If we do Night Shift, we need to do Skeleton Crew, too.
Which one do you like best and why?
Here’s a linkto wiki with links to a short summary of each story if your memory needs a jog.
I might have voted for five of them…
We read Skeleton Crew my freshman year of high school. It was probably the 8th time I’d read it. I remember dissecting “Here There Be Tygers”, and comparing it to Kipling, and ancient maps where you’d fill in the gaps with “Here there by tygers”. I also remember how very similar the bathroom being described looked just like the bathroom we used when I was in 1st grade. When our freshman lit. class finally figured out that the “tiger” in the bathroom was just the daydreams of a young boy as his mind played tricks with the light pouring through the “stripes” of the horizontal blinds, we were pissed (because it wasn’t an actual tiger)! But it definitely left an impression of what writers could do with a short story.
“The Mist” is classic. Some people hate the movie adaptation by Darabont, but I thought it was perfect. He took some liberties with the ending, but if anyone is going to be allowed to fudge with King’s written word, it’s Darabont (or Robin Furth…). “The Mist”'s one weakness, the ending (huh - King couldn’t close the deal?), was finally given closure. Loved it. How often do characters these days truly give you a “oh my god - I can’t believe he just did that?” reaction of true horror?
“The Jaunt” was simply awesome. King isn’t a great scifi writer because he doesn’t delve into it much, but when he does in short bursts like this, he shines.
“The Raft” was really cool. Growing up we went to a lake that had a raft like that, so I could see it perfectly. Add in the coolness of night swimming with hot chicks too! It’s the perfect description of a time and place, he creates a handful of distinct characters in a short amount of words, gives them realistic dialogue for the situation, and totally fucks them over. I think this (Skeleton Crew) is where King developed his bad habit of not ending stories properly, because it WORKS with short stories - you can leave your readers hanging because there’s another story on the next page.
I voted for “Beachword” over “Survivor Type”. ST was always the popular pick (“tastes like ladyfingers…!”), but I though “Beachworld” was the better “I’m stranded on this place and I’m going to make the best of it” story. Again, another attempt at scifi, and he succeeds because he didn’t try too hard with details. I really like the way he spends 95% of the time in one little area, and then right at the end pulls back to reveal how desperate a situation it really is.
I gotta disagree with you on The Mist. I think that for King this was one of the stories he actually nailed the ending on. The ambiguity of what was going to happen, with a little hope thrown in, makes the story. I was way pissed with the ending Darabont threw in. It totally changed the tone of the story. That ending made the story one of despair, not hope.
Slee
This is my favourite collection of Stephen King books. The Mist is one of my favourite short stories, and I think the ending is fantastic. King gets a lot of flack over his endings, but this one hits exactly the right note for me. It gives me goosebumps every time.
The other stories I like in this collection are The Jaunt, The Raft,* Survivor Type*, Beachworld and Gramma.
I voted for The Mist without looking up the others. I don’t know if it was the best written, but it is clearly the one that had the most impact on me. I’ve remembered it ever since I read the book the first time right after it was released.
Okay - it wasn’t a terrible ending, but I will disagree with any hope that was thrown in. That was false hope, if anything. And for a short story, it works. But for a movie, people would be physically angry if that’s what they went with. The movie ending works as well - it turns it around, leans heavily on the psychological component to the whole situation, and makes you deal with a decision you never thought you’d have to make.
I voted for: The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft, Beachworld, and Survivor Type.
I guess I’m the only fan of Mrs. Todd. King does a love story his way and nails it. The ending gives me chills.
I voted for The Mist and Survivor Type. The first because it was just darn good and the latter because any story that has a ending that still comes to mind to mildly horrify me at least once a month even though I read it many years ago get my vote.
And that last sentence is horrible, but I’m tired and can’t think of a way to improve it.
I don’t know about that. It’s been a while since I read it but IIRC, once they got on the road they heard a snatch of people on the radio right at the end. It wasn’t a huge amount, but enough to make you think they had a chance of getting out.
IMHO ending that Darabont used was a lame twist that did not need to be thrown in. One thing that I have always liked about King is that he does stories are about hope. Darabonts change made the whole thing rather pointless. However, YMMV.
