Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, science fiction, and mystery writer known best for his 1950 short story collection The Martian Chronicles and his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451.

Adaptations of his work

Many Bradbury stories and novels have been adapted to films, radio, television, theater and comic books. In 1951-1954, twenty-seven of Ray Bradbury's stories were adapted by Al Feldstein for EC Comics, sixteen of which were collected in the books The Autumn People (1965) and Tomorrow Midnight (1966).

Related Topics:
Novel - Al Feldstein - EC Comics

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In the early 1950s, adaptations of Bradbury stories were televised on a variety of shows -- Tales of Tomorrow, Lights Out, Out There, Suspense, CBS Television Workshop, Jane Wyman's Fireside Theatre, Star Tonight, Windows and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. One outstanding, well-remembered production from this period, praised by Variety, was the half-hour film, "The Merry-Go Round," adapted from "The Black Ferris" and shown on both Starlight Summer Theater in 1954 and NBC's Sneak Preview in 1956. The Martian Chronicles became a 1980 TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson. For The Ray Bradbury Theater, first seen on TV from 1985 to 1992, Bradbury adapted 65 of his stories.

Related Topics:
The Martian Chronicles - 1980 - Miniseries - Rock Hudson - The Ray Bradbury Theater

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Director Jack Arnold first brought Bradbury to movie theaters in 1953 with It Came from Outer Space, a Harry Essex screenplay developed from Bradbury's screen treatment ("The Meteor"). Three weeks later came the release of Eugène Lourié's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), based on Bradbury's "The Fog Horn," about a sea monster mistaking a fog horn for the mating cry of a female. Bradbury's close friend Ray Harryhausen produced the stop-motion animation of the creature. Over the next 50 years, more than 35 features, shorts and TV movies were filmed from Bradbury stories or screenplays.

Related Topics:
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms - 1953 - The Fog Horn - Fog horn - Ray Harryhausen

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Recently, Peter Hyams' A Sound of Thunder (2005) brought an almost unanimous negative reaction from film critics. Reviewing for The New York Times, A.O. Scott observed that "it illustrates the dangers of turning a lean, elegant short story into a loud, noisy, incoherent B movie." A new film version of Fahrenheit 451 is being planned by director Frank Darabont; an earlier version was directed by François Truffaut in 1966.

Related Topics:
The New York Times - François Truffaut

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In 2002, Bradbury's own Pandemonium Theatre Company production of Fahrenheit 451 at Burbank's Falcon Theatre combined live acting with projected digital animation by the Pixel Pups. Bradbury and director Charles Rome Smith co-founded Pandemonium in 1964, staging the New York production of The World of Ray Bradbury (1964), adaptations of "The Pedestrian," "The Veldt" and "To the Chicago Abyss."

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