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Editorial Review Product Description
The first in a three-volume collection of short stories by the grandmaster of the horror genre features unabridged narratives of the spinetingling tales. Amazon.com Review
Many people who write about horror literature maintain thatmood is its most important element. Stephen King disagrees: "My deeplyheld conviction is that story must be paramount.... All otherconsiderations are secondary--theme, mood, even characterization andlanguage." These fine stories, each written in what King calls "a burst of faith,happiness, and optimism," prove his point. The theme, mood,characters, and language vary, but throughout, a sense of story reignssupreme. Nightmares & Dreamscapes contains 20 shorttales--including several never before published--plus one teleplay,one poem, and one nonfiction piece about kids and baseball thatappeared in the New Yorker. The subjects include vampires,zombies, an evil toy, man-eating frogs, the burial of a Cadillac, adisembodied finger, and a wicked stepfather. The style ranges fromKing's well-honed horror to a RayBradbury-like fantasy voice to an ambitious pastiche of RaymondChandler and RossMacDonald. And like a compact disc with a bonus track, the book endswith a charming little tale not listed in the table of contents--aparable called "The Beggar and the Diamond." --Fiona Webster ... Read more Customer Reviews (107) 
The Brooklyn Bridge, Over and Over Again
In his introduction to this collection, Stephen King recalls being a credulous youngster who believed all sorts of things--from the reality of Santa Claus to Richard Nixon's plan to get the country out of Vietnam.He is still like this, and willingly accepts the recurring disappointments in exchange for the ability to believe in a story and bring it to life.In this collection, his third following Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, King believes into existence twenty-two stories--and one nonfiction piece--intended to scare the reader "...so badly you won't be able to go to sleep without leaving the bathroom light on."Some of them deliver all too well.
Three of my favorites:
In "Dolan's Cadillac" we live through years of obsessive investigation and planning for revenge.A man traps the mob boss who ordered his wife's death and systematically covers up all evidence of his crime.Perfect.
If you could remove mankind's violent tendencies and bring about "The End of the Whole Mess" of murder and war, you would do it, right?Even if it wasn't the smartest thing to do.
In "Suffer the Little Children" we meet Miss Sidley, a teacher who has been taking care of children all of her adult life.One day her students begin acting strangely...so she takes care of them.
This book is highly recommended for Stephen King fans and readers who enjoy a well-crafted story that makes their brains squirm for a day or two after reading.
Expect the expected--and the unexpected
One of the many things I love about Stephen King as a writer is this--when you read one of his works (whether short story, novella, novel, or epic novel), you get exactly what you expect, along with a bit of what you don't expect. And that's one of the characteristics that make him such an entertaining and amazing author--he keeps building his repertoire and impressing you with talents that you didn't know he had. This collection of short stories allows King to showcase many of the talents you'd expect from him, as well as a number of talents he doesn't often get an opportunity to showcase in his novels. There's a revenge tale reminiscent of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" ("Dolan's Cadillac"), a story featuring creepy kids ("Suffer the Little Children"), stories about animated things that shouldn't be animated ("Chattery Teeth" and "The Moving Finger"), apocalyptic tales ("The End of the Whole Mess" and "Home Delivery"), an homage to Lovecraft ("Crouch End"), and what is probably one of King's best short stories, "The Ten O'Clock People"--all pretty standard, and well done, Stephen King fare. And then there's the unexpected--a teleplay ("Sorry, Right Number"), a Sherlock Holmes story ("The Doctor's Last Case"), a poem ("Brooklyn August"), and--the most pleasant surprise of all--a non-fiction piece about King's son's Little League team ("Head Down"), which resulted in an effect I never imagined a piece of Stephen King's writing would have on me: I cried. I will continue to sing the praises of Stephen King and insist that he is one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated writers around. Despite his massive popularity, he is often derided as a one-dimensional writer with no skill outside of his chosen genre--horror. "Nightmares & Dreamscapes" offers ample proof that that is not the case at all. Read it, and be surprised.
2 stars for Seller;5 stars for book
The book had many interesting short stories.I would recommend the book but not the seller, Thriftbooks.The book they sent me had pages out of order.For example, you're reading on page 342 and the next page is 382.The pages were mixed up throughout the middle of the book.All the pages were there but not in order.
