Author Ray Bradbury’s papers set for preservation @ Collection includes unpublished works, 1,20,000 pages
Collection includes unpublished works, 1,20,000 pages of the author’s typescripts, photos and magazines
Ray Bradbury won over generations of readers to science fiction with Fahrenheit 451 and other works during a writing career that spanned much of the 20th Century and produced a mountain of manuscripts, correspondence and memorabilia.
That sprawling collection, much of which Bradbury’s family donated after his death in 2012 at age 91, is now entering a long-running preservation project at its home on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.
The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, which is devoted to the study of the science fiction and fantasy author’s works, won a $50,000 grant this month from the National Endowment for the Humanities to begin planning the giant archive’s conservation.
“This is a national treasure and we have the great, good fortune to be able to preserve his legacy here for years to come,” said Jonathan Eller, who befriended Bradbury in the 1980s and directs the centre, which he co-founded in 2007. Although Bradbury wrote his most famous titles in the mid-20th century, including Fahrenheit 451, a novel about a dystopian future in which “firemen” hunt down and burn books to keep society in a state of ignorance, Mr. Eller said many of his works remain relevant because of their warnings about the misuse of technology and the importance of safeguarding the human imagination.
Freedom of imagination
“He stands as much as any author for freedom of the imagination. With Fahrenheit 451, which was written when there was a climate of fear in America and McCarthyism, and other works, he’s still synonymous with freedom of the imagination,” he said.
Bradbury’s major works, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, remain in print and HBO will next month air a version of Fahrenheit starring Michael Shannon, Michael B. Jordan and Sofia Boutella.
Meanwhile, the Bradbury centre is preparing to delve into the collection he left behind for what’s expected to be a years-long preservation effort. It won’t be an easy task. The collection includes unpublished works, 1,20,000 pages of the author’s typescripts and other documents as well as photos and memorabilia. There’s also about 30,000 pages of Bradbury’s incoming correspondence, including letters from astronauts and astronomers who were fans of his space-age tales, and some 1,600 rare pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories.
Mr. Eller said it will take years and more funding to sort, categorise, stabilise and digitise the contents, including brittle documents that dried out in Southern California’s arid climate.
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920, but his family moved to Los Angeles in 1934 during the height of the Great Depression. His first short story was published when he was 18, and he rose to literary fame in 1950 with The Martian Chronicles, a collection of loosely connected stories about Mars’ colonisation by humans fleeing a troubled Earth.
Prolific writing
During his more than 70-year career, he was a novelist, screenwriter and short story writer who worked in the fantasy, horror and mystery genres and adapted many of his short stories for television, including The Twilight Zone series.
Bradbury also scripted John Huston’s 1956 film version of Moby Dick. Those items made the trip from California to Indiana in 2013 in a 53-foot van.
Source | The Hindu | 17th April 2018
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