Midnight Graffiti

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Some of them are decent: the Gil Lamont yarn “Sinus Fiction” begins promisingly until falling apart in some misunderstanding-between-the-sexes codswallop, and the usually-reliable Dan Simmons and Harlan Ellison both offer up stories which are well below their standard, with “The River Styx Runs Upstream” and “Where I Shall Dwell in the Next World”, respectively. Here it was, tangible proof that not only do I kick ass, but have been kicking ass since back in ‘the day’. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, he became a teacher.

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. This was a wonderful collection of short stories mainly for the sheer variety of genres, styles, and moods. She opens the anthology with an eight-page introduction, smugly explaining to her readers every obvious, bromidic reason that people are fascinated by horror. Some stories though, were a bit tough to get through and I found myself grinding through them to get to the next one. Or Dan Simmons' "The River Styx Runs Upstream," a story of resurrection -- with a ghastly difference.A good number of the stories rely too heavily on Reagan/Bush-era shock factor, which is horribly dated and uninteresting in 2018. Come to think of it, there must have been a pretty good reason to quit reading anthologies in the first place, right? I would prefer to be almost entirely unaware of the editor's existence, and allow their selections to speak for themselves. This might be the lowest point of the book, that two authors expected to deliver the big hits are poorly represented. I highly recommend this book especially for people like myself who just got into reading and wanted to find some different authors, this is a quick way to get a snapshot of their various writing styles and genre.

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. It's a fascinating look at horror, how it's changed over the years due to society, and why we're so entranced by horror novels/movies.Horror is the only medium that regularly succeeds in relating the momunmental strangness of the world in an accessible, cathartic manner. Granted, “Rant” has lost some of its luster of the years, probably because I’ve seen it reprinted in at least three other volumes (including the lackluster “Splatterpunks II”, which in terms of sequels, goes over about as well as Gremlins 2). I had never heard of the publication "Midnight Graffiti" before, but I wish more publications like it existed now. 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. 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’.