The October Country by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This might be a re-read... but for the most part, I had forgotten much of what I read here from way back in the day.

No matter.

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.

For one, I'm familiar enough with so many movies and tv shows and even music to exclaim... "Hey! They took that from Bradbury!" or "Hey! Someone really ran with a Bradbury idea and made it deadly!" or "This is superior to Bradbury!"

Ahem. Bradbury has great ideas! Bradbury has wonderful prose! Yes. But he's also mild. I love writers that take ideas and do something extraordinary, and back when these were written, that was probably the case.

Something to consider: His story "Touched with Fire" has a great, perhaps apocryphal, line about more murders occurring at 92 degrees F than any other temperature. It was used in the 70's B movie It Came From Outer Space. And then it was used in a great song by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIqyV...

I was all, like... I love that song! Another fun fact, Siouxsie's punk music also does full tributes to Stephen King and Shakespeare. Much love. :)

Oh, I hated the story "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone" :)

Everything else was fine, if not super-grabbing. :)

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