A few real gems include
Have I got a chocolate bar for you
The utterly perfect murder
The parrot who met Pappa
Long after midnight

Feels a bit derivative of his other collections, brings in the "dead author comes back to life" story twice somehow, which makes it feel tired. If you like October Country, this feels like an unofficial sequel.

The Blue Bottle was one that resonated with me, with commentary on alcoholism and existentialism and how different people grapple with just, existing in different ways.
The October Game is a certified horror banger, wouldn't be out of place in October Country.
A Story of Love is really cute.
Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You is great, one of his funnier stories.
Parrot Who Met Papa is also good, echoes back to his noir tales.
The Miracles of Jamie was amazing, truly overlooked Bradbury. The last few sentences hit like a gravestone against your heart.

Long After Midnight appears to be one of Ray Bradbury's more obscure story collections; I read it at some point in college but it took me over a decade to track down a copy. I wouldn't necessarily consider this among his best collections, with the story selection rather eclectic in theme and variable in quality, but there's still enough quality work to justify reading it. A standout here is "Punishment Without Crime," a sequel to "Marionettes, Inc." from The Illustrated Man, features a man sick of his wife who decides to kill a robotic duplicate, unaware of the consequences - the kind of bitter irony Bradbury handled so well. That irony also manifests in "The Blue Bottle," about a man who seeks a legendary Martian treasure, which starts as an adventure tale and ends on a beautifully wistful melancholy. Two of the best in the collection, "A Piece of Wood" (about a pacifist soldier whose invention threatens the military-industrial complex) and "The Burning Man" (where a demonic hitchhiker menaces an unwary couple) are among the shortest. The story that gave me the most pause is "Drink Entire - Against the Madness of Crowds," an interesting modern spin on the Faust tale - from the perspective of someone who spurns the Faustian offer and has to watch another profit by it - which is, unfortunately, suffused with pronounced misogyny beyond the casual sexism often found in vintage science fiction. There are also outright duds, like the weird literary tales "The Parrot Who Met Papa" and "GBS Mark V" or "Darling Adolf," where an actor becomes overly engrossed in playing Adolf Hitler, which are among Bradbury's least appealing tales. A mixed bag, then, but still contains some worthy entries in Bradbury's oeuvre.

What if you thought that everything you ever wanted could be found inside a blue bottle? What if your first few weeks on the job as a policeman found you questioning your profession, and by extension, society? What if a woman frozen in ice offered you the perfect life, absolute love and immunity from everything painful, but the requirement was to marry her, sight unseen? What if the scent of chocolate in a confessional box reignited the passion of a grumpy priest, to save someone's soul, and thereby save a little bit of his own?

You almost can't go wrong with a book or story by Bradbury. He is truly an artist with words and the imagination. There were multiple flavors in this collection: science fiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, horror (Yes. There is a horror story). Each story had a unique message for the reader and you always came away a bit more thoughtful or curious about the world we live in. I also rediscovered the joy of the short story format.

4.5 stars out of 5 - I listened to this on CD during drive times over the past couple of weeks. Some of the short stories are amazingly good. Most are not science fiction but rather personal and revelatory. Some are a bit overlong, but most are perfectly pruned down to ideal length for the subject matter. If you like short stories you will rate some here among your favorites.

Muy buen libro, mi cuento favorito fue “La botella azul”, es muy entretenido.
Definitivamente es el libro ideal para pasar el rato, es una lectura fácil.

Creepy and riveting. Bradbury's voice is clear through each of the stories. I felt that his other short story collections were a bit better.

An excellent cross-section of Bradbury shorts. There are Mars stories (one which I'm not sure if it was a Silver Locust or not, and one which most definitely was), Green Town stories (you've not experienced summer until you've experienced a Green Town summer), Irish stories, Mexican stories, and -of course- October stories. Some are SF, some Fantasy, some scary or even Horror (I look at you, The October Game), some wonderfully mundane. Some are funny, sad, incredibly touching, thought-provoking. All are written in Bradbury's almost trademarked deceptively simple style that creeps around the back of you in plain sight and grabs you by the scruff.

Everything glitters here, some brighter, some in a different way, but they all glitter.

Highly recommended.

This has been one of my favorite Ray Bradbury collections so far. Each story is a perfect example of his genius storytelling and his power to transport you to Mars, back to the wonder of childhood and all the beautiful and terrible stops in between.

I always knew Ray Bradbury was a kind soul, but I didn’t know (until this read) that he was an ally.

Verschillende dingen stoorden me tijdens het lezen: Vele verhalen hebben een Christelijke insteek, vele verhalen hebben heel wat woorden en dialoog nodig om hun boodschap over te brengen, vele verhalen zitten vol stopwoordjes (lees: nog, steeds, terwijl, werd...) Vele malen een verhaal overgeslagen. Conclusie: beetje veel.

As much sci-fi as I've read, I don't think I've picked up a Ray Bradbury book before! This one is a collection of 22 of his short stories. What surprised me is that most of them weren't science fiction at all, but literary works to illustrate the point Bradbury was after in each one. More info about the stories here.

And he had lots of points to make! It almost seemed as if he was going through a mid-life crisis while writing these stories and working past the issues through stories. The Messiah... The Miracles of Jamie... Have I Got a Chocolate Bar For You!... The Wish... Festival in Sunlight... Getting Through Sunday Somehow... The October Game... probably others! All about desire and regret, with the author's weariness coming through the pages.

The October Game was great... I wasn't quite sure where that was going at the start, but I'm glad he didn't shy away from the ending.

Oh, and A Story of Love... we won't speak of that one except to say that it's apparently based on one of his other stories from 1951, which makes a little more sense. Still, he should have known better by 1976.

But it was nice to see little bits of progressive thought far beyond the time. Interval in Sunlight (1954) is about a woman contemplating leaving a marriage. The Better Part of Wisdom (1976) has a gay subtext that felt very true for how it would have been at the time. And Long After Midnight (1963) itself... that could have been written today.

Most of these stories won't stick with me. I had to page through it just now to remember what some of them were even about. Still, the stories are very well written and worth reading, just be prepared for an introspective tone.