The October Country

Welcome to a land Ray Bradbury calls "the Undiscovered Country" of his imagination--that vast territory of ideas, concepts, notions, and conceits where the stories you now hold were born. America's premier living author of short fiction, Bradbury has spent many lifetimes in this remarkable place--strolling through empty, shadow-washed fields at midnight; exploring long-forgotten rooms gathering dust behind doors bolted years ago to keep strangers locked out.. and secrets locked in. The nights are longer in this country. The cold hours of darkness move like autumn mists deeper and deeper toward winter. But the moonlight reveals great magic here--and a breathtaking vista. The October Country is many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night. The October Country's inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder, and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's The October Country is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.

Having checked out the book Dear Fahrenheit 451, I had fond memories of reading the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  On the same library display shelf was this book of short stories by Ray Bradbury.  The short stories cover several decades of his writing.  The topics remain similar, but Bradbury's writing still obviously changed over that time.  To the better in my opinion.

Since it has been almost 100 years since he wrote some of these stories, they seem practically humorous to me where they were intended to be suspenseful.  My how times have changed.  Some of the stories were insightful and thought-provoking.  I will allow the reader to determine which ones.

Comparing these short stories to his masterpiece Fahrenheit 451 or to The Martian Chronicles would be unfair.  This is a modest collection of short stories but do not expect the Bradbury of F451.  Expect the Bradbury as a writer of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.