New Ray Bradbury Audiobooks with Celebrity Narrators Are On the Way—and More SFF Links

Simon & Schuster to Publish New Ray Bradbury Audiobooks with Celebrity Narrators

Simon & Schuster is set to release new editions of Ray Bradbury’s seminal works on audio, featuring celebrity narrators. It starts May 6 with Fahrenheit 451, narrated by Penn Badgley. Then, Marin Ireland, Ari Fliakos and Prentice Onayemi narrate The Illustrated Man, coming June 3. For the 75th anniversary of The Martian Chronicles, Levar Burton will lend his voice to a new edition out July 1. And Paul Giamatti will narrate a new edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes, out September 30.

“Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill. on Aug. 22, 1920. Over the course of his prolific career, he published over 30 books and 600 short stories, many in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres, until his death in 2012 at age 91.

And what could be stranger than that? How about 3-D holograms that you can actually touch? Researchers at the Public University of Navarra (UPNA) have devised a way to move mid-air 3-D holograms by hand.

“What we see in films and call holograms are typically volumetric displays,” explains Bouzbib, the study’s lead author. “These are graphics that appear in mid-air and can be viewed from various angles without the need for wearing virtual reality glasses. They are called true-3D graphics.” She adds that “they are particularly interesting as they allow for the ‘come-and-interact’ paradigm, meaning that the users simply approach a device and start using it.”

Reactor has an exclusive look at A.R. Capetta’s upcoming YA time travel romance Costumes for Time Travelers. It’s about Calisto and Fawkes, who discover one another in the town of Pocket, where costumes were made for time travelers, and a romance begins.

From the publisher: “Anyone who has hiked through time knows the town of Pocket. It’s the place travelers first reach after they stumble away from their hometime, passing through on their way to any other when. To Calisto, Pocket is home. They love their grandmother’s shop, which is filled with clothes from every era that are used to make costumes for time travelers. Calisto has no intention of traveling—it’s too dangerous. For Fawkes, traveling is life. He put on time boots when he was young and has been stumbling through eras ever since. When he floats into Pocket, Calisto meets him for the first time, though Fawkes has seen Calisto—in glimpses of what hasn’t happened yet. He’s also seen the villains chasing them both. Now Calisto and Fawkes must rush—from Shakespeare’s London to ancient Crete to California on the eve of a millennium—to save Pocket, and travelers, from being erased.”

And Reactor also had a first look at the debut cozy fantasy Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Once Upon a Tome author Oliver Darkshire. It’s a reimagining of the tale of a heroine from Boccaccio’s Decameron, with “talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals, and shape-shifting sorcerers.” How can you pass that up??! And there’s also some fungus, if that’s your thing.

From the publisher: “In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating her feckless husband, caring for the farm’s strange animals, cooking up ‘scrunge,’ and crooning over her treasured pot of basil, Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she thinks: what harm could a little magic do?”

GIVE ME THE COZY FANTASY NOW.

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire will be out May 13, 2025 from W.W. Norton & Company.