Many of King's other horror novels have been adapted into movies, including The Shining, Firestarter, Pet Semetary, Cujo, Misery, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers. Years of abusing inhalants couldn’t possible do the damage that this alleged story manages to do in a few ridiculous pages, even with the women cooing ‘Mmmmm’ for their cherished Domino Man. I used to read a lot of anthologies, and since I ride the train daily, I figured maybe I should resume this habit, seeing as that 15-50-page stories are perfect for my rides to and from work, and for my crappy lunch break, where I have nothing better to do than sit on a cold metal bench, alone, smoking and reading (occasionally interrupted by shoving some food down my gullet). The toads alone make this antho worthwhile, but I really enjoyed "Rant" by Nancy Collins (in the appropriately titled PSYCHOS section).

Further, Horsting attempts to flatter each author with an introductory bio, but just comes off overly congratulatory and all too chummy. Here it was, tangible proof that not only do I kick ass, but have been kicking ass since back in ‘the day’. Several were interesting in portraying the point of view of part of society: Rainy Season, Say Hello Mister Quigley, Emerald City Blues, Rant. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.Or Stephen King's "Rainy Season," first published in this collection, a tale of small-town mores and a warning to travellers that even the most picturesque of towns may turn out to be lethal traps.

This might be the lowest point of the book, that two authors expected to deliver the big hits are poorly represented. It turns out that the cover illustration is actually by some total fraud named Martin Cannon, just some unfortunate slob without an original style of his own, proving he’s capable of producing something as derivative as possible of the style of Giger, sans talent. It did have a great line, jauntily poking fun at military/old man lingo: Goldilocks was SAC - Strategic Air Command - headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska; ETA was Estimated Time of Arrival.

A collection of new horror stories includes contributions by Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, David J. Just knowing that this was tucked away in my laptop bag brought back a flood of memories from my angst-ridden high school days, pitifully eking out an existence as the typical underachieving, uninspired white kid in Suburbia, USA. Like many early/mid 90’s anthologies (see ‘Shock Rock’, ‘Prime Evil’, and ‘Night Screams’ from my small sample alone), the ever-present Stephen King has a seldom-published contribution in ‘Midnight Graffiti’, and editors Jessica Horsting and James Van Hise unwisely decide to shoot their wad immediately out of the starting gate by opening it up with “Rainy Season”.

They could blissfully continue to struggle through joyless slop like Dickens, I was getting a little taste of Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, J. The author uses the time-honored crutch of borrowing established characters (the inhabitants of Oz) and endlessly perverting their well-intentioned natures, only to have them caught up in a boneheaded nuclear catastrophe. Rather shockingly, Neil Gaiman, who I usually couldn’t care one way or the other about, actually has one of the few worthwhile reads within, with “Murder Mysteries”, a roundabout indictment of God’s alleged Master Plan and borrowing heavily from the once-popular mythos of something referred to as 'heaven' and ‘angels’. Says the World’s Smallest Man”, which chronicles the disastrous love life of a little person following in the footsteps of the esteemed Herve Villachaize; and “Rant” by Nancy Collins, which I’ve always liked due to its complete intolerance, madness, and otherwise nonsensical nature.By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Horror is the only medium that regularly succeeds in relating the momunmental strangness of the world in an accessible, cathartic manner. I don't think that the Anthology Experiment went over too well; back to reading something slightly more worthwhile, maybe some letters to the editor from back-issues of Club, if I can manage to pry the pages apart somehow. The final story, "Dark Embrace," comes from (mercifully silent) co-editor James Van Hise and is an adroit, if somewhat predictable, story of a boy who is forced to mature with cruel haste. Both of Branham’s stories sucked, but allowing him to dominate at something is unthinkable (even if that something is having the most shitty stories included in this colelction), so I had to flip a coin to determine which travesty got a shot at the ‘honors’.Stories from Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and an absolutely wonderful study on how Harlan Ellison process of writing from misheard words were a few of my favorites. I had never heard of the publication "Midnight Graffiti" before, but I wish more publications like it existed now. The paperback version of the book, released after the movie, went on to sell more than two-and-a-half million copies. Wait a second, that’s actually pretty crappy; if Giger committed this abortion he’d have set it aflame before it could leave his premises and tarnish his reputation. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, he became a teacher.