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.
Horror Book Review Blog: Flight or Fright
When I started reading as a youngling, I started with the anthology format with books such as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Tales for the Midnight Hour, The Scariest Stories You’ve Ever Read, Masters of Darkness, and The Haunted Planet to name a few. I graduated to more “serious” work like Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, 999, Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night, Four Past Midnight, and a slew of many more. I was a big fan of the short story format because the scares came a lot quicker and one of my favorite things to do was to read something scary before going to bed. A lot of these were Stephen King books so I was anticipating Fright or Flight which is a collection of stories that revolve around flying the high skies that were curated and edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent. Stephen King is involved so it has to be great, right? But, like many anthologies, you’re going to get some good stories and some bad ones. This is no different.
If you’re expecting to get all new, and unpublished, stories then you will be sorely disappointed because with the exception of two of the stories in Flight or Fright, all of the tales here are previously published works and are being regurgitated here. Those two unpublished works come from none other than Stephen King himself and his son, Joe Hill. I hate, no, despise flying so what better way to get scared, aside from actually flying, than to read about fictionalized accounts about the possible horrors of soaring 30,000 feet in the air? I mean, reading this book could not scare me any further from flying. That fear was unlocked years ago already. I am not going to go through each and every story in Flight or Fright, but I will touch on a few, especially those of King and Hill.
The book is spearheaded by “Cargo,” a short story by E. Michael Lewis about a pilot transporting a cargo load of the corpses of young children who passed away in a tragic event. Things go accordingly until he hears sounds that resemble children playing. This is one way to get this anthology going; trapped inside of a plane full of dead bodies with the spirits of said corpses haunting the aluminum can in the sky. This story reeled me in and I was all in. But, as I mentioned earlier, you never know what you’re going to get in an anthology as they are usually a mixed bag of taste and quality.
“Cargo” is followed by “The Horror of the Heights” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which was published in 1913 when flying was still in its infancy and the concept of flight was still being explored and discovered. Yes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes! The concept of flying must have been considered science fiction at the time of its writing and release. Being that this is a period piece, there is an abrupt shift in tone going from “Cargo” to “The Horror of the Heights.” This is not to say that the story is a bad one but because of the time that was written, much was left to the imagination of what may lay above the clouds. It was hard to shut off my modern, and knowing, mind to suspend belief in what may be up there. If I read this short story at the time of its release there is no doubt that my imagination would conjure up scary images of what may be beyond the clouds, watching us miles below. In a way, it is very much how we yearn to learn what is outside of our planet in space and the stars beyond. The vastness, isolation, and darkness of space alone are enough to send shivers coursing throughout my body. “The Horror of the Heights” was very reminiscent of an H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu story and the 2010 film Altitude.
Next, there was “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” by Richard Matheson, which, if you’re a fan of The Twilight Zone you might remember the episode starring William Shatner or John Lithgow in the 1984 film of the same name where a man sees some sort of creature on the wing of the plane. The man pleads with other passengers, flight attendants, and even the captain for them to look out the window as the thing is damaging the wing but, every time they look there is nothing there. The 1963 television episode, the movie adaptation, and this original story terrified me to no end despite my knowing the story and its outcome. This is testimony that the story stands the test of time and that Matheson is also a master of horror with novels such as I Am Legend, A Stir of Echoes, and Hell House under his belt.
Other noteworthy stories in this collection include “Lucifer!” By E.B. Tubb where a man steals a ring off of a dead body that allows him to time travel fifty-seven or so seconds back in time. Another is “Zombies on a Plane” by Bev Vincent which involves survivors of a zombie Apocalypse escaping on a plane to seek refuge when, as one would expect things don’t go as planned. “Murder in the Air” by Peter Tremayne is a murder mystery much like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Not scary, but a good read for any mystery buff. “Air Raid” by John Varley is about a dystopian future where time travelers go back to recover passengers from doomed flights in order to bring them back to the future for the purposes of repopulating. An excellent short story that was later adapted to the feature film, Millennium in 1990. The other stories, for the most part, range from just Okay to “It was alright”, not enough to really pack a punch. In fact, I nearly forgot what some were about and had to refresh my memory.
And then, there were two. The only two original stories in Flight or Fright are “The Turbulence Expert” by Stephen King and “You Are Released” by Joe Hill. I’m just going to come out and say it, the Stephen King story was not very good at all. I was excited when I reached this story because it is Stephen King and my expectations were through the roof. But, I was extremely disappointed in this story and it failed massively, in my opinion, to induce any sort of feeling whatsoever. The story is about a man who is tasked to prevent plane crashes using unorthodox methods. I will leave it at that. Being that this was Stephen King’s story, I really expected a more impactful story. Instead, I was left empty-handed.
On the other hand, Joe Hill’s “You Are Released” was the complete opposite and may have been one of, if not, the best story in Flight or Fright. I can’t say that the idea is original and I’m sure it has been done before but the characters and his writing, in my opinion, were excellent and it kept me engaged the entire time. What made “You Are Released” frightening to me is that it was to fantastical nor supernatural, rather, It is something grounded in reality and something that can actually happen. The story revolves around a group of passengers, strangers, on a flight when, below them, a nuclear war starts. That premise alone is absolutely terrifying. Joe Hill’s writing here is impeccable and is able to capture humanity in a nutshell in just a few pages. “You Are Released” is an excellent short story and I highly recommend it.
Flight or Fright, like many anthologies, is a hit or miss in terms of the quality of the stories. I would have to say, in this case, Flight or Fright is a miss. While there are certainly some fantastic stories here, there were more that were mediocre and didn’t do much for me in terms of entertainment. Because most of the stories in this book were already published elsewhere, I would be hard-pressed to recommend purchasing this book. I would recommend picking this one up at a local library to give it a read, especially for “You Are Released,” but hold on to your hard-earned cash.