Synopses & Reviews
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 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.
Synopsis
...that country where it is always turning late in theyear. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnightsstay... Explore the outer limits of the imagination with the GrandMaster of American Literature, Ray Bradbury, in a dark and disquieting descentinto The October Country. Readers of The Martian Chronicles and TheIllustrated Man, as well as fans of H. P. Lovecraft, Rod Serling, Bram Stoker, Stephen King, and writers of other classic horror stories, will be captivated by TheOctober Country s nineteen astonishing tales. From drowned cities tofrantic carnivals to forgotten Mexican villages, Bradbury offers anunforgettable journey into mystery, shining brief lights upon the darkestcorners of the soul.
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Synopsis
“ . . . that country where it is always turning late in theyear. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnightsstay . . . ”Explore the outer limits of the imagination with the GrandMaster of American Literature, Ray Bradbury, in a dark and disquieting descentinto The October Country. Readers of The Martian Chronicles and TheIllustrated Man, as well as fans of H. P. Lovecraft, Rod Serling, Bram Stoker, Stephen King,and writers of other classic horror stories, will be captivated by TheOctober Countrys nineteen astonishing tales. From drowned cities tofrantic carnivals to forgotten Mexican villages, Bradbury offers anunforgettable journey into mystery, shining brief lights upon the darkestcorners of the soul.
About the Author
Ray 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 typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them,
Dark Carnival, in 1947.
His reputation as a writer of courage and vision was established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, which describes the first attempts of Earth people to conquer and colonize Mars, and the unintended consequences. Next came The Illustrated Man and then, in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, which many consider to be Bradbury?s masterpiece, a scathing indictment of censorship set in a future world where the written word is forbidden. In an attempt to salvage their history and culture, a group of rebels memorize entire works of literature and philosophy as their books are burned by the totalitarian state. Other works include The October Country, Dandelion Wine, A Medicine for Melancholy, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric!, Quicker Than the Eye, and Driving Blind. In all, Bradbury has published more than thirty books, close to 600 short stories, and numerous poems, essays, and plays. His short stories have appeared in more than 1,000 school curriculum "recommended reading" anthologies. Mr. Bradbury?s eagerly awaited new novel, From the Dust Returned, will be published by William Morrow at Halloween 2001. Morrow will release One More For the Road, a new collection Bradbury stories, at Christmas 2001.
Ray Bradbury?s work has been included in four Best American Short Story collections. He has been awarded the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. In November 2000, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was conferred upon Mr. Bradbury at the 2000 National Book Awards Ceremony in New York City.
Ray Bradbury has never confined his vision to the purely literary. He has been nominated for an Academy Award (for his animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright), and has won an Emmy Award (for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree). He adapted sixty-five of his stories for television?s Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the creative consultant on the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World?s Fair. In 1982 he created the interior metaphors for the Spaceship Earth display at Epcot Center, Disney World, and later contributed to the conception of the Orbitron space ride at Euro-Disney, France.
Married since 1947, Mr. Bradbury and his wife Maggie live in Los Angeles with their four beloved cats. They have four daughters and eight grandchildren.
On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you?ll come along."
Table of Contents
The dwarf -- The next in line -- The watchful poker chip of H. Matisse -- Skeleton -- The jar -- The lake -- The emissary -- Touched with fire -- The small assassin -- The crowd -- Jack-in-the-box -- The scythe -- Uncle Einar -- The wind -- The man upstairs -- There was an old woman -- The cistern -- Homecoming -- The wonderful death of Dudley Stone.