Something Wicked This Way Comes and A Sound of Thunder »

A veteran sci-fi author with side talents for poetry, plays and screenwriting, Ray Bradbury has had a long career of provoking thought and a compelling uneasiness in generations of readers. But rather than create worlds made for escape, Bradbury refracts our own foibles through otherworldly prisms.

In Bradbury’s unforgettable modern Gothic masterpiece, Something Wicked This Way Comes, something evil arrives in a small Midwestern town on the crest of the wind one autumn night. A “dark carnival” with frightening attractions and supernatural characters sets up stakes. It is up to two thirteen-year-old boys, James Nightshade and William Holloway, to figure out a way to save the souls of the town.

In Bradbury’s short story, A Sound of Thunder, a small safari company promises to transport adventurers back in time for a chance to hunt any animal that ever existed. The animals are specially selected according to their natural time of death. Nothing else may be altered because it just might change the whole course of the future. When one foolish hunter comes face to face with a Tyrannosaurus rex, the carefully constructed safari goes awry and the future is up for grabs.