Flight or Fright

Overview

FLIGHT OR FRIGHT

edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent
An Original Cemetery Dance Trade Hardcover

Fasten your seatbelts for an anthology of turbulent tales curated by Stephen King and Bev Vincent. This exciting new anthology, perfect for airport or airplane reading, includes an original introduction and story notes for each story by Stephen King, along with brand new stories from Stephen King and Joe Hill.

“When I’m at 30,000 feet and the PA comes on and I hear those words—”this is your Captain speaking”—I immediately imagine he’s about to complete his sentence by adding, “and we’re all about to die.” He’ll laugh maniacally, the PA will shriek with feedback, and the 777 will tilt forward into a sickening nosedive. This is diseased, I know…but maybe you have a touch of the same illness, and if you do, Flight or Fright is the book for you.” —Joe Hill

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Horror (2018)

About the Book

Stephen King hates to fly.

Now he and co-editor Bev Vincent would like to share this fear of flying with you.

Welcome to Flight or Fright, an anthology about all the things that can go horribly wrong when you’re suspended six miles in the air, hurtling through space at more than 500 mph and sealed up in a metal tube (like—gulp!—a coffin) with hundreds of strangers. All the ways your trip into the friendly skies can turn into a nightmare, including some we’ll bet you’ve never thought of before… but now you will the next time you walk down the jetway and place your fate in the hands of a total stranger.

Featuring brand new stories by Joe Hill and Stephen King, as well as fourteen classic tales and one poem from the likes of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Dan Simmons, and many others, Flight or Fright is, as King says, “ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents… Even if you are safe on the ground, you might want to buckle up nice and tight.”

Book a flight with Cemetery Dance Publications for this terrifying new anthology that will have you thinking twice about how you want to reach your final destination.

Table of Contents:
Introduction by Stephen King
Cargo by E. Michael Lewis
The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson
The Flying Machine by Ambrose Bierce
Lucifer! by E.C. Tubb
The Fifth Category by Tom Bissell
Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds by Dan Simmons
Diablitos by Cody Goodfellow
Air Raid by John Varley
You Are Released by Joe Hill
Warbirds by David J. Schow
The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury
Zombies on a Plane by Bev Vincent
They Shall Not Grow Old by Roald Dahl
Murder in the Air by Peter Tremayne
The Turbulence Expert by Stephen King
Falling by James Dickey
Afterword by Bev Vincent

A Note from Stephen King on the origins of Flight or Fright:
Well, we were sitting around at dinner before a screening of The Dark Tower in Bangor, and there were a lot of people who’d flown in for the big night. I mentioned that I hated flying, and the conversation turned to various airplane stories, some scary and some funny. I said there had never been a collection of flight-based horror stories, although I could think of several (including the Matheson and the Conan Doyle, which are in the book) about the terrors of flight. I said someone ought to do the book. Rich Chizmar said, “I would, in a heartbeat.” It took more than one heartbeat, but Flight or Fright is now a book. Bev Vincent, that incredible polymath, agreed to team with me as co-editor, and now the book—including several new stories, one by me and one by my son, Joe Hill—is an actual fact. Bev and I think it would make ideal airplane reading, especially on stormy descents.

A Note from Bev Vincent on the origins of Flight or Fright:
I was sitting next to Rich Chizmar in a Bangor restaurant when Steve came up to us with this idea for an anthology of horror stories involving flying. The fact that we were across the street from Bangor International Airport was especially apropos. Steve and I dug deep to come up with this collection of stories—some of them I’d read before but many of them I hadn’t. It was a delight to find tales by some of my favorite authors that fit the loose theme and also to be introduced to several new-to-me writers who had published some chilling tales. Then there’s the new stories by Steve and Joe Hill, both of which are terrific and disturbing contributions to this sub-genre. I spent 24 hours total on two flights to and from Japan while working on this project and I spent a lot of time…a LOT of time…thinking about all the things that might go wrong when I was 35,000 feet up hurtling through space at 500 mph in a torpedo with wings. Is it a little twisted that we hope this anthology makes a lot of other people equally nervous the next time they board a flight?

