Following up on my summer trend of reading short stories, I got this recent collection of Stephen King’s short fiction.
I remember reading Night Shift when I was a kid (my dad loved King, and we had plenty of his books around) and it’s probably one of the things that stayed with me the most from that era.
I mostly forget everything I read, but I can still remember most of the stories in this. I like to think it’s because they were really, really, good.1
Quitters, Inc may be my favorite short story after Asimov’s The Last Question and Brown’s Sentry, it’s just so powerful.
Anyway, when I noticed there was a new short story collection I decided to give it a go. And well, Stephen delivers.
If you haven’t read a lot of King and you’re only familiar with It or Cujo, you may think he’s mostly an horror writer. But he’s not, in fact his best fiction (see Quitters, Inc) is speculative fiction at it’s best.
It’s our world but a little off . A little something that makes it uncomfortable, scary, or just makes you think harder. Just like in Night Shift, some stories have zero paranormal and are just unsettling. Unlike Night Shift, many (most?) stories seem to have a positive ending.
I guess Stephen got softer with age, just like me.
Vote: 7/10, not all stories are great, and overall this is not as good as some of his older collections, but it’s still good.
- . Rather than think my memory was better 20+ years ago. ↩︎