This week’s “Kittee Tuesday” post is a PDF newly-upload in the public domain slot on the SFF Audio server. It’s a good scan of “The World The Children Made” by Ray Bradbury, as it first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post for 23rd September 1950. Though with ads removed, so we only get to see half of the historical context of its original publication.

The story is of course more famously known as “The Veldt”, under which title it was published the next year in Bradbury’s collection The Illustrated Man.

It’s interesting to know that SFF Audio consider that the tale is now in the public domain, at least in the USA. I can’t find any supporting evidence for that, but perhaps a reader of Tentaclii knows more on that point? I see from two reprint sources that the story’s copyright was renewed in 1977, when some 1950 copyrights were up for renewal in the USA.

In 1955 it had a full-cast radio adaptation which is now online at the X Minus One archive. This used an earlier 1951 radio script, but padded it to 30-minutes by added a new framing story. I once had an edit which cut this broadcast down to six minutes with a focus on the original story, but it appears to have been lost over the years.