Dean R. Koontz - Strange Highways

[dem bones]

Dean R. Koontz - Strange Highways (Headline, 1995)

Lee Gibbons

Strange Highways
The Black Pumpkin (Twilight Zone, Dec. 1986)
Miss Attila the Hun (Night Visions 4, 1987)
Down in the Darkness (The Horror Show, Summer 1986)
Ollie’s Hands (Robert Hoskins [ed.] Infinity #4,1972; revised).
Snatcher (Night Cry, 1986)
Trapped ( Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg [eds] Stalkers, 1989)
Bruno (MFSF Apr. 1971; revised).
We Three (Edward L. Ferman & Barry N. Malzberg [eds.] Final Stage, 1974; revised).
Hardshell (Night Visions 4, 1987)
Kittens (Readers & Writers, 1966; revised).
The Night of the Storm (Roger Elwood [ed.] Continuum #1, 1974; revised).
Twilight of the Dawn (Night Visions 4, 1987)

Notes to the Reader

Blurb:
One rain-swept Sunday night when he was twenty years old, Joey Shannon took the wrong highway – and from that moment, nothing ever went right for him again. Now, exactly twenty years later, on another rain-swept night, Joey finds himself at the same crossroads, looking down the road never taken. Which is odd. Because that road no longer exists. A superhighway replaced it years ago. But now the highway is exactly as it was on that long-ago night, and when Joey turns on to it, he begins an eerie, terrifying journey towards a truth so dark and stunning that it will change everything that he believes about himself, his past, and the nature of life.

STRANGE HIGHWAYS is breathlessly suspenseful, disturbiug, filled with surprises, as frightening as anything Dean Koontz has written - and yet it has a haunting beauty all its own. It is the perfect opening to a large and varied collection that contains twelve additional novelettes and short stories that will keep readers awake and fearful for many nights, along countless strange highways.

Jul 15, 2013 7:28:05 GMT mattofthespurs said:

The companion is a good book. I enjoyed reading it.

For me, the best Koontz are;

"Watchers", "Strangers", "Chase", "Twilight Eyes", "Night Chills", "Strange Highways" (short story anthology), "Odd Thomas" (his best book in my opinion), "Shattered", "Mask", "Phantoms" (joint favourite) and "Icebound".

Some of the later ones like "The Husband", "Life Expectancy", "The Good Guy" and "The Face" are ok. Competently written thrillers.

Avoid, if you can find, pretty much all his Ace double science fiction stuff. Anything from the last five years is generally garbage. All in my opinion of course.

For a novice who has never read any Koontz I would suggest starting with "Phantoms" and then "Odd Thomas". The sequels to Odd are ok but he seems to be dragging it out now. Some of the earlier stuff like "Chase", "Shattered", "The Vision" and "Mask" are decent and are short and quick easy reads.

Hey matt, after weeks of scouring market stalls and charity shops, finally came up trumps with two from your recommendations in as many minutes; a hard-cover of Odd Thomas, and the above. Not having read much of his work, came as a surprise that I've already encountered at least four from Strange Highway: Down in the Darkness (was very impressed) in Kathryn Cramer & Peter D. Pautz's The Architecture Of Fear and three from a Night Visions collection (below), the one that stuck involving a young schoolmistress who saves her pupils from extra-terrestrials of unfriendly intent. Hope to get around to Strange Highway(and, possibly, revisit Night Visions as I liked Edward Bryant's contribution) over coming week(s).

Clive Barker (ed.) - Night Visions: Hardshell (Berkley, 1988)

Dean R. Koontz
Miss Attila The Hun
Hardshell
Twilight Of The Dawn

Edward Bryant
Predators
The Baku
Frat Rat Bash
Haunted
Buggage
Doing Colfax

Robert R. McCammon
The Deep End
A Life In The Day Of
Best Friends

Blurb:
NIGHT VISIONS
On the cutting edge of modern terror, this innovative collection features new and excit­ing works by today's master storytellers. The acclaimed Dean R. Koontz, Robert R. McCam­mon and Edward Bryant demonstrate their unique talents in these nerve-shattering tales of the macabre and give new meaning to the word fear. Here is a celebration of all-too- human nightmares, presented by the phenomenal Clive Barker...

