SHOCK! (Sphere, 1978: Originally Corgi, 1962)
The Children Of Noah
Lemmings
The Splendid Source
Long Distance Call
Mantage
One For The Books
The Holiday Man
Dance Of The Dead
Legion Of Plotters
The Edge
The Creeping Terror
Death Ship
The Distributor SHOCK 2 (Sphere, 1978: orig. Dell, NY, 1964; & Corgi, 1965)
A Flourish of Strumpets
Brother to the Machine
No Such Thing As a Vampire
Descent
Deadline
The Man Who Made the World
Graveyard Shift
The Likeness of Julie
Lazarus II
Big Surprise
Crickets
Mute
From Shadowed Places SHOCK 3 (Sphere, 1978: Originally Corgi, 1967)
Girl Of My Dreams
'Tis The Season To Be Jelly
Return
The Jazz Machine
The Disinheritors
Slaughter House
Shock Wave
When The Waker Sleeps
Witch War
First Anniversary
Miss Stardust
Full Circle
Nightmare At 20,000 FeetSHOCK 4 (Sphere, 1989: Originally Berkley, 1969 as
SHOCK WAVES)
A Visit to Santa Claus
Finger Prints
Deus Ex Machina
The Thing
The Conqueror
A Drink of Water
Dying Room Only
Advance Notice
Wet Straw
Therese
Day of Reckoning
Prey
Come Fygures, Come ShadowesShock! When you pick up a telephone and hear soft, menacing breathing, who is really on the other end?
Shock! When a meek little man suddenly goes totally, psychotically berserk - why?
Shock! When thousands upon thousands of cars stand abandoned on an empty beach - what has happened to their occupants?
Shock! It's easy to drive people out of their minds - here's how to drive them out of their bodies!
Shock! All-devouring teenage temptresses - the ultimate weapons of war!
Shock! One of the cruelest mass-murders in history - repeated after seventy years. This time from beyond the grave!Something that works to Matheson's great advantage is the utter humorlessness of many of his horror stories.
Slaughter House is as good an example as any. On the surface, a ghost of a woman coming between two brothers - nothing we've not seen before - but there's a conviction to the writing that has you believing its a documentary. In
The Children Of Noah Mr. Ketchum, is arrested on a dubious "speeding" charge in Zachry, Maine, taken back to the police station and thrown into a cell. It sure is hot in there. Like ... like an oven ...
No Such Thing As A Vampire turns myth on its head and gives it a good seeing to. The people of Solta, a village in the Romanian mountains, are in the habit of painting crosses on their doors and gathering garlic bulbs to ward off the undead, so when Madame Alexis Gheria wakes to find her nightdress shredded and blood seeping from her throat, they know what they’re up against. Which is entirely what her doting husband, Dr. Gheria, bargained for when he learned she was having an affair. Now he can set about his cruel and protracted revenge.
Girl Of Me Dreams sees the lovestruck Amy manipulated by her odious boyfriend Greg - who detests her - into exploiting her "gift" for financial gain. The gift in question is the ability to dream of appalling tragedies some days in advance of their taking place. Once he's taken down the gory details, Greg then offers to sell date, time and place of impending catastrophe to the party whose life is at risk. In
The Likeness Of Julie, clean-cut college boy Eddy Foster gets to indulge his flair for stalking, voyeurism, doping and date rape on a timid (he thinks) fellow student in Mr. Euston's class. Eddy has no fear of her telling anyone - he photographed the entire event.
By contrast, there are occasions when the overall going is quite jolly. In
Crickets, John Morgan is convinced that he's deciphered the insects' secret code and far from going chirrup ... chirrup for the Hell of it, they're actually reciting the names of the dead - who are planning a mass return from the grave! And now, the little bastards are onto him! He confides in vacationing Hal and Jean Galloway who are too polite to send the paranoid old fool packing. "Listen, ... 'They aren't just making indiscriminate noises when they rub their wings together ... They're sending messages."
Big Surprise provides just that: Old Mr. Hawkins is forever taking the kids aside on their way home from school and giving them directions as to where they should dig in Potter's field if they want a "big surprise". None of them ever takes him up on it until Ernie's curiosity gets the better of him.
Prey is Amelia’s life or death struggle with an evil doll. Wilson, petrified of flying, endures a
Nightmare at 20, 000 Feet when he spots a gremlin hanging on the wing of a DC7. This made for a memorable
Twilight Zone episode, with William
The Transformed Man Shatner putting in his best performance this side of
Devil's Rain.
A number of the SF-horror crossovers have a post-Nuclear War setting. In 1989 The
Dance Of The Dead is all the rage with the patrons of a St . Louis nightclub, the L.U.P.'s (Lifeless Undeath Phenomena) strutting their stuff onstage for the amusement of college kids (the inspiration for
Big Tit Zombies?),
'Tis The Season To Be Jelly: Waiter, there's a nose in my soup: Oh, it's Ok, it's mine.
Witch War sees a front-line peopled with teenage black magicians - Morticia Adamms clones at that - who effortlessly blast the enemy to kingdom come.
Lemmings and the highway is gridlocked. Millions of abandoned cars packed solid. their occupants go down to the beach and walk into the sea. This has been going on for a week.
Richard Matheson - Shock (Corgi, 1962)