So, that makes Something Wicked and the mystery trilogy (Death Is a Lonely Business, A Graveyard for Lunatics, Let's All Kill Constance) then are RB's true natural novels?

Curious but true, I was pondering this precise topic of "RB novels" (in preparation for upcoming seminars) before the posts began here?!

Not forgetting Fahrenheit 451.

However, once we start considering the origin of even these novels, we soon find that they all started as something else!

Fahrenheit 451 - started as a novella, The Fireman

Something Wicked - started as a short story (Black Ferris) and film treatment (Dark Carnival)

Death is a Lonely Business - started (if I recall correctly) as an unpublished short story.

True F451, from Pedestrian "and" Fireman...right!?

SWTWC, true, phil! Intended for Gene Kelley on the big screen originally.

Mr. B has had to maneuver too many magnificent metaphors, a daunting challenge to satisfy within solitary novels!!

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Fahrenheit 451 - started as a novella, The Fireman

But had its earliest beginnings, I learned last evening at Jon Eller's lecture, as another novel, which Ray abandoned. We were blessed with a few snippets from it and it was much darker than 451.

Where Ignorant Armies Clash by Night. ? Found in Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451. The short story "The Smile" originated there.