comparison to the pleasure he gains from simple human companionship. Reception Critics have praised Something Wicked This Way Comes as a classic of fantasy and horror, noting its masterful blending of both genres and Bradbury's unusual and mesmerizing prose. The most referenced characteristic of the novel's plot is its unusual subtlety and realism for its genres. The magazine Science Fiction Weekly published a review of the novel; an excerpt of it follows:Science Fiction Crowsnest, another science fiction magazine, reviewed it with high praise, referring to it as a "Masterwork" with "a suitably fantastic and scary plot around colourful description ... with hidden meanings, mysteries and symbols adding to the layers of tension". The Denver Rocky Mountain News said in 1999: "If rational beings had created the 100 best books of the century list, this one would surely have been on it". Legacy and literary influenceSomething Wicked This Way Comes has served as a direct influence on several fantasy and horror authors, including Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. Gaiman paid tribute to Bradbury's influence on him and many of his peers in a 2012 The Guardian article following Bradbury's death. King discusses this novel at length in his 1981 non-fiction book Danse Macabre. The book also influenced R. L. Stine, who said, "Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors. I always tell people that the scariest book I ever read was one of his books—Something Wicked This Way Comes". Reference in other works Stephen King mentions the book in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone and echoes the beginning scene of it by referring to a lightning-rod salesman in a chapter titled "Dark Carnival". His novels 'Salem's Lot (1975), Needful Things (1991) and Fairy Tale (2022) also contain references from Something Wicked This Way Comes. Don Coscarelli has cited the novel as a major inspiration for his 1979 film Phantasm. The TV show South Park parodied the novel in the 2004 episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" with a similar plot about the titular department store luring townsfolk with its super-low prices. British TV comedy series The League of Gentlemen features the Pandemonium Carnival of Papa Lazarou. In similar vein, the animated TV show Rick and Morty paid homage to the novel in an episode titled "Something Ricked This Way Comes", which centers around a comically-shadowy figure granting the citizens of the town wishes, but the plot largely draws upon