53. Flight or Fright
Edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent
About the Book:
"Stephen King hates to fly.
Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you.
Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you're suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like—gulp!—a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we'll bet you've never thought of before... but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger.
Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, "ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents... Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight."
Book a flight with Cemetery Dance Publications for this terrifying new anthology that will have you thinking twice about how you want to reach your final destination."
My Thoughts:
Artwork for the trade hardcover is done by François Vaillancourt and definitely fits the ominous and foreboding bill. Nice job.
The artist edition, which I am also getting, has artwork by Cortney Skinner and I am really looking forward to that edition.
My grandfather had his pilot's license and owned his own small plane. He flew a lot after he lost all but 3 fingers in a farm accident. I wish I would have had the presence of mind to ask him more about this time in his life, but I was young when he died and didn't get my chance.
Also, I live on the line between two cities. Both have small, commuter airports. Good for crop dusters, air traffic helicopters, gliders, parachuting businesses, small planes, old war birds and experimental one-man death-machines that look like go-carts with propellers jerry-rigged to the back.
Both of these airports have hosted air shows. And I happen to live where these stunt pilots and big bombers swing out in their holding patterns waiting for their turn to zoom back to their prospective air fields to thrill the crowds. The airport closest to me does accommodate private jets as we have a billionaire that lives in the state and has businesses in this town, so he would fly in frequently and paid for the runway to be extended for his use.
It's also fun to watch a local business with a fleet of small craft send one up to lazily circle and circle and circle higher and higher so it can spit out human beings like watermelon seeds -- their parachutes opening in a splash of color as they drift down. It looks so peaceful watching them from the ground. You don't think as you move back and forth in your rocker gazing upward that these "seeds" have lips and cheeks that are flapping like laundry sheets caught in a tornado. Unfortunately, I do know someone whose chute didn't open and they lived because they landed in a farmer's field that had just been tilled, so the soil was nice and fluffy. Lots of damage, but she walks today and has her faculties about her. A miracle.
Neither airport is big enough for the big birds, but our state capitol has our main airport, and even though I live about 25 minutes away, those large, lumbering aircraft also circle over my tiny little house in their holding patterns on occasion. So lots of sky watching going on. And yes, I'm the idiot who waves.
So, many a day or evening I have sat on my patio and watched and wondered about all these men and women in their flying machines.
This book gave me great anxiety about my casual viewing and I am forever going to look at the skies and those aeroplanes differently. And actually flying? These stories might put ideas in my head to think about at the most inopportune time.
I loved the foreword and afterword by Stephen and Bev respectively. Clever and fun entries. And Stephen's comments before each story to set them up and prime our pumps were great. Love when authors do that.
Being Stephen King fans, we tend to hear a lot of the same stories when he is interviewed because no one asks him anything remotely original. But his airplane story in this foreword was one I had never heard and I would love to hear more about it! Good God!
My standout stories would be:
Lucifer! by E. C. Tubb. Just the futility and inevitable outcome of those last couple pages left me right there with this person, frantic.
Cargo by E. Michael Lewis. A story around a very dark and infamous event.
The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury -- A very Aesop-fabley tale.
and
Murder in the Air by Peter Tremayne. I love locked-room stories.
Our host, Stephen King, has a very nice entry that was totally him. And Bev Vincent's contribution was also well done. Still waiting for his book of short stories to be published.
I am very pleased to have this on my bookshelf and again, so excited to get the artist edition for that beautiful art to accompany each story.
. They would just think I was a name dropper.
