Night Shift (1978) - Review

There's a reason why Night Shift has led to so many film and television adaptations.  It's good.  Damn good.

I've read that King himself sees a very cocky, self-confident, top of the world writer when he reads The Shining.  And that's definitely true, but it's incredibly evident in some of the short stories presented in Night Shift.

After my bad experience with Rage, which was an early novel that he decided to publish quietly as Richard Bachman, I was afraid that I might have a similar experience with Night shift, knowing that a good deal of these stories had been written in the decade prior to publication in Night Shift.

Boy was I wrong.

King shows off how versatile of a writer he is as well, following an epistolary story in the vein of Lovecraft in Jerusalem's Lot, with Graveyard Shift, which feels like it's yanked out of some 1950's era pre-Comics Code Authority EC comic, The mental image of gigantic mutant rats that had begin to take on some traits of both ant colonies and bats, is an image that I'll carry with me for a while.

Night Surf, the third story in Night Shift, was essentially a companion story to The Stand.  However, since Night Shift was published before The Stand (and Night Surf was originally published all the way back in 1969), readers at the time would have no way of knowing of the cross over.

I'm not sure if Night Surf is considered "canon" now or if it's just supposed to be viewed as a work in progress of the ideas that eventually led to The Stand.  The Captain Trips virus seems to be a little bit different than what was described in The Stand.  But I really appreciated, as the story unfolded, how the main characters attachment to any kind of morality or higher authorities seemed to vanish as societal structure collapsed.

I am the Doorway didn't feel like a Stephen King story at all.  It reminded me most of an episode of the 1950's old radio drama X Minus One or an episode of The Twilight Zone.  It's the first stab at straight up science fiction that I've seen King try and I really liked it, even if the end was a bit predictable.

Another thing I really appreciated in this collection was King's willingness to be flat out silly.  Battleground and Trucks demonstrated this fully.  I already commented on my adoration of Battleground.  While I don't feel as strongly about Trucks, its hard not to admire a serious horror story based on the idea that one day all the trucks in the world became sentient and just decided to enslave and/or kill humanity.

Sometimes They Come Back and The Man Who Loved Flowers both felt like they could have been written by a slightly darker O. Henry.

Quitters, Inc. was a particularly strong as well.  If you've ever seen The Game, you have an idea of the nature of this story.  Very cool idea.  The two concepts are so similar, I wonder if the Game stole some of the ideas from King.

 Children of the Corn was creepy but not really one of my favorites.  It was good, not great.

The only story in Night Shift I actively disliked was The Lawnmower Man, which was just so bizarre that I just rolled my eyes, said "Whatever, dude," and moved on.

I wonder if all of King's short story collections are this good, because he definitely brought his A-game to this one.

Next up: The Stand.

Indian in the Cupboard meets Full Metal Jacket

Making my way through Night shift. I had to stop reading to write this.

  Battleground may just be one of my favorite things I've ever read.  It's so batty, and so insane...and just so much fun that it left me giddy in a way I haven't felt reading a story since I was a kid.

The plot is simple enough.  Renshaw is a world renowned assassin who has just taken out a toy-maker.  Upon returning home, he receives a package containing a GI Joe vietnam footlocker, sent to him by the toy-maker's mother.

The tiny toy figures inside, including all of their weapons and vehicles, come to life and begin a full frontal assault to take Renshaw down.

I couldn't stop reading...and occasionally laughing or smirking...as Renshaw desperately tried to come at the platoon, only to be thwarted at every opportunity.  Their methods were particularly enjoyable.

At one point, they even give him a chance to surrender, to which he responded "NUTS!"

Just as it appeared Renshaw was about to gain the upper hand, with a hastily constructed Molotov cocktail, the entire apartment disintegrates.  It seems our GI Joe dudes brought a thermonuclear bomb with them.

At times, this tale seemed full of wonder, like the Indian in the Cupboard.  At time it was a brutal look at modern warfare, hence the title of this post.

This story is also completely unlike the others in Night Shift, so it was a very unexpected, but awesome shift.

Jerusalem's Lot

The more I think about it, the more my opinion of  'Salem's Lot, Stephen King's second novel, increases.

It's not just that it's scary, which it most certainly is.  But it's got this great mesh of old world gothic and modern technology that just grabbed me.

So I was definitely excited to learn that the first short story in Night Shift is a prequel.

It has a different feel to it than most of King's works.  While it's told through letters presented to the reader, written in the 1850's, it feels less intimate and more stoic than King normally feels.  And it works.

The story actually doesn't link much to the story of 'Salem's Lot, as told in that novel, but adds background to the location.

Jerusalem's Lot is cool, in that it takes the location of Salem's Lot, and establishes that it wasn't just a place where evil came to lurk and eventually harbored vampires, but that it was a place that was so evil that it drew other evil things to it.  So it was no mere coincidence that Hubie Marsten and later Barlow were compelled to this sleepy little town.

In that sense, in the Lore of King (as I've come to call it) as I currently understand it (having only read a few novels), Salem's Lot is of a kindred to the Overlook Hotel.  They are both locations that, presumably due to the actions of evil people over the years, turned into great beacons that lured more evil to them.

I really like this concept and hope it is explored further.