Editions

Flight or Fright
Editors: Stephen King and Bev Vincent
Page Count: 400
Publication Date: September 4, 2018

Other editions

Translations:

  • Rettegés a felhők felett (Hungary, Europa) ISBN: 9789634059301 (October 26, 2018)
  • Ужас във висините (Bulgaria, Pleiada) ISBN: 9789544092238 (2018)
  • Flug Und Angst (Germany, Heyne/Random House) ISBN: 978-3-453-43980-1 (April 4, 2019)
  • 17 Podniebnych Koszmarów (Poland, Prószyński i S-ka) ISBN: 978-83-8169-020-1 (February 12, 2019)
  • Odio Volare (Italy, Sperling & Kupfer)  ISBN: 978-88-2006-754-0 (September 2019)
  • Απρόσμενες αναταράξεις (Greece, Kleidarithmos Publications) ISBN : 978-960-461-966-5 (June 12, 2019)
  • Por los aires (Spain, Debolsillo) ISBN: 978-8466349529 (November 7, 2019)
  • Летать или бояться (Russia, AST) ISBN: 978-5-17-114110-3 (September 23, 2019)
  • 死んだら飛べる (Japan, Takeshobo) ISBN: 978-4801920118 (September 26, 2019)
  • سفر أم خطر – 17 حكاية مضطرية (Arabic Scientific Publishers, Inc. September 25, 2019)
  • Terror a Bordo (Brazil, Suma)  (February 2020)
  • Лети або тремти (Ukranian, Family Leisure Club), January 1, 2020
  • Classe Tous Risques (France, le Livre de Poche Imaginaire) ISBN: 2253820148 (May 6, 2020)
  • 恐飞故事集 (China, ‎People’s Literature Publishing House) ISBN: 9787020168347 (March 2022)

Cemetery Dance trade hardcover edition:
• Printed on 60# acid-free paper
• Bound in full-cloth with colored head and tail bands
• Featuring hot foil stamping on the front boards and spine
• Printed and bound with full-color endpapers
• Smyth sewn to create a more durable binding
• Wrapped in a full-color dust jacket
• Retail price just $27.95

Cemetery Dance Slipcased Hardcover Artist Edition:
• Each book hand-numbered and housed in a custom-made slipcase
• Personally signed by Bev Vincent and Cortney Skinner on a unique signature page
• Includes exclusive interior artwork by Cortney Skinner that does not appear in the trade edition
• Printed on 60# acid-free paper
• Bound in a fine material with colored head and tail bands
• Featuring hot foil stamping on the front boards and spine
• Printed and bound with full-color endpapers
• Smyth sewn to create a more durable binding
• Wrapped in a DIFFERENT full-color dust jacket featuring artwork by Cortney Skinner
• Limited ONE TIME printing of this special edition
• Retail price: $85

Cemetery Dance Signed & Traycased Hardcover Lettered Edition:
• This will be one of the most unique editions Cemetery Dance Publications has ever created
• Limited to just 52 signed and lettered copies personally signed by Stephen King, Bev Vincent, and Cortney Skinner
• Housed in a custom-made box unlike anything we’ve ever produced before
• Printed on the same 80# acid-free archival quality paper we use for our high-end Stephen King Limited Editions
• Bound in leather with colored head and tail bands
• Featuring hot foil stamping on the front boards and spine
• Printed and bound with deluxe marbled endpapers created exclusively for this edition
• Smyth sewn to create a more durable binding
• Limited ONE TIME printing of this special edition
• Retail price: $1500

Reviews

This entertaining anthology of horror, mystery, and literary tales about aircraft (most reprinted) will have the reader thinking twice about flying. The stories span the entire century of human flight, beginning with Arthur Conan Doyle’s riveting “The Horror of the Heights,” in which a pilot attempts to discover what lurks in the clouds. Most of the tales tend to skew toward horror. In E. Michael Lewis’s “Cargo,” the crew of a plane bringing bodies back from Jonestown start hearing noises coming from the cargo bay. In Cody Goodfellow’s “Diablitos,” an art smuggler gets more than he bargained for when he tries to bring a tribal mask to the U.S. Others take a different approach, such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Flying Machine,” which sees a Chinese emperor realizing the risk that flight poses to the Great Wall. Standouts include the two original stories: King’s “The Turbulence Expert,” a perfectly tense tale about a mysterious group that prevents aircraft crashes though unusual means, and Joe Hill’s “You Are Released,” made terrifying by its proximity to reality: it follows the crew and passengers on a 777 en route to Boston, who learn that North Korea has just nuked Guam and other countries are retaliating. This is a strong anthology full of satisfying tales. — Publishers Weekly (*their fifth most-read review of 2018 out of ~8000 reviews)

