I am a Stephen King fan. Admiration notwithstanding, he is quite capable of birthing runts, alongside the succubi.

However, King has something many others in the field don't — the horrific equivalent of verisimilitude. While straight writers aspire to making their stories seem like life, King, even in his bad stories, makes his nightmares seem real, at least for 10 to 60 pages. I think that's because when he's in the midst of writing them, they are real to him. Not in the literal, but in the 'what if' sense. His stories always seem multi-dimensional, as opposed to characters just moving about on a stage.

In the Night Shift collection, The Ledge is a strong psychological suspense tale, and Graveyard Shift is an outright nasty little horror story.

You can see the origins of his novel The Stand in the story Night Surf, and Lawnmower Man is just so weird I sense he was smoking something during composition.

I think the story, Sometimes They Come Back, is one of the strongest of the lot. King has some fun with one of his favorite cast of stock bad boys, 50s greaser-types, and let's his protagonist whup they ass — and leaves you with the notion that all will not be well for the hero.

Speaking of lot, and origins, the story, Jerusalem's Lot has almost nothing to do with the novel, 'Salem's Lot, except for the big nasty house.

In Skeleton Crew, he opens the book with a schlocky, old-time Saturday matinee monster fest, The Mist. Goofy, but fun.

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut delivers poignance along with the unbelievable, and The Monkey is also, just plain nasty.

Oh, and The Raft is a neat story about 'kids stranded on the lake,' and the book closes strong with The Reach. As for The Wedding Gig and Survivor Type, didn't care for them, especially the former.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes may be the weakest of the trio, for my money, which I did spend to buy these three.

While The Night Flier, a tale of a vampire with a pilot's license, is prety decent, I thought Dolan's Cadillac was too long for what happened, Rainy Season was a little dumb, and The Ten O'Clock People a bad imitation of John Carpenter's They Live.