The Cistern", slight but poetic, is more about evoking Ophelia-like images of drowned bodies and flowers deep underground than telling a full story. The introduction suggests this one's a good choice for a Halloween read, and indeed the stories selected for the present collection may not all happen in October, but they do share a melancholic mood that often morphs into full blown fright. I am thinking of adding as a subtitle High Anxiety for the whole set and then play a game of 'Name That Fear' for each episode:

You must admit that gave me an advantage few other humans have had, to emerge with my retina in full register to recall from Instant One a lifetime of metaphors, large and small. The Scythe is a good candidate for a 'Best of ...' anthology of Bradbury short stories. It's major anxiety is the fear of a father that he cannot provide sustenance and safety for his family during the Great Depression, most of all that he cannot protect them from the death that must come to us all, sooner or later. Great writing! Along the way you discover you are alive—age twelve. Discover you can die—age fourteen. Plus the funerals of your grandfather and sister and a few friends, waking you up midnight. En este tercer libro de cuentos me encuentro con un Ray Bradbury distinto. Completamente alejado de la ciencia ficción, las historias que narra son oscuras, por momento ominosas, bordeando un subrepticio terror. Construye los relatos rodeándolos de cierta oscuridad y jugando con el inconsciente del lector.There Was An Old Woman" is another charming weird tale, with an unexpected ending (usually, stories like this would be about acceptance of the inevitable). The cantankerous old biddy is strongly sketched and the humor is well-delivered. October may actually be the cruelest month, in spite of T.S. Eliot's well-known characterization of April in The Waste Land (1922). After all, October is the month when the year starts to die here in the Northern Hemisphere; and as the weather cools - as the leaves start to turn colors and fall from the trees - we feel a chill in the blood, and start to think about our own mortality. And for all those reasons, it is good that Ray Bradbury gave this 1955 short-story collection the title The October Country. The Dwarf - in which the owner of a Hall of Mirrors and a young carnival-goer observe a dwarf who uses the mirrors to make himself seem taller. That's so creepy. It is though, isn't it! Also, not especially PC. urn:lcp:octobercountryf50000rayb:lcpdf:80861130-e910-495a-85de-0b3371b4ea70 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier octobercountryf50000rayb Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2j7pgp91z4 Invoice 1652 Metasource_catalog openlibrary Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9773 Ocr_module_version 0.0.21 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-0001602 Openlibrary_edition When I finished my first short story in the seventh grade I knew I was on the right path to immortality. Or the sort of immortality that counts, being remembered here and there in your time while alive, existing a few years after your death beyond all that.

Night came in over the pier. The ocean lay dark and loud under the planks. Ralph sat cold and waxen in his glass coffin, laying out the cards, his eyes fixed, his mouth stiff. At his elbow, a growing pyramid of burnt cigarette butts grew larger. When Aimee walked along under the hot red and blue bulbs, smiling, waving, he did not stop setting the cards down slow and very slow. Hi, Ralph! she said. Brew a witch’s mug of warm drink, breathe in the leafy chill, wrap up in an old woolen scarf and enjoy. So, I love Ray Bradbury's writing. His ability to craft palaces of light and shadow out of mere words is right up there with the best of the best. And, usually, he gives you lots to think about. But sometimes you gotta wonder if the guy was on or just recently off his meds. The Scythe" is another great one - solid, well-told, well-imagined, painful. Another great idea that doesn't need world-building or explication - just accept it - because Bradbury is such a good storyteller why would your ruin the story with more questions? It's like reading a young, creative person's first realization that death isn't fair and logical.Nineteen macabre and Octoberesque tales for our delight. They’re all good but for me the most notable are: But for those with the eye for a well-told tale, and senses neither dulled by crap or so highly attuned by High Lit that they can't enjoy solid pulp, this should go down a treat. My copy of The October Country has a new introduction by Ray Bradbury, written in 1999, where he claims to remembering being born and the development of his passion for stories and storytelling. He wrote his first story in the seventh grade, and since the age of twelve knew that was the way to ensure proper immortality - being remembered after our limited time on earth runs out. Bradbury saw the process of writing as a match between life and death, each completed story a victory. Days when he didn't write were threatening him extinction, and this is why he wrote every day since he turned twelve, evading death. He died last year, at the age of 91, having published his last novel - Farewell Summer - six years before, along with hundreds of short stories. Death has finally caught with Ray, but not before he had his say - he went out on his own terms, and achieved the exact type of immortality that he hoped for. Skeleton" - That is gross man! LOL! A darkly humorous story. OK, this one is a bit horrifying. I love it! She sat with him standing over her, his voice far away. Her eyes were half shut and her hands were in her lap, twitching.

