Usher II

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Bradbury, Ray. "Usher II" (vt "Carnival of Madness"). As "Carnival of Madness," Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950. Collected The Illustrated Man (British). London, UK: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952. Revised for a Martian collection as "Usher II," The Martian Chronicles (US edition, not British). New York: Doubleday, 1950.

Biblio-/Filmographic note and addendum from Jonathan R. Eller, Director, Center for Bradbury Studies, via SFRA ListServ, 3 & 9 July 2017 (somewhat reformatted): The original version, “Carnival of Madness” (title from Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”) was set on Earth (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950). Bradbury altered it to fit in The Martian Chronicles in the U.S., but it was pulled from most (but not all) of the British editions. The Ray Bradbury Theater episode (adapted by Bradbury) first aired on August 17, 1990. [...] /// In 1947 or 1948,  Bradbury wrote an early version of this story, titled “The Castle” (eventually published in the lettered limited edition of Match to Flame, Gauntlet, 2007). “Carnival of Madness,” the first published version (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950) was reprinted in Argosy (U.K.), November 1950, as “The Second House of Usher,” and in Esquire, November 1951, as “The Immortality of Horror.” The version revised for The Martian Chronicles as “April 2005: Usher II” was adapted to comic-strip form for Ray Bradbury Comics 4 (Aug. 1993), as “Usher II.” — End of Note and Addendum
"Usher II." Ray Bradbury Theater Season 4, Episode 5 (17 August 1990), 23 minutes. Screenplay by Bradbury from his story. Patrick Macnee stars. See IMDb, which speaks of "androids" rather than robots.[1] As of early July 2017, available whole or in two parts on YouTube, which cites the season as 5.[2][3]
A graphic novel of sorts appears to be available as a limited edition hardcover of 72 pages from 15 Oct. 2010, The Fall of the House of Usher/Usher II, credited to Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury as authors of their two works, and an illustrator credited as just Allois, apparently "the German American painter and sculptor, best known for the striking and bizarre images of Aliens in her surrealist work," including "2010 - Fine Art Novel 'THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER/USHER II' by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Allois, Gauntlet":[4] i.e., Gauntlet Press of Colorado Springs, CO.

See for motif of robot (or android) duplicates and for ingenious methods of murder from the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, set in a world of the censoring of books: cf. Bradbury's novel and François Truffaut's film Fahrenheit 451.[5].


RDE, Initial Compiler, 3/4/9July17