[mattofthespurs]

I hope you're not let down by my recommendations!

[dem bones]

Not at all, it's been good fun so far.

Made sense to revisit the stories from Night Visions first.

Hardshell: LAPD Homicide detective Frank Shaw hot on the trail of prolific serial-killer (22 confirmed and rising) Karl 'The Night Slasher' Skagg. Shaw, a Viet Vet known to his colleagues as Hardshell, has traced his man to a warehouse , and he will need to live up to his nickname if he is to avoid becoming victim #23. Skagg has already dealt him a rib-wrecking blow with an iron bar and buried him beneath a crate of machine parts, but Frank doesn't mind, it all adds the thrill of the game. The tables turn. Frank trains his pistol on Skagg's chest and when the "drooling degenerate" refuses to come quietly, blows him away at point blank range. Skagg, screaming, plunges from atop a stack of crates and hits the concrete floor head first. But when the cop steps over to examine the corpse, it's no longer there. How can a dead man disappear in a split second? Answer is simple. Skagg is not human but an indestructible shape-shifting abomination, one minute movie star handsome, the next a mantis-cockroach hybrid. He's also an incorrigible show off, treating Frank to his impressive repertoire, each manifestation more horrific than the last. Suddenly, things have taken a turn for the Alien versus Predator

Miss Attila The Hun: Mrs. Laura Caswell, twenty-eight, a popular teacher at Pineridge Elementary School, battles to resist a parasitic alien seed, whose only purpose is to spread chaos and destruction. It's first victim, Teel Pleever, a tight-fisted Real Estate trader, is easily possessed while poaching in the wood - the implication being he deserves what he gets - and Seed uses his body to infect first the entirely innocent Mrs Halliwell, then Laura's husband, Jack, whose legs were crushed in a car smash. Having no use for a hindrance in leg braces, Seed fixes Jack's injuries before unleashing the trio on the school. But the alien - millions of years old and, until now, unstoppable - underestimates the human spirit as personified by a determined, loving woman. Put me in mind of Joseph Payne Brennan's Slime with tendrils, or possibly, Charles Dickens gone sci-horror.

He's very optimistic for a horror author, isn't he? On the evidence of these and Graveyard Highway (which admittedly, given how prodigious his output, is no 'evidence' at all), Mr. Koontz is the anti-Laymon, their world views at polar opposites. Found both stories good fun, certainly more-so than his Tropical Chills contribution. Down In The Darkness still my pick at this early stage. Koontz identifies the final Night Visions: Hardshell story, Twilight Of the Dawn as his personal favourite of all his short fiction

Pop culture references: Invaders From Mars, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, and War Of The Worlds (Laura's seen the movies and takes inspiration from them).

[dem bones]

"The virus of religion was loose in my house"

Twilight of the Dawn: Fallon's fanatical atheism is rocked when his life is torn apart by tragedy. First Ellen is killed in a motorway collision. Two years on, his nine-year-old son boy is diagnosed with bone cancer.
The dying Benny clings to a belief in an afterlife.
"I want us all to be together again like we were before mommy died. Together again someday. But I'm afraid ... If you don't believe you can find us ... then maybe you won't find us."
Fallon stubbornly refuses to entertain him. Until ....

Koontz writes in the afterword. "My personal favourite of all the short fiction that I have written ... it is about faith and hope - but is not in the least sentimental."

Maybe, but I still far prefer this pair;

Ollie's Hand: Reads like a supernatural take on Theodore Sturgeon's masterpiece, Bright Segment. Ollie, a broken down street bum with healing hands and extraordinary telepathic ability, saves the life of a young junkie prostitute collapsed in an alley. Ollie carries Annie back to his bolt-hole, restores her to health, sets her life back on track. Love and hope briefly light up his days, but the girl demands too much of him. Ollie is doomed to remain an outcast even among outcasts.

Kittens: Koontz's first professional sale and most Pan Horror moment. Marnie's Dad says that it was God took Pinkie's kittens away to live with Him in Heaven. Marnie is confused. Marnie saw 'God' drowning Pinkie's kittens in a bucket, one after the other. Marnie noticed that 'God' looked a lot like Dad. Marnie thinks God needs punishing.