Even for people without flight phobia, commercial air travel can be unpleasant. But that is exactly what makes it the perfect frame for an anthology of horror stories, especially one coedited by King (The Outsider, 2018), who has a lifelong fear of flying. The terror often writes itself, a point that King and Vincent (The Road to the Dark Tower, 2004) prove with this expertly compiled collection of tales that entertain and scare. Besides brand-new stories by King and Joe Hill, the contents include 15 reprinted surprises, tales of horror in the air from famous authors like Arthur Conan Doyle, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and Dan Simmons as well as an 1899 story by the often overlooked Ambrose Bierce. Whether readers take it to the airport or read it with feet firmly planted on the ground, Flight or Fright delivers on its promised theme and will make the next plane ride a little more exciting. Pair it with themed horror anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow (Black Feathers, 2017) and John Joseph Adams (What the #@&% Is That?, 2016).

Further Appeal: New stories by Stephen King and Joe Hill, the almost universal fear of flying trope, classic stories….this book really does sell itself. And sells it very well as the first printing is already sold out and it hasn’t shipped yet.

But seriously, this is a great intro to horror collection. The mixture of classic authors with new masters and a common trope that is scary but not necessarily gory or based on a supernatural monster, will lure in readers, many of whom might not consider themselves horror readers.

—Becky Spratford, Booklist

Flight Or Fright is a glorious collection of 17 airborne-themed short stories from a selection of authors who are gleefully intent on making sure that you never want to fly again. Edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent, Flight Or Fright includes tales from authors such as Roald Dahl, Joe Hill, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury and even the mighty Stephen King himself.

Each of the tales revolve around planes and/or air travel – and every fear which they conjure and expound. Usually any collection of short stories has a few which fail to hit the mark, but Flight Or Fright takes-off from E. Michael Lewis’ spine-tingling Cargo and it doesn’t let you disembark until James Dickey’s hypnotic Falling finally brings you back to earth (with a mighty thud).

If you’re going to play favourites with these stories, then it’s probably going to be Richard Matheson’s Nightmare At 20, 000 Feet, a stone-cold classic which was adapted into an episode of The Twilight Zone starring William Shatner and again by George Miller for Twilight Zone: The Movie. Other standouts include Joe Hill’s You Are Released, E.C. Tubb’s Lucifer! and Stephen King’s own, The Turbulence Expert.

The beauty of Flight Or Fright is the sheer craftsmanship of the tales. These are a masterclass in tension and fear, the perfect thing to read when you’re firmly on the ground – but you might want to leave this addictive page-turner behind if you’re about to take to the air for your holidays — .Niall Browne at Movies in Focus

Air travel used to be one of those things that scared me, but not for any reason I was ever able to pin down totally. Eventually, I was advised to accept that I was going to die, and then I’d relax and enjoy the journey – and ever since, it’s not been an issue. Even writing an 180,000 word book on Air Disasters in just two months a few years back didn’t bring the fear back – in fact, if anything the research for that reinforced just how much safer air travel is now (particularly after talks with cabin and cockpit crew who passed on certain things that aren’t generally known).

That might change after reading this collection of stories curated by Messrs King and Vincent, both of whom provide a tale (although the idea that there are turbulence experts out there is rather comforting). It’s a mix of the well-known (such as Richard Matheson’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet), the classic (including a spooky story from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose imagery will haunt you – and make you look out the window next time the aircraft you’re on breaks through the cloud cover), and the new – especially one of the most frightening stories that Joe Hill has yet committed to print. All eras of flight are covered – perhaps not going back to Daedalus and Icarus, but not too far removed in a Ray Bradbury vignette – and while we might find some of the science a step too far removed from what we know now, there’s a power in some of the older tales that still grips.

Even if the authors’ names are familiar to you, you may well not know the particular stories: there’s a piece of Roald Dahl writing I’d not encountered before, as well as a particularly nasty character created by E.C. Tubb for his tale whose adventures I’m surprised we’ve not seen on the large or small screen. Each story gets a brief introduction from Stephen King, and both editors contribute a short essay – King’s explaining how we could easily have lost him well over a decade before his car incident.

