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We shall just have to be patient, and see what the two profs come up with

Based on their past work, whatever they come up with will be great. This will be fantastic--to have the complete critical texts!!!!

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Originally posted by theoctobercountry:
That's what I was wondering, myself; how is the definitive text chosen? Do that simply mean it is the version that Bradbury himself prefers? (In some cases, I've read variations of stories where I preferred an earlier version, rather than the most recently revised one.)

Donn Albright agrees with you, as, in some cases, do I. In other cases, revisions added improvements. In the 100 Stories version of "The Lake," the beginning and end are messed up but there is an addition to one sentence I wouldn't change for anything, so how to establish a preferred text?

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Originally posted by philnic:
I've no idea what will be done with stories which have been revised multiple times by Bradbury himself. (The Dark Carnival stories were re-written for The October Country, for example.)

Well, exactly. There is at the very least the manuscript version, the magazine version, the Dark Carnival version, The October Country version, the 100 Stories Version, and the From the Dust Returned version. Some time back I tried to do a version of "Homecoming" combining the best from all of the above and found it a daunting task. Then to think of doing this with ALL the stories! I feel weak at the very suggestion.

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I also have some breaking news on definitive short story collections, courtesy of my academic colleague Bill Touponce at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies:

He and Jon Eller are about to embark on a five-volume series which will contain all of Bradbury's published short stories in the order in which they were written. In many cases, Bradbury stories have taken years to come into print, so this will be the first attempt to put them in chronological order.

This is what Bill tells me about The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition, which is expected to be published by Kent State University Press in five volumes, starting in 2010:"This edition will reprint (actually establish the text for) every story that Bradbury has published, in chronological order. Ray has signed on the contract and we are just now finalizing plans with the press. I will be the general editor of the volumes with Jon as textual editor. Needless to say, I am very excited; indeed it will be the culmination of my critical writing on Bradbury."

My, this is very exciting. Thanks for the info!

Dandelion, feeling weak, eh? How about this - the (oh, so remote!) possibility that, prior to publication, Mr. B may find another hitherto unpublished story or two he wants included, thereby derailing the painstakingly researched chronology; or deciding again to revise some stories!
Nah! Couldn't happen.

Somewhat like finding still "one more" delicious piece of fruit at the bottom of the bowl!

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Originally posted by Braling II:
Dandelion, feeling weak, eh? How about this - the (oh, so remote!) possibility that, prior to publication, Mr. B may find another hitherto unpublished story or two he wants included, thereby derailing the painstakingly researched chronology; or deciding again to revise some stories!
Nah! Couldn't happen.

BII, that idea alone is enough to justify arranging the stories according to their date of FIRST PUBLICATION! (But it could mean that the series just runs on and on.)

Isn't this just mind blowing, this is the author who was not recognized by the high school English teachers of my generation, his own generation, to be worthy of having his works read in formal classes. I remember carrying around $0.25 paperbacks of October Country and The Illustrated Man and could not use them for book reports as they were not considered of literary value by my English teacher. My, the times they are a changin' - for the better usually. I feel so vindicated in my choices of reading material at age 17.

Patrask,

Or that the Pulitzer Committee would have never, in the 50s, given a prize to a science fiction writer about some silly book on firemen. They had to wait half a decade to award him one for is body of works.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jkt,

I'm grateful to Phil for mentioning The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition, but I don't think I used the word 'definitive' in describing it to him. If I did then that was certainly an act of hubris on my part. Actually, it's a word that textual scholars try to avoid (while aspiring to do just that, of course!). I'm not trying to be disingenuous about our ambitions, but I think that what we are hoping for is more a 'standard' edition of Ray stories, one that acknowledges the variations of his work over a half century, but one that seeks to establish a corrected, preferred text, than a 'definitive' edition. Undoubtedly other scholars will edit Bradbury differently in the future, but the basic historical and textual work on each story will be done 'definitively.' In those cases where the revisions were complex enough to warrant it ("The Wind", for example), we will treat the story as two versions and publish both. In other cases we will have an apparatus recording variants that will be easy enough to use so that the general reader can get a sense of what has changed in the basic text that we select for inclusion in our edition. Where there are extant manuscripts for a story, we may edit from them so that you will have a text that has not been previously published. We will not publish any unpublished stories, but of course the more Ray publishes from them, then the better for our edtion. Thus the primary goal of the edition - to study the development of Ray as a short story writer - will be made available to the general reader.

As we make progress on the edition, I will post news and info on the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies website: http://www.iupui.edu/~crbs.

My best to everyone on the board - lovers of Ray's stories all. I enjoyed your comments.

Bill Touponce

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bill Touponce,

Hi professor! Nice to see you again.

Hubris is a good word.

Bill, thanks for clearing up some of the questions. I don't think I attributed the word "definitive" to you, but I did naively post under this thread (which has "definitive" in the title).

There's clearly a lot of interest in this fascinating project, and I'm sure we all look forward to seeing it develop.

I think this is the single greatest news item on Ray's writing I have ever heard!! I have been hoping for years that someone would take on this task.

Can Mr. Toupance give us any details on the "physical" aspects of the book. I hope there is a hardback edition and not just a paperback. I hope the goal is for it to be an edition to last for years to come. Might there be a higher end hardback edition???

Thanks,

Brad

The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition will be published in a 'limited' hardcover edition of 3,000 copies by Kent Sate University Press starting in 2010. It will not be available for sale in the UK.

Prof. Touponce

Are you planning any kind of a subscription, so someone can make syre they get the entire set?

Also, is there a rough estimate of story count? With the hundreds and hundreds of stories Mr. Bradbury has written, is five volumes going to be enough?