Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

The recent release of this collection honoring Ray Bradbury couldn’t have been timed better: it was in the works several months before the celebrated author died in June, and Bradbury even signed a few copies. In his brief introduction to the book, Bradbury reflects on how the son has become the father: he says he regarded Edgar Allan Poe and other authors as “papas”, and now Margaret Atwood, Audrey Niffenegger, Joe Meno, Dave Eggers, Neil Gaiman, and other illustrious writers have penned short stories in tribute to him. The range of literary styles is as vast as you might expect, with a fair amount of fantasy and a smattering of dead people—some of whom stay dead, while others show up for dinner and the opera. Each tale ends with a brief afterword by the author explaining how he or she was influenced by Bradbury, which in most cases turns out to be more interesting than it sounds. Take Neil Gaiman’s “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury”: the background—that it was inspired by Gaiman forgetting the name of a friend who’d died ten years earlier—is nearly as haunting as the story itself. —Julia Thiel Thu 9/27, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665, bookcellarinc.com, free.

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At the University of Chicago’s Comics: Philosophy & Practice conference in May, New Yorker art editor Francoise Mouly moderated a panel featuring comics artists Dan Clowes, Robert Crumb, Seth, and Chris Ware. At one point the conversation turned to print versus digital. The panelists were all in agreement: for their medium, screw digital; print is where it’s at.

Preceding the festival proper are two Festival Days, one on the Northwestern campus in Evanston (Sun 10/14), the other on the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park (Sun 10/21). You can hear talks by humorist John Hodgman and cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Evanston; at Hyde Park, take a Leopold and Loeb walking tour or learn about “The Lady Gagas of the 19th Century.”

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Fall Arts Calendar: An event for each of the season’s 80 days