characters illustrated by Lee Moyer. Participating authors include:
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A meme going around recently in the genre blogosphere is to name the five most influential books in your life, and how they changed your life.
Some examples recently include : Ian Sales), Justin Landon , and Aidan Moher.
I can never resist a chance to talk about books, and so here are mine:
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Here’s the description and table of contents for the upcoming Ray Bradbury tribute anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury edited by Sam Weller & Mort Castle, which includes an essay by the master himself written specifically for this anthology:
What do you imagine when you hear the name . . . Bradbury?
You might see rockets to Mars. Or bizarre circuses where otherworldly acts whirl in the center ring. Perhaps you travel to a dystopian future, where books are set ablaze . . . or to an out-of-the-way sideshow, where animated illustrations crawl across human skin. Or maybe, suddenly, you’re returned to a simpler time in small-town America, where summer perfumes the air and life is almost perfect . . . almost.
Ray Bradbury—peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America’s most beloved authors—is a literary giant whose remarkable career has spanned seven decades. Now twenty-six of today’s most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
In Shadow Show, 26 acclaimed writers have come together to pay tribute to the work of the one and only Ray Bradbury with never before published stories inspired by the master. The incomparable literary artist who has given us such timeless classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Dandelion Wine, is being honored by some of the most notable names in the writing world—including Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Audrey Niffenegger, Margaret Atwood, Alice Hoffman, Robert McCammon, and more—with new short fiction that thrills, frightens, moves, and dazzles in the great Bradbury tradition. Edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle, with an introduction by the man, Ray Bradbury himself, Shadow Show pays well-deserved homage to one of America’s greatest, most celebrated authors.
Next month, William Morrow is publishing a collection of Ray Bradbury tribute stories called Shadow Show.
Here’s the description:
What do you imagine when you hear the name . . . Bradbury?
You might see rockets to Mars. Or bizarre circuses where otherworldly acts whirl in the center ring. Perhaps you travel to a dystopian future, where books are set ablaze . . . or to an out-of-the-way sideshow, where animated illustrations crawl across human skin. Or maybe, suddenly, you’re returned to a simpler time in small-town America, where summer perfumes the air and life is almost perfect . . . almost.
Ray Bradbury—peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America’s most beloved authors—is a literary giant whose remarkable career has spanned seven decades. Now twenty-six of today’s most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
In Shadow Show, 26 acclaimed writers have come together to pay tribute to the work of the one and only Ray Bradbury with never before published stories inspired by the master. The incomparable literary artist who has given us such timeless classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Dandelion Wine, is being honored by some of the most notable names in the writing world—including Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Audrey Niffenegger, Margaret Atwood, Alice Hoffman, Robert McCammon, and more—with new short fiction that thrills, frightens, moves, and dazzles in the great Bradbury tradition. Edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle, with an introduction by the man, Ray Bradbury himself, Shadow Show pays well-deserved homage to one of America’s greatest, most celebrated authors.
Neil Gaiman, a contributor to the anthology, has posted an audio recording of him reading his story “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, which appears in Shadow Show. It was originally released via the Kickstarter/fan-funded live album An Evening With Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer
You can listen to Neil reading this beautiful story right here after the jump…
“”[R]eaders care not a whit about cover design or even good writing, and have no attachment at all to the book as object. Like addicts, they just want their fix at the lowest possible price, and Amazon is happy to be their online dealer.” – Steve Wasserman, in “The Amazon Effect.”“You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” – Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury died on Tuesday, after 91 years of dreaming and writing and breathing and wondering. I am sure by now that everyone reading this knows this fact. It is a fact; an incontrovertible, real thing that happened. But his words, his conjured presence in them, the lessons and pleasures many have gleaned from them, will last for a very long time. That too, I think, is incontrovertible. President Obama paid tribute to him, and a quick Google search will yield a list of many more. The outpouring of reflections and memories is everywhere. One of the last old masters has left us.
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Interviews and Profiles
News
Sad news…
Locus Online is reporting that Ray Bradbury has passed away. He was 91 years old.
Bradbury is known for numerous works, including The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The October Country, Dandelion Wine, I Sing the Body Electric, and many more.
Carrie Cuinn is a writer, editor, book historian, small press publisher, computer geek, & raconteur. In her spare time she reads, makes things, takes other things apart, and sometimes gets a new tattoo. Learn more at carriecuinn.com.
Some of the most read, and most loved, early science fiction novels are set in places where only the hero of the tale has a chance at a enviable life. Golden Age SF especially, with its focus on adventure stories and cold-war era morality plays, often describes bleak home worlds from which the main character has to escape to survive, or dystopian worlds from which escape is impossible. Though usually presented as the highest form of man, even the heroes have lives absorbed by trying to break free from an oppressive or rigidly controlled society. If the landscape doesn’t kill you, the locals probably will.
Here are five more examples of terrible vacation spots (continued from Part 1):
Each year when autumn arrives, I’m drawn by a kind of inner gravity to revisit the work of Ray Bradbury, and to recharge his fictional vision within me. This is always inextricably intertwined with the transcendent longing that I mentioned in my previous (just-published) column, Fantasy, Horror, and Infinite Longing.
There I talked about the sense of transcendent yearning that I’ve experienced intermittently since childhood, and that often comes to me as a companion to the autumn season. I speculated about its profound significance for both human consciousness and the fantasy and horror genres, and I talked about some of the authors — C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, Colin Wilson — who have known it and focused directly on it in their work.
Here I focus on the fact that Bradbury is a master at both arousing and confirming this experience of heightened inner intensity. My first readings of The October Country, The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes as an early adolescent left a permanent mark on me, both intellectually and emotionally. More than just the sum of their parts, his books and stories conveyed to me then, and convey to me now, an entire vision of the world in which darkness and light both intensify to new heights and depths of vividness, and all the daily details of life assume a kind of mythic numinosity. Which is to say that his work exemplified then, and still exemplifies now, what I take to be the deep raison d’être of fantasy and horror.
REVIEW SUMMARY: An interesting idea for a film, but it suffers from underdeveloped characterizations and pacing issues.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: In an ecologically ravaged near-future, a scientist named Smith undergoes a mysterious transformation.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Interesting premise; cool claustrophobic atmosphere.
CONS: The overall pace is slow; weak characterizations.
BOTTOM LINE: While I applaud the production of a film based on a science fiction short story, I can’t help wishing that this one was just a bit more polished.
The film, based on Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, begins about 5-and-a-half minutes into the video…
[via Divers and Sundry]
