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First, i'd like to apologize about my bad english...but i'm french and i think that explain lots of thing no?

So, my question about "Martian Chronicles" is about the form of the novel. It's not really a novel in fact, it's more like short-stories that are all around the same subject. And my question is: Ray Bradbury create the fact of making a novel with short-stories...or someone make that before?
And who?

If i want to know that, it's because i'm on the way to follow the same direction and i want to know more about this way of write.

Thank you very much,

Icare
 
Posts: 1 | Location: France | Registered: 06 November 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Icare,
Hop over to raybradbury.com and do a search on Martian Chronicles.
Also, in the new book "The Bradbury Chronicles" there are several pages about the writing of "Martian Chronicles" and "The Illustrated Man", both of which are collections of short stories connected by "bridge chapters". Whether Bradbury invented this, I'm not sure. Maybe you'll find out.
Bon chance!
 
Posts: 901 | Location: Box in Braling I's cellar | Registered: 02 July 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES was published in May of 1950. Isaac Asimov's I, ROBOT came out the same year, but I'm not sure which month.

In those days it was really difficult for Science Fiction authors to sell a novel to publishers. They usually sold individual short stories to the editors of the Science Fiction magazines. Many (if not all) of the "stories" in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, I, ROBOT, and 1952's CITY by Clifford Simak originally ran in those magazines, and some of the stories were several years old (from the war years in Asimov and Simak's cases) by the time they landed a deal for a novel. The magazines did not pay much money. So, after the publication of A.E. Van Vogt's novel THE WORLD OF NULL-A, and it's immediate (and global) success, Science Fiction authors scrambled and threw together all these short stories that they had been writing over the years and began to shop these impromtu novels around to the publishers, who were suddenly interested in Science Fiction novels and willing to pay a lot more than the magazines.

I once heard Bradbury say that he sold THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES before it was even written. Well, the stories were written, but the publisher did not want a collection of short stories. He wanted a novel. So, Bradbury told him he ALSO had a novel. He came back the next day and submitted it as a novel.

He says this in the introduction to "Ray Bradbury reads stories from THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES" by Newman Books-On-Cassette 1977
ISBN 0-88690-039-5
 
Posts: 901 | Location: Sacratomato, Cauliflower | Registered: 29 December 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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