Dark Carnival, Ray Bradbury

   I can't recall where I picked up a copy of Ray Bradbury's collection of short weird fiction, Dark Carnival. In any case, I must say that I don't recall ever having read any of his fiction. This, despite his name being legendary in the golden age of science fiction. Despite my associating him with science fiction, here are a few lines from Wikipedia that describe his fiction:

Bradbury was once described as a "Midwest surrealist" and is often labeled a science-fiction writer, which he described as "the art of the possible." Bradbury resisted that categorization, however:

First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time -- because it's a Greek myth, and myths have staying power.^[35]

Certainly, there is nothing of science fiction in this collection of short stories. I would classify it as weird fiction. I am not an authority on anything except my opinion, of course.

   I'm not going to go over each of the short stories. I'm only going to mention the few that stood out for me.
   Death and the undead often come up as subjects or characters throughout many of the stories. There is a vampire who doesn't like to be a monster like the rest of his relatives. There is a story, "Uncle Einar", about psychic possession where a girl, to prove how awful she is, possesses a relative hated by the family until he kills himself. All the time he is looking for her to help him, completely unaware that it is she who has haunted him, leading him to his own extinction. There's another story, "There Was an Old Woman", of a woman who refuses to die. When death comes to her and separates her from her body, she manages to retake it from the funeral home which has already gutted and embalmed her. She has her blood replaced in her veins. She then goes home and from then on refuses to answer the door (perhaps to make sure that Death does not trick her again).
   The final story which stood out for me is "The Next in Line", which is about a couple who go to Mexico for a holiday. The woman is haunted by the tour of the unburied: the poor rent plots for a year but cannot afford a second year. So, the bodies are exhumed and left in a kind of cavern, standing. There is a series of macabre descriptions of the dead: one woman who is buried alive. Another who dies giving birth along with the baby. All of them held together and stiff with wire. She begs her husband to not leave her there. But, he refuses. On his way back to Texas, he seems quite happy that she is no longer beside her.
   If you're looking for a series of good horror tales, this is not a bad choice at all.