IU School of Liberal Arts

Bradbury Center Publications Provide New Insight into American Icon

News Categories: Books by Faculty | Centers | English | Institute for American Thought | News | Research

Ray Bradbury is best known as the author of Fahrenheit 451, a book found in high school English curriculums across the country. Among science fiction scholars and enthusiasts, Ray Bradbury is revered as nothing less than an American icon, an artist and master of the short story in his chosen genres, science fiction, fantasy and horror.  He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for his "deeply influential" contributions to these genres.  As the first center of its kind in the United States, the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI is rooted in an unparalleled devotion to understanding Bradbury’s genius.

The Center and its director, English professor William Touponce, are pleased to announce the recent release of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, Volume One (1938-1943), the first of three critical editions co-edited by Touponce and Professor of English Jonathan Eller, that will showcase Bradbury’s work through a new approach. While other collections are often based on arbitrary arrangements of the published versions of Bradbury’s stories, this edition presents Bradbury’s work chronologically and illustrates Bradbury’s transformation as an artist and writer through an examination of the processes by which his stories moved from original drafts to published pieces.

This first volume of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury contains thirteen previously uncollected stories, and will be a must-read for Bradbury and science fiction fans alike. But what makes this and other CRBS publications-like the annual The New Ray Bradbury Review-valuable to the average reader? According to Professor Eller, the multitude of awards that Bradbury has received and continues to receive speak for themselves, as does the fact that Fahrenheit 451 still sells over 200,000 copies a year despite having been published over sixty years ago.

"Ray Bradbury has become an American icon because his work remains relevant today," Eller explains. "His continuing popularity is apparent in the way his work has been transformed into film, TV, radio, and comics and graphic novels by a wide range of other writers." Bradbury’s relevance is also apparent, Eller adds, "in the way that Fahrenheit 451 has become one of the most read books in America as school systems and state, local, and federal governments try to get people to read books in an increasingly visually-oriented society." 

Professor Touponce adds "the work now being done at the Center - on adaptation, on aesthetics and religion -  provides an opportunity for readers who may have encountered Bradbury’s writings in the past to rediscover his work in a newer, broader and more significant context, one that relates to the humanities in general."

Since opening in 2007, The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies has striven to become an all-source archive within the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI’s Institute for American Thought. The Bradbury Edition is co-edited by Touponce and Eller, supported by editing team associate editors Joseph Kaposta, Diana Reynolds, and David Spiech, alongside of the three other editions currently edited in the Institute for American Thought:  that of Frederick Douglass, Charles Sanders Peirce, and George Santayana, and like them it has received the MLA’s seal of approval for scholarly editions.  The Center’s work is published through Kent State University Press; both The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury Volume One (1938-1943)  and the 2010 The New Ray Bradbury Review are now available.

[Read the IUPUI news release]

-Prepared by Meghan Smith, English major

Published on: March 30, 2011