There’s something about October that brings a change in me. It could be that autumn has now unambiguously started, as opposed to just going by the autumnal equinox. The weather is now colder and dryer. My hands and nose are getting dry, the latter occasionally resulting in a nosebleed. I now feel like I can put on a hoodie and jog around the city. The trees will start being stripped of their leaves. Overall it’s a time of changes, mostly for the better. October is also the month of Halloween, which is far and away my favorite holiday, to the point where it might the only one I really get festive about. Now is the time for watching horror movies, from the classices to some grade-A schlock. Time to catch up on some horror reads I’ve accumulated on my shelf. Time for pumpkin spice lattes, if you’re into that. In other words, this is for me what Christmastime is for some people—mind you that I tend to get depressed around Christmas.

For this month we’re back to reviews at regular intervals, all short stories, all featuring thrills, chills, and assorted horrors. For the first time in a while I’m actually excited with what I’m gonna be writing about. Hopefully you’ll be joining me in reading at least a few of these.

We have one story from the 1940s, three from the ’50s, three from the ’80s, one from the ’90s, and one from the 2020s.

For the short stories:

1. “The Hungry House” by Robert Bloch. From the April 1951 issue of Imagination. Bloch was correspondents with H. P. Lovecraft when the former was still in high school, and this friendship had an apparent influence on Bloch’s early fiction. While he’s most famous for writing Psycho, which is non-supernatural horror, most of Bloch’s work involves ghouls, cosmic horrors, and whatnot.
2. “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills. From the November-December 2022 issue of Uncanny Magazine. Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, being only the third story ever to win all three. Mills debuted in 2016, with her debut novel published in 2024. “Rabbit Test” was the last of a streak of short stories, as Mills stopped writing short fiction for three years.
3. “Punishment Without Crime” by Ray Bradbury. From the March 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Fiction. Being one of the most famous American authors ever, it can be easy to forget that Bradbury started writing for the genre magazines, not all of them being of the first rate. He also wrote so much horror early in his career that only a fraction of it appeared in The October Country.
4. “Lost Memory” by Peter Phillips. From the May 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. I had ever heard of Peter Phillips before, which might be because he was only active for a short time, from about 1948 to 1958. He stopped writing SF for reasons I’m not sure of. He was also British, at a time when there weren’t too many active in the field, even appearing in the inaugural issue of New Worlds.
5. “Yellowjacket Summer” by Robert McCammon. From the October 1986 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine. McCammon made his debut in 1978, but it took him a bit to come to the forefront of contemporary horror fiction. His massive post-apocalyptic novel Swan Song tied for the inaugural Stoker for Best Novel. Disillusionment with the industry made him step away from writing for a decade.
6. “Bloodchild” by Octavia E. Butler. From the June 1984 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novelette. This is a reread for me, but I’ve been meaning to return to it for a close read for a minute. Butler wrote only maybe a dozen short stories, but they’ve received a disproportinate amount of praise, with her winning Hugos for short fiction twice consecutively.
7. “Reckoning” by Kathe Koja. From the July 1990 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Koja debuted in the late ’80s with a pretty strong string of short stories before her debut novel, The Cipher, hit stores in 1991. She was a formiddable horror talent in the ’90s, but in the 2000s onward took to writing novels aimed at young readers, and she hasn’t written much generally lately.
8. “Day of Judgment” by Edmond Hamilton. From the September 1946 issue of Weird Tales. While he’s most known as a pioneer of space opera, as well as his Captain Future series, Hamilton appeared frequently in Weird Tales from the beginning of his career, sometimes with SF but also sometimes with fantasy and horror. He was an old-school pulp writer in that he wrote for basically any market.
9. “The Pear-Shaped Man” by George R. R. Martin. From the October 1987 issue of Omni. Winner of the Stoker for Best Long Fiction. Martin is a case where a series (A Song of Ice and Fire) of his is so famous that it overshadows the rest of his work, which mind you is considerable. Martin’s gone on record as thinking of himself as instincively a horror writer, a fact which is on display here.

We have pretty much an all-star cast of authors here, so I hope this will help my recent writing slump. Of course, the most important thing is that we have fun with this. Happy Halloween.