It's odd. I've changed as a reader. These slow and gently transformative stories are... prosaic. They don't grab me as much as they might have, years ago. Indeed, I dropped a star for that reason. But I still found enough to love in them that I didn't just despair from boredom. Un hombre sugestionado cree que el viento es una presencia sobrenatural que desea matarlo en el cuento "El viento". It all began the day I was born. Oh my god, I can hear you say, here comes the flim-flam. No, no, I say, here comes a consequential truth: I remember being born.El enano" es otro cuento narrado alrededor de la misteriosa y (nuevamente debo utilizar ese término) ominosa figura de un enano cuyo costado diabólico inquieta a una mujer en un extraño parque de diversiones. Similarly, I didn't really get the fall/October feeling from the vast majority of these stories. I think he described fall things like rustling leaves on the ground or the biting wind or the way the grass turns colour in one or two stories, maybe three or four, but that was it, out of nineteen stories. So I didn't really get scared or into the fall mood from this collection, which was a real letdown. Ralph looked at her, his head to one side. And guess who’s going to do it? Well, well, ain’t we just the Saviour’s right hand? The collection was published in numerous editions by Ballantine Books. The 1955 hardcover and 1956 and 1962 softcover versions featured artwork by Joseph Mugnaini that was replaced in 1971 by an entirely different Bob Pepper illustration. It was again published in 1996, by Del Rey Books, a branch of Ballantine Books; the illustrations within were drawn by Mugnaini. In this edition there was a foreword written by Bradbury himself, called "May I Die Before My Voices", in Los Angeles, California, on April 24, 1996.

I am a dwarf and I am a murderer. The two things cannot be separated. One is the cause of the other. The October Country was Ray Bradbury’s first collection of tales. It’s the equivalent of a first pitch home run. Some of these stories are lyrically terrifying, others whimsical and funny. All delve deep into the human psyche, touching something essential. The Small Assassin: A fine, healthy baby boy was the new mother's dream come true--or her worst nightmare . . . Touched With Fire is more difficult to pin down. Two mysterious strangers try to prevent a woman from getting murdered. Are they prescient or simply better observers of human nature than usual? I would class the story as fear of predestination, of the loss of free will, but a more accurate message may be that we cannot force people to act against their nature. The Next In Line highlights the fear of the cemeteries, of the dark, damp and smelly place undergound where the dead are buried. A young couple on a tourist visit to Mexcio comes across a town where the air is so dry that bodies do not rot in the ground and are instead mummified. Because a lot of the local people are too poor to pay for the burial place, these mummies are exhumated and stored in a long underground chamber and then shown to the tourists for a small fee. I have saved a quote from this story, where the young man chides his wife for being superstitious, but I have a hunch that the author sides with her on the issue, as sometimes the fear is too strong for the rational brain:The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse doesn't seem too scary at first glance - it is the story of a man so dull and uninteresting that he becomes an attraction for a crowd of fashionable artists. Enjoying their attention, the man now tries to remain in the spotlight by artificial means, like wearing an unusual eye-piece painted by the famous French Impressionist. My vote would be again for fear of loneliness, of rejection by social conformists. Use your head, damn it! You go busting in on him he’ll think you’re handing him pity. He’ll chase you screamin’ outa his room.