Archive for Ray Bradbury
New Ray Bradbury Full Color Illustrated Collection
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Gauntlet Press will be publishing its first full-color illustrated collection this fall, The Fall of the House of Usher/Usher II, illustrated by Allois. They took on this project after Ray Bradbury (author of Usher II) saw the finished book and expressed his enthusiasm, and also agreed to sign a limited number of signature sheets for two editions of the book.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe has become one of the most recognized psychological horror story of all times. The fable of tainted bloodline and madness is as disturbing today as it was at the time of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The pain of Roderick Usher was retold innumerous times, including musical and visual art forms. The Grand Master of Science Fiction, Ray Bradbury himself, has re-built and re-demolished the House of Usher in his Martian Chronicles with the story “Usher II.”
The Usher legend is given another life in this edition, combining the stories from our past and from our future, united through the art of the present-day artist Allois. As Ray Bradbury broke the barrier between Sci-Fi and mainstream literature, so Allois had made an attempt to combine two art forms into one. The reader is presented by the printed stories and their visual counterpart as found in the depths of the artist’s imagination. The result, a Fine Art Novel, combines the strength of classic literature and the power of fine art.
As to who is Allois? Allois is an American painter and illustrator, best known for the striking and bizarre images of Aliens in her surrealist work. Says art critic Peter Frank, “Allois paints presences. Her figures manifest conditions, sliding away from personality and into mood. A particular character may present itself as a child or adult, man or beast, but its identity gives way almost immediately to its nuance. Personages making their way through a landscape come to embody self-containment, self-absorption. This is real abstraction, a dissolution of the seen into the sensed.”
You can see a number of images from the two stories in the collection, as well as her portrait of Ray Bradbury here: Usher II.
Gauntlet Press expects a Fall 2010 release for this title.
Ray Bradbury on God, Monsters and Angels
Posted by: | CommentsCNN is currently running a great piece on Ray Bradbury, who turns 90 this month. Bradbury – who lives in a rambling Los Angeles home full of stuffed dinosaurs, a tin robot pushing an ice cream cart, and a life-sized Bullwinkle the Moose doll lounging in a cushioned chair – says he will sometimes open one of his books late at night and cry out thanks to God.
The primary push of the article is Bradbury’s belief in God and how it’s influenced his writing.
“We must move into the universe,” says Bradbury. “Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves.”
You can read the article in its entirety here: Ray Bradbury
Bradbury is still conjuring his monsters and angels. His latest book, Summer Morning, Summer Night, was released last month.
A Pleasure To Burn
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Subterranean Press is reporting that all copies (individual, retail, and wholesale) for Ray Bradbury’s major new collection, A Pleasure to Burn, as well as Elizabeth Bear’s glittering sold out novella, Bone and Jewel Creatures, should be en route to customers by the end of the day April 27.
After that, the shippers at their warehouse will be moving on to Jim Butcher’s Grave Peril, while Subterranean’s other shipper will be working on the limited edition to Thomas Ligotti’s Songs of a Dead Dreamer next week.
A Pleasure to Burn is the ideal companion to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Edited by Bradbury authorities Donn Albright and Jon Eller, this generous volume gathers 16 vintages stories and novellas. Some of the stories, such as “The Pedestrian” and “Pillars of Fire,” will be familiar to the author’s long-time fans. Others, such as “The Bonfire” and “The Reincarnate,” are more obscure. The true heart of the collection are the long novellas “Long after Midnight” (which has only appeared once in an expensive limited edition) and the 25,000-word tale, “The Fireman,” the immediate precursor to the final, full-length novel. These independent, brilliantly original tales are a significant publishing event.
A Pleasure to Burn:
Trade: 3000 fully cloth bound hardcovers: $35
Songs of a Dead Dreamer:
Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition: $40
Ray Bradbury’s Tribute to Saturday Matinees
Posted by: | CommentsThe following ten minute clip was filmed in June 2009 at Ray Bradbury’s home in Los Angeles. This tribute to Classic Saturday Matinees, It Came From Outer Space, the art and craft of writing, had its World Premiere on October 17, 2009 at The Buffalo International Film Festival 2009 at The North Park Theatre.
We’re so fortunate every time we have an opportunity to share a piece of Ray Bradbury with you. Enjoy this …
Bradbury’s Where Everything Ends
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Subterranean Press is shipping Ray Bradbury’s Where Everything Ends, but they still have some trade hardcovers available.
Description: In 1949, a struggling writer – a man very much like the young Ray Bradbury – boards a late night trolley in Venice, California and hears a disembodied voice murmur the words: “Death is a lonely business.” Shortly afterward, that same young man discovers a body trapped in a cage beneath the waters of the local canal. Convinced of a connection between these events, the narrator/hero – together with a wonderfully characterized detective named Elmo Crumley (named in a nod to noted mystery novelist James Crumley) – begins to investigate a series of suspicious deaths among the disenfranchised population of Venice.
Death is a Lonely Business was Ray Bradbury’s first book-length foray into classical detective fiction. Two others followed: A Graveyard for Lunatics, in which Crumley and our hero (now a gainfully employed scriptwriter) join forces with special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, and Let’s All Kill Constance, a tale of mystery and suspense set against the faded backdrop of Hollywood’s Golden Age. All three, together with “Where Everything Ends,” the never-before-published title story that preceded and inspired them, are now gathered together in a single generous volume that should prove indispensable to Bradbury’s large and loyal readership.
Freely acknowledging the influence of the genre’s masters (Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald, and Cain), all of these stories successfully transcend those influences, filtering them through their author’s wholly unique sensibility. The result is a powerfully nostalgic evocation of time and place, and an unforgettable portrait of a writer in love with language, with movies, and with the transformative power of stories themselves.
To learn more and/or purchase: Where Everything Ends
Cover Art for Dawn to Dust Revealed
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Gauntlet is continuing to firm up additional contents for Ray Bradbury’s Dawn To Dust: Cautionary Travels. To the left you can see the cover art for the book, a Joe Mugnaini painting. This was the first Mugnaini painting Bradbury saw and while he wanted to purchase it he didn’t have the funds. He and Mugnaini came up with a payment plan, the two became friends, and the rest is history. Mugnaini illustrated many of Bradbury’s early books with wonderful cover art and interior illustrations. This is the painting that started it all and Bradbury is thrilled we’re using it for this book.
This new Ray Bradbury volume edited by Donn Albright, Dawn to Dusk – Cautionary Travels, is constructed around two unpublished and un-produced screenplays.
Dark Carnival (1955-59) was written with Gene Kelly in mind. It would later be reshaped into the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) This version is much darker. Catacombs is an integration of two of Ray’s stories, “The Next in Line” (Dark Carnival, 1947) and ”Interval in Sunlight” (Esquire, March 1954).
The unpublished short story “You Must Never Touch the Cage” serves as an interesting bridge between the two screenplays. It was originally planned for the 1955 edition of The October Country, but was emitted prior to publication.
The lettered edition contains facsimiles of fragments and Bradbury sketches the were done in preparation for The Illustrated Man, but never used.
The cover art is a painting by Joe Magnaini. This cover was Bradbury’s introduction to Magnaini’s art and the beginning of five decades of close collaboration and friendship.
To learn more and/or order: Dawn To Dusk