Verdict: With graphic descriptions of everything from aerial combat to descent to Earth without benefit of parachute, this definitely leans toward the second word in its title. Recommended. 9/10 — Paul Simpson, SFB (Sci-Fi Bulletin)

There’s a great line in Peter Gent’s novel North Dallas Forty where the narrator, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Phil Elliot, explains why he likes to fly: “At 5,000 feet, I figure (in a passenger seat in a jet) is the one place I can’t be blamed for anything that (screws) up.” Well, it makes sense that a fictional character is the only one in the world for whom the prospect of flying doesn’t spark an anxiety attack. This book of short stories, out from vaunted horror publisher Cemetery Dance, is a wonderful, must-read collection for vacation-season travel. The contributors are genuine heavyweights including King, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Dickey, Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Dan Simmons and Joe Hill. It’s amazing how many different ways there are to terrify a reader through the prism of flight, and these bastards are really, disturbingly good at it. Don’t board a plane without a copy! — Rick Koster, The Day

As a follower of, and occasional fellow passenger, crime fiction over the years, I have received a weird variety of ‘promotional items’ accompanying new books. These have included: a traveller’s sewing kit, chocolates, a torch, key-fobs, flash-drives, bookmarks galore and miniature bottles of vodka and bourbon sadly too small to qualify as a decent bribe.

But until now I have never received what we used to call on aeroplanes, a sick-bag! An unused one, I hasten to add, and personalised to promote a collection of stories designed to make those frightened of flying even more scared: Flight or Fright edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent and published this month by Hodder.

I simply cannot resist suggesting that for some of the books I have been sent to review, a sick-bag would have been most welcome, but not this one as it contains some classic tales by some big names in the horror and science fiction genres. There’s Stephen King, of course, but also Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl and Dan Simmons. Particular treats come in the form of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by the awesome Richard Matheson which made a famous Twilight Zone episode (starring William Shatner); a prose poem by James Dickey, author of Deliverance and the underrated thriller To The White Sea; and even a locked-room mystery set on an aeroplane by Peter Tremayne – better known for his Celtic mysteries – which has a lovely Latin tag-line clue.

The anthology is dedicated ‘to all the pilots…(who) …brought their passengers home safely. The list includes Wilbur Wright and Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger and, delightfully, Ted Striker. — Mike Ripley, SHOTS eZine

If you’ve ever flown, then you’ll know the fear that can sometimes come with the experience; the unexpected turbulence, unforeseen weather events, the vertigo, the constant possibility that something might go wrong and send the plane plummeting to the ground.

This “fear” is exactly what editors Stephen King and Bev Vincent explore in their anthology, Flight or Fright, and the authors push every conceivable notion of aeronautical terror to their limit. In his introduction to the anthology King himself admits to not being a fan of flying, and presents one of his own experiences to set up the tone for the fiction that follows.

Flight or Fright offers up an interesting mix of classic and new stories with the majority consisting of reprints and two new stories, one by King and the other by his son, Joe Hill.

As a whole, the anthology presents a wide array of scares, ramping up the latent fears air travel can present; the claustrophobia, the sounds the plane’s mechanics makes, the sheer powerlessness that passengers feel when something does go wrong. There are tales of paranoia (Richard Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”), cosmic terror (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Horror of the Heights”), time travel (E.C. Tubb’s “Lucifer!”), and even a locked room murder in an airplane lavatory (Peter Tremayne’s “Murder in the Air”).

There are several real standouts, including the opening story, E. Michael Lewis’ “Cargo.” The tale offers a nightmarish insight into the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre from inside the cargo hold of a C-141 troop carrier. The blend of history with the supernatural makes it one of the most memorable stories.

Other memorable entries include “Diablitos” by Cody Goodfellow; the author mixes native Columbian mythology with airborne disease and spins a nasty little apocalyptic tale that will definitely leave a bad taste in the mouth. The one story that manages to not only be entertaining, but poignant, is Joe Hill’s “You Are Released.” This passenger-hopping tale about an airliner hurtling through the outbreak of World War III is pure nightmare fuel. It’s a vivid exploration of real people, flaws and all, as they contemplate catastrophe.

