Well, now, how do you do that—homestead an autumn landscape that won’t stand still, all whispers, shadows, and dousing rains? Finally, on the threshold of puberty, Mr. Electrico, the carnival magician, summoned me away from graveyards and funerals, touched me with the St. Elmo’s fire sword and shouted sound advice: Live forever! Fall is probably my favorite of all seasons, and every year I walk on the streets, through avenues and parks. There is a smell of burning leaves hanging around lazily, and the skies are still bright, sharp and clear, but the sun is less warm. You can feel the wind getting colder and taste the air, now sharper and fresher. Nights are chilling, with big yellow moons. Leaves change their colors and are now a mixture of yellow, green, red and orange. They start dropping from the trees one by one at first, but steadily gusts of wind grasp them by the handfuls and leave bare branches behind. Although the process is inherently sad in nature as it forecasts the upcoming winter, with its ice and snow, there is an element of beauty in fall leaves on the ground, especially in the afternoon sunlight. It casts a special shine which is not there in other seasons, and yellowing leaves make the streets look as if they were paved with gold. The nineteen stories brought together by Bradbury and published in 1955 as The October Country share that delicious-chill, twist-ending quality that many of us who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century associate with television series like The Twilight Zone. If the genre of dark fantasy in a modern American setting feels familiar to us now, courtesy of writers like Rod Serling and Richard Matheson and Ira Levin and Stephen King, perhaps it is in part because Ray Bradbury did so much to popularize it. Skeleton is fear of illness, of your own body. It is the tale of a hypochondriac who goes to a dubious doctor and becomes aware that he has been walking around all his life carrying a skeleton inside him. Delightfully macabre.

Many of the stories deal with death—its certainty and the ways people react to this certainty. In “The Scythe,” a poor farmer inherits the job of Grim Reaper. Each day he must harvest blades of wheat that represent those scheduled to die. He tries to spare his family, but they are trapped between life and death. In his attempt to free them, he slashes wildly and indiscriminately at the wheat, thus beginning World War II.

Success!

Stone, on the brink of his greatest work, turned one day and went off to live in a town we shall call Obscurity by the sea best named The Past.” Writes just enough pulp detective stories to live. I found one of his stories in the secondhand magazine place, and, Ralph, guess what? The contest has resulted in all that you will read here. The Small Assassin is, of course, me. The Homecoming family is my Waukegan hometown family, surrounding me in my youth, prolonging themselves into shadows and haunts when I reached maturity. Skeleton resulted from my discovering the bones within my flesh, plus seeing the pale skull ghost of myself in an X-ray film. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone: A most remarkable case of murder--the deceased was delighted . . . It took me a year to adjust. A job with a sideshow was unthinkable. There seemed no place for me in the world. And then, a month ago, the Persecutor came into my life, clapped a bonnet on my unsuspecting head, and cried to friends, ‘I want you to meet the little woman!’

Los Angeles artist Joseph Mugnaini, who had provided illustrations for the stories and the cover of The Golden Apples of the Sun, as well as the iconic cover art of the paper man aflame that appears on the first edition of Fahrenheit 451, made illustrations—sui generis pen-and-ink drawings that are mysterious and haunting—for several of the tales in The October Country, an addition that heightened the book’s tonal quality. “The custom of artist-illustrator and mythologist (which is what a good writer should be) working together,” said Bradbury, “is as old as the Greeks, Romans or name any other culture of some two-thousand-plus years ago. They are amiable cross-pollinators of one another.” A wonderful short story about a man hunted by a wild. Not only kind of wind, a predatory kind that takes the souls from its victims. Very well written and quite convincing in the matter it was told! For most of the story, this man communicates with his best friend on the phone and the tension is established by the fact we are not certain of his sanity. Maybe he is imagining everything?She sat with him standing over her, his voice far away. Her eyes were half shut and her hands were in her lap, twitching. Two colorless sisters living alone together. One of the sisters dreams passionately morose dreams of dead romance beneath the city. When the dream becomes more real than the reality… Un hombre sugestionado cree que el viento es una presencia sobrenatural que desea matarlo en el cuento "El viento". The Crowd” – a motor vehicle accident survivor notices some strange things about a crowd that surrounds him and goes on a quest for discovery that does not end well. It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason…All the hot-dog stands were boarded up…sealing in all the mustard, onion meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins.”

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.

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El cuento que cierra el libro, "La maravillosa muerte de Dudley Stone", no narra la muerte física de ese personaje, sino de su muerte literaria y de cómo esta, paradójicamente lo mantuvo vivo el resto de sus días. Otro gran cuento del libro se llama "La guadaña", en el que un hombre y su familia arriban a una cabaña escapando del hambre. Allí encuentran que un viejo ha muerto y les ha cedido todas su posesiones y una portentosa guadaña con una inscripción que dice 'Quien me maneja, ¡Maneja el mundo!' Podrán darse cuenta hacia dónde se orienta la narración... 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 Lake is another touching and sad story, but in another way - it's about a man who revisits his childhood home and is flooded with memories of a lost friend. It's almost a ghost story, but not quite - the ghosts are the memories which flood the main character to the point where he almost re-enters the past, and feels disconnected from - and disappointed with - the present reality.

Ray Douglas Bradbury, American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and poet, was born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. He graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1938. Although his formal education ended there, he became a "student of life," selling newspapers on L.A. street corners from 1938 to 1942, spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewrite There's a great mixture of Bradbury's recollection of his youth mixed with his interest in weirdness in Uncle Einar and Homecoming, both of which share characters. Uncle Einar was inspired by Bradbury's favorite uncle, and you can see his love in this weird tale of a man with wings who longs to return to the skies but has to live among people who don't have them. The resolution is heartwarming and memorable. Homecoming is the exact reverse of Uncle Einar - Timothy, its young narrator, is a mortal child living among supernatural beings. Left on their doorstep as an infant, he longs to be like them but at the same time understands that this will never be possible. Unlike Uncle Einar, Homecoming is a sad story of a boy who wishes to belong but will always be an outsider, even with the complete support of his adoptive family. The October Country is a collection of nineteen short stories by Ray Bradbury. I read two things online about this collection before reading it: it's scary (don't read it at night), and it really gives you the October feeling. Sadly, neither of these things are true, or at least they weren't for me. The stories aren't even horror for the most part; they're more like weird fiction, and I didn't find any of them to be scary. Some of them are actually pretty funny.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. 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. She held up the magazine. I’ll read you part of his crime story. It’s got all the guns and tough people, but it’s told by a dwarf. I bet the editors never guessed the author knew what he was writing about. Oh, please don’t sit there like that, Ralph! Listen. 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