Welcome to what Ray Bradbury deems the “undiscovered country” of his imagination. The nights are long in this country. The cold hours of darkness move like autumn mists, leading the way deeper and deeper toward an inevitable winter. But the moonlight reveals great magic and a breathtaking vista of fabulous ideas, outlandish concepts, unexplored notions, and otherworldly conceits—the creative landscape of America’s premier short fiction writer. 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 or nightmares;a woman’s newborn child can plot her murder;and a man’s own skeleton can war against him. Her