King’s story, “The Turbulence Expert” proposes that there are special people tasked to help planes survive the phenomenon of “clear air turbulence” using their fear alone. Like many of King’s short stories, it leaves you guessing—and wanting more.

The volume ends with a long poem by James Dickey, called “Falling.” Supposedly inspired by the real-life account of a stewardess falling out of a plane, Dickey paints a beautifully haunting picture of what would no doubt be a horrifying demise.

One observation that some readers may find curious is that there are no stories by female authors in the anthology. This certainly isn’t a deal-breaker, but it would have been interesting to have had some tales from a female perspective to add some additional diversity. Having said that, it’s possible that there may have been few stories of this nature written by women for the editors to select from?

According to Bev Vincent’s Afterword, the idea for Fright or Flight was apparently conceived by King on a whim, but it’s clear that each story has been carefully selected. The pair have scoured the globe and found some of the most intriguing tales of high-flying horror, mystery and adventure. Here’s hoping King and Vincent decide to compile a second volume with some fresh content. With such a terrifying theme, the sky’s the limit. — Greg Chapman, new york journal of books

Flight or Fright brings together 17 turbulent tales which will strike fear in to those who especially have a fear of flying but will quite frankly scare the pants off of anyone who has ever been on a plane…these stories will get that grey matter ticking, whirling it into overdrive so it resembles a greying custard in your skull by the time you have finished.

Trust me you will never board a plane again without thinking about one of these stories.

But more importantly than all of this, the tales collected here are both terrifyingly brilliant and showcase some of the best writers both past and present – many of these stories have been published previously, but there are quite a few I’ve never come across before and I delighted in discovering some of these classics for the first time…and if all of that isn’t floating your boat, there are also two new short stories from Stephen King and Joe Hill to devour. If you are brave enough to buy the ticket and take the ride, then lets get started – oh, and don’t forget the sick bag…you may need it.

The collection as a whole works really well, it reads like a who’s who in literature – Flight or Fright has something for everyone, it’s not all out horror which is good, it’s a subtle blend of horror over various genres – and this I would say is its big selling point. The anthology will impact the reader in many different ways and that’s what makes a good anthology, a great anthology; being able to offer a variety of readers from all walks of life a collection of stories that we thrill, scare and cause panic in equal measure.

If you didn’t fear flying before, after reading Flight or Fright you might just start having palpitations and coming out in a cold sweat the next time you find yourself at an airport awaiting to board your next flight.

With the writers Stephen King and Bev Vincent have been able to include here, trust me, you will be travelling first class all the way. — Ross Jeffery, STORGY Books

BOUND TO PLEASE / Turbulent flights depart for destinations unknown

“Our lives always hang by a thread,” Stephen King writes in his introduction to “Flight or Fright,” an anthology of weird tales that unfold aboard airplanes, “but that is never more clear than when descending into LaGuardia [Airport in New York] through thick clouds and heavy rain.”

Clouds and rain are the least of the worries of the passengers and crew in the collection’s 16 stories and one poem. There are no snakes on these planes, but Bev Vincent, who edited the anthology together with King, contributes a story called “Zombies on a Plane.” Other tales feature murderers, ghosts, gremlins, revenge-seekers and several varieties of time travelers.

Only two of the pieces are brand new — one each by King and his son, the novelist Joe Hill — but about half were originally published since 2000. The older ones date back as far as 1899, the year of a three-paragraph gag by Ambrose Bierce about credulous investors sinking their money into a “flying machine” that they don’t understand.

The second-oldest story is one of the best. “The Horror of the Heights,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, came out in 1913 — only 10 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight — but it is set in an imagined future in which pilots reach such extreme altitudes that they discover a whole new ecosystem. It’s based on a wispy, plankton-like mist on which peaceful creatures resembling translucent gas-filled jellyfish feed. Further up the food chain, there are monsters no pilot would want to meet. The story’s final, vivid image leaves a lasting impression.

Moving toward modern times, there are stories by Roald Dahl, drawing on his Royal Air Force experience in World War II; Ray Bradbury, imagining the mystery of flight being solved in ancient China; and Richard Matheson, whose story “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” became a famous “Twilight Zone” episode. From U.S. Air Force veteran James Dickey, best remembered as the author of “Deliverance,” there is a poem imagining an airline stewardess making the long fall to earth after being blown out of a defective door.

