Uncle Einar" is, of course, not really a horror story, more of a weird tale in that fine old tradition. It's also one of his stories about "The Family" that eventually influenced Charles Addams. It's probably the slightest of those Family stories (Cecy's story, "The Traveler" is really dark!) and I've never read Bradbury's late-in-life reworking of this material into a novel-form, because I feel so close to "Homecoming" and The Family, et. al (having discovered them at exactly the right moment of my childhood). But this one is a wonderful bit of dark fantasy, touching and sweet. La tía Tildy, recién muerta se va a la morgue a reclamar su propio cadáver, armando un lío fenomenal en el desopilante cuento "Había una vez una vieja". Qué cuento tan original... 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. 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 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. The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" - A humorous observation about the pretentious avant garde. Nice one!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. Algunos cuentos están muy bien logrados, y los trabaja a partir de la obsesión del personaje principal, tal es el caso del señor Harris en el cuento "Esqueleto", en donde el personaje se obsesiona en una batalla en contra de su propio esqueleto con un final digno de "El extraño caso del señor Valdemar" de Edgar Allan Poe. En las Vísperas de todos los Santos, se produce una "Reunión de familia", que es un tierno cuento sobre el reencuentro de más de cien familiares. Obviamente, están todos muertos.

The Jar”, “The Lake”, “The Emissary” and "The Scythe" are stand outs that contain humor, terror, loss, love and wistful longing for the past in equal parts. I was surprised by “The Small Assassin” which is the creepiest post-partum depression story I have ever read, and really freaked me out. The little ambiguous note with which each tale concludes feels like Bradbury giving me a wink and a self-satisfied giggle as I hide my face behind my scarf after reading the last sentence. The man was a truly virtuoso at playing with his readers’ emotions. 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. I’m a Ray Bradbury fan and this is one of my favorite collections from him. This was first compiled in 1955 from previously released stories and a couple of these stories would be used again in his 2001 novel From the Dust Returned. Many of these have inspired other stories and episodes of the Twilight Zone and other shows.

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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 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 an 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. The Jar" - I like how the entire story revolves around the mysterious content of the jar, the twist at the end is cool. 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!

I just happened to pass the Ganghes Arms, and saw Mr. Greeley, the manager. He says the typewriter runs all night in Mr. Big’s room! There stood the Dwarf in the middle of the small blue room. His eyes were shut. He wasn’t ready to open them yet. Now, now he opened his eyelids and looked at a large mirror set before him. And what he saw in the mirror made him smile. He winked, he pirouetted, he stood sidewise, he waved, he bowed, he did a little clumsy dance. The Wind" - a simple idea simply told, as long as it needs to be and no longer. I love how it locates the main narrative away from the important action, and then comments upon that very thing ("as we sit here, people are dying"), using the set-up for an effective punchline. Nice. This is an absolutely brilliant story about two men who having retired from selling life insurance study human psychology and thus discover that people often cause their own death- in an unconscious way. They want to help one lady, but as it turns out, some people are beyond help.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. Something is odd, odd and wrong, Douglas thinks, with his grandma’s new boarder. He carried no silver change, and eats his meals with wooden fork and knife. But Douglas is just a boy, and no one is listening. So Douglas must take action himself.

It’s because I know he’s different, she said, looking off into darkness. It’s because he’s something we can never be—you and me and all the rest of us here on the pier. It’s so funny, so funny. Life fixed him so he’s good for nothing but carny shows, yet there he is on the land. And life made us so we wouldn’t have to work in the carny shows, but here we are, anyway, way out here at sea on the pier. Sometimes it seems a million miles to shore. How come, Ralph, that we got the bodies, but he’s got the brains and can think things we’ll never even guess? 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.” 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?I am a dwarf and I am a murderer. The two things cannot be separated. One is the cause of the other. Tonight was one of those motionless hot summer nights. The concrete pier empty, the strung red, white, yellow bulbs burning like insects in the air above the wooden emptiness. The managers of the various carnival pitches stood, like melting wax dummies, eyes staring blindly, not talking, all down the line. 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. In this particular book though, i especially enjoyed the deep dive and analysis into the very character of humanity. His understanding of what makes us human absolutely blew my mind and made for a very interesting, intruiging and thought provoking read.