Slee
three way tie with The Mist, The Raft and The Jaunt.
You could vote for multiple entries? Whoops.
Ooops too!
I voted for Gramma, that story freaks me the most.
It’s a tough choice, harder than for Night Shift.
I would have voted too for Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, The Jaunt, Beachworld and Word Processor of the Gods.
Oops three!
I voted for The Jaunt - the kid is just exploring a child’s natural curiosity and pays the price.
I would have also voted for Survivor Type or The Mist.
Hope? Not in Skeleton Crew. Nearly every one of those stories is going to end badly. The characters may not know it, but we do.
Spoilers for the movie “The Mist”, in case anyone is inspired by this thread to go out and rent it:
There actually was hope in the movie, but the character(s) weren’t aware of it. The monsters were getting bigger and bigger, and mist thicker and thicker - same as in the book. Suicide was a very real possibility/necessity. Having them immediately find the National Guard waiting for them would have been a giant cop-out, and killing them with giant bugs would have been disappointing for a movie audience. For a movie, it was risky and well executed. IMO.
I voted “Gramma” (I do like when he brings Lovecraftian allusions into the picture, and the entire premise of the story is frightening) but could just as easily have gone with “The Raft,” “The Reach” (the only one of King’s more sentimental short stories that I really like), or “The Mist.” It’s an uneven collection, especially with the milkman stories thrown in, but probably my favorite of his story collections overall. Even the poems are memorable, and the non-horror stories here really succeed (“Wedding Gig” has some great characters, and “Ballad of the Flexible Bullet” is beguilingly weird).
I voted for “Survivor Type” because the whole story’s stuck with me since I last read the book about 20 years ago.
I think Darabont introduces hope into the equation on a different level that’s contrary to the spirit of the story (and really, the spirit of King’s work.) [spoiler]So much of King’s work is thematically driven by the idea that institutions in general, and state institutions in particular, fail individuals: the cops in his stories range from ineffectual pawns to representations of psychotic evil; there’s the whole Dallas Police thing in Tommyknockers; even in this collection there’s “The Jaunt” (I haven’t read the story in a while, but was the jaunt run as a private industry? I’m pretty sure it was federalized). King’s original story of “The Mist” certainly showcases this theme: it was governmental tomfoolery that led to all of this in the first place, and given the scale of what seems to have happened, how plausible is it that they could fix it in the first place, or that the world could even be saved? Darabont, rather than going with King’s dark subtext of mistrust of authority, sweeps hope back into the equation: the National Guard takes care of things, even tying up narrative loose ends like the lady who needed to be seen home. And all of this happens in a way that I suppose was necessary, given the temporal constraints of cinema, but which plays out like a vicious deus ex machina in reverse: no sooner has Thomas Jane’s character done what he thought he had to than the cavalry sweeps in, just in time not to save the day. It’s a pretty facile reintroduction of hope and trust (not on the level of individuals in the narrative, but on an overall ideological level) - the fact that official bodies are able to neatly clean up the mess they’ve made contradicts King’s entire ethos.
Also, I just want to know how they dealt with the long-legged beastie that walked past the car![/spoiler]
I think so too, which is strange because IMO, Skeleton Crew has fewer good stories. But the good ones are very, very good. I wanted to keep my choice down to one, as I did in the other poll, and wound up literally flipping a coin to choose between The Jaunt and Survivor Type. The Jaunt won.
Honorable mention to Survivor Type, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, The Raft, and Gramma.
I think it’s these two short story collections, more than any of his novels, that will keep me a King fan for life.
Couldn’t pick just one.
Seriously, I love Skeleton crew. As a young adult I read stories from it at least a dozen times. I haven’t read it in a few years now, but I should revisit it.
Hands down, the Mist is my favorite. I got the biaural (sp?) audio-play version of it in the early 1990’s (or whenever it came out) on a lark and I listened to the cassette so many times that I wore it out. I had whole portions of it memorized.
I’d say that it also greatly influenced me to check out Lovecraft - whom SK, I believe, mentioned somewhere was an influence of his (possibly in skeleton crew, I can’t remember).
I should note that the Mist is my favorite, but I couldn’t leave off Survivor Type and the Jaunt.