Good fun, lots of chills
This collection is chock full of everything King aficionados love, and it'll easily hook the uninitiated.There are many different samples on display, from one of King's true oldies (a Castle Rock story originally published in a college literary magazine, and feeling its roots very deep...when the autumn pumpkins get loving detail, you know it's a young man's voice) to something he finished in about three days in the year this was published.They are, for the most part, very good, full of story and gab, which is what you expect from King.I especially liked 'Popsy', which is a sort of child abductor revenge fantasy meets vampire tale (parents everywhere are confronted with their greatest nightmare and must give a cheer at the end), 'Suffer the Little Children', which kept me up for HOURS later that night, 'Rainy Season', which walks the line between horror and humor very well (the only time King tips his hand is when he name drops 'The Lottery'...you'll see what I mean), and 'Umney's Last Case', since it's clever and I'll gobble up anything Raymond Chandler-esque.
There are actually only a couple of bumps in the road.King's Sherlock Holmes story is passable Conan Doyle, at best.If you want a BRILLIANT modern attempt, read Neil Gaiman's 'A Study in Emerald.'King probably gets a moderate grade because Holmes requires icy precision, subtle restraint and a wry, nimble style of writing, and King, much as I love him and much as he has great talent, is not especially gifted in those areas.(I could be wrong, but I think Holmes makes a pussy joke somewhere in there...reader, I cringed.)
Still, there is much to enjoy here.I won't give a blow by blow of everything I liked (which was a lot), and everything I didn't (which was a little.)Instead, I'll take on two stories, my favorite and the one I liked least.
Crouch End- King goes to Lovecraft country, and I absolutely didn't want it to end.Everything you love about King-- the sense of place and character, dialogue and dialect, rising sense of terror, and flat out crazy, tentacled monsters living under the city streets-- is here.It's also one of the best examples of story and mood working together, instead of fighting with each other.A young couple visiting London go to meet the husband's colleague in Crouch End.The moment they enter the suburb, I became unsettled.It got worse from there.The wife, who (spoiler) lives to tell the tale, notices the strange orange light, the claw-handed child, the people with rat heads (but she imagined it...?), the one-eyed cat who seems to become a vagrant under a bridge later.The woman's tale is interspersed with the kindly officers at the police station, who listen to her story and don't know what to make of it.The editing in this tale is very good, so that the action unfolds as you might see it on television or at the movies.I won't say what happens to the husband, or how it ends, but it's very satisfactory, very frightening, and also very creepy.I had to turn on the lights when I was done, and it was only afternoon.King's command of the British dialect in this is nearly always spot on, and he makes everyday things in the light of day appear sinister and evil.The plotting, writing, everything is good here.Happily, most of the collection falls into this area, though I think this is the best example of the book.
Home Delivery- Unfortunately, everything that is right about Crouch End is wrong about Home Delivery.The story starts out as some kind of Lifetime movie, with an incredibly mousy woman, unable to cope without a man.She once married a dashing sailor, you know, who showed her love, until...until he was drowned at sea.Now, weak minded and pregnant, she must face the void alone.And then the zombies eat the president.Not kidding.That's basically the next line.King's instincts here are wrong, between trying to play all this nonsense dead serious and the wall to wall folksiness of EVERY F---ING SITUATION.The down home charm is one of the reasons I like King, but if you were up in a space shuttle, watching space worms eat your compatriots' brains (don't ask, it'll make sense) and knowing you're next, would your last musings to the world via satellite be 'I did so like all of them, especially the fat guy who dug around in his nose.'Yeah, it's a British character.King's knack for the Brit dialect vanished on this one.Sometimes, it does seem like King will be folksy if it kills him.Then the pregnant woman fights the Ray Harryhausen (in my mind) sailor husband back from the grave, zombies you know.And the men of the island town machine-gun the whole graveyard.And the woman is happy that she'll have a home delivery.Probably the two greatest failings here were the decision to, as I said, play it straight, and the relentless down home chat.Honestly, Steve, I know you have an ear for dialogue.I BELIEVE YOU.
Still, snark ended, this is a very good, creepy read, excellent for curling up with on a dark night.Going through it, piece by piece, you see and understand how much love King has for the craft, how hard he works at it, and how much joy it brings him.It's bound to bring you happiness as well, even if it's the squirming, terrified kind of happiness.It'll do.
A Great RIde
I really enjoyed this book, its a lot like enjoying classical music. The moods, the tempo and the pacing of the stories is so enjoyable. The story that still freaks me out to this day is "Home Delivery" simply for the scene that takes place in the space shuttle!! King could have made a whole novel based on that scene. But he didn't and that is what makes him so good at the short stories. I think a good short story forces your mind to ask "what would have happened if the story kept on going"? Not that his novels do not do the same, but in the short story King is forced to put down the bare bones of the story. The other stories that blew me away were: The Night Flier, The Moving Finger, Crotch End and My Pretty Pony. My Pretty Pony shows the depth of King's thinking on the philosophy of time. The Ten O' Clock People is a nice story but to me it's just a ripe off of John Carpenter's They Live. All in all not a bad collection of stories.
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