A review by gengelcox
The October Game by Ray Bradbury

5.0

As a teen, I tried to read Bradbury a couple of times and was turned off by his nostalgia for the halcyon days of the mid-1950s, as captured in [b:The Martian Chronicles|76778|The Martian Chronicles|Ray Bradbury|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1374049948l/76778._SY75_.jpg|4636013], which were less about Mars than about a United States that, frankly, never was. I recall trying some of the other collections, like [b:R is for Rocket|886229|R is for Rocket|Ray Bradbury|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442748697l/886229._SY75_.jpg|1142993], and finding them similar, so I never got to his fantasy or horror, like this story. And, my, what a different story this is. Yes, there’s the nostalgia—here depicted in the negative. All the trappings of a traditional Halloween, but seen through an extremely dark glass. Rather than Bradbury, this perverse tale reminded me more of [a:Roald Dahl|4273|Roald Dahl|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1311554908p2/4273.jpg], who loved to portray people at their most wicked. There’s a subtleness to the horror, where the crime is implied rather than overtly stated, but that’s where the imagination kicks in and makes it worse than anything Bradbury could have actually written.