Fellow October Dwellers --

Going slowly mad(er) attempting to rediscover one of Ray's stories.
Published in a recent Halloween themed anthology (I believe), circa 2003. Assume it was written within a decade prior to that date. I do not remember the name and searches have failed to resurrect it.
His short story HEAVY SET was published contemporaneous to it.

All I can (sort of) recall about it is:
Droll, witty, dark-humor; not classic sentimental Bradbury.
Involved outcasts living in a small town who somehow turn the tables on local citizenry (witches?).

Has ABSOLUTELY NOT been included in any of his short story collections!

I realize that this is slim, slim stuff to go on, but it was one of those wonderfully different examples of late period Bradbury that I simply MUST read again.
Any help would be immensely appreciated.

Thank you for your attention to my piteous request.

Mark Packo,
Stratford, CT

The last title on this list of anthologies containing stories by Ray Bradbury is dated 2000: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/ray-bradbury/

For years we kept a list here of uncollected vs. collected stories, but it has not been updated in at least five years. https://raybradburyboard.com/ev...901/m/1941065901/p/1

At the time of his death, Ray had an almost-completed collection titled Juggernaut but he was unable to do final polishing on the stories or persuade anyone qualified to do so. If some of the stories appeared in magazines or anthologies they might be in the table of contents for that. Good luck!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dandelion,

I would love to help you find this, but first, a few observations:

It's unclear how much you know about Ray Bradbury. For starters, most of the stories that appeared in the 1990s and 2000s had, in fact, been written many years earlier; in some cases as early as the 1940s. So the story that you're looking for may not be "late period Bradbury" at all.

Are you sure the story isn't in one of Ray Bradbury's books? There are an awful lot of them. Have you read them all?

We recently had a query from someone who was absolutely sure a story was by Ray Bradbury—but it wasn't. Ray Bradbury had written an introduction, but the actual story was by someone else.

Possibly the best clue is your reference to "Heavy-Set". What do you mean by "His short story HEAVY SET was published contemporaneous to it."? "Heavy-Set was first published in 1964, not at all the period you're talking about.

Could it possibly be that you saw "Heavy-Set" and the mystery story in the same book?

If so, I found this:

"Heavy-Set" appears in OCTOBER DREAMS: A CELEBRATION OF HALLOWEEN, edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2000)

There are three contributions by Ray Bradbury in the book, but "Heavy-Set" is the only story (the other two pieces are a poem and an essay).

Could the story you're looking for possibly be by one of the other authors in the book?

The contents are here:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?228737

There is a whole CD of march music titled Not Sousa. Someday we need to get all these stories together, if they can be identified, and edit an anthology called Not Bradbury!

I like the layout of the Fantastic Fiction (UK) website (linked by dandelion), but it just isn't very accurate. Just casting my eye over it for about three minutes, I saw about ten mistakes.