Back in the present day — or perhaps next week — Hill’s black comedy “You Are Released” is another of the best, weaving together nine characters’ points of view as their flight is rerouted for reasons that include the message: “Sorry about this, ladies and gents. Uncle Sam needs the sky this afternoon for an unscheduled world war.”

As for King himself, his story “The Turbulence Expert” includes the line, “The plane seemed to run into a brick wall.” Nearly these exact words also appear in his introduction to the book, when he recounts an incident in the 1980s when a small plane he was in had a near-miss with a 747. It was “caught in its exhaust, and tossed like a paper airplane in a gale.” King says the episode cured him of his fear of flying, as it showed the extreme abuse a plane can take and keep on going.

In a book that’s meant to be scary, that anecdote is oddly reassuring.

Where to read: At the airport, if you’re feeling bold. Leave it for a traveler to find, if you’re feeling wicked. — Tom Baker / Japan News Staff Writer

Ladies and Gentlemen… Your Captain Is Dead.

First, let me be honest: I am not a good flier. I flew to Florida for spring break a few months after 9/11, and there were armed guardsman all over our tiny airport. Ever since then, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach starting the night before we leave that doesn’t abate until after we land. Yes, I know it’s safer than driving. Yes, I know that there is an infinitesimal chance of something going wrong. None of those things matter to me in the least. There is not a part of me that’s unhappy that I haven’t been on a plane in over 3 years.

Needless to say, these stories appealed to all my flying insecurities. This is one of the best anthologies I have read in a long time. Co-edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent (both of whom have stories included), we take a trip through the not-so-friendly skies and are reminded just how vulnerable we are riding in a tin can at 20,000+ feet. The book includes murders, gremlins, zombies, dead bodies and missiles, all of which are in the air with you, whether you are flying in a new jumbo jet, or a World War II era prop plane. Recline your seats and hold on, this ride is about to get bumpy!

I was stoked to see Richard Matheson’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet in the table of contents. I don’t think a book about the horrors of flying would be complete without it. Imagine seeing a creature on the wing of your plane attempting to tamper with the engines while in flight. (If you’ve only seen the Twilight Zone episode, you are missing out!) While I don’t recall reading anything by E.C. Tubb before, I thought that Lucifer! was a great tale about both time travel and the horrors of flying. Zombies on a Plane by Bev Vincent is a rather cautionary tale about the desperate fight for survival and running away from your problems, even when running seems like the best possible idea. And even though Murder in the Air by Peter Tremayne was more mystery than horror (although having to solve a mysterious death in the air is a horror in itself), it was quite clever.

Coincidentally, my last flight was to see Stephen King in Toronto, so perhaps there is some bias, but I really enjoyed his new story included in this collection. The Turbulence Expert has a truly unique premise – imagine if there was someone on the plane to help keep the flight safe that wasn’t an Air Marshal…

The other previously unpublished tale included in the collection was Joe Hill’s You Are Released. I had the opportunity to go to a book festival featuring Joe Hill a few months ago (no flight necessary) and heard him read an abridged version so I already knew it was great. A terrifyingly plausible story of what if, made more frightening because it occurs to the passengers while en route across the country. It did absolutely nothing for my flying jitters!

Anthologies are always a mixed bag – some stories you love, some you don’t. This is a truly unique collection that touches the many horrors of air travel.  All in all, this is a wonderful assortment of great authors and remarkable stories. — Dez Nemec, Fiction Addict

Here’s some turbulent reading to put a little frission into your next longhaul.

This collection of flight-related scary tales is designed to have you clutching the armrest in terror and comes with the cheery smile of Stephen King who edited and compiled the collection of short stories with Bev Vincent.

Air travel is ripe material for horror. I’ve always felt that plane passengers are necessarily on an uneven psychological setting. All stacked together in a fragile tomb-like tube blasting through the stratosphere, we sit side by side with complete strangers in a weird communal space trying to observe our private niceties. We fly for hours together, falling asleep leaning on each other, passing one another food, moving to the side so our fellows can go to the toilet — yet we avoid eye contact.

Pretty weird, huh?

And of course, what could make better airport-purchased, page-turning fiction than horror stories featuring airports?

King contributes a new story to the anthology, but there are plenty of other big names to dive into. Ray Bradbury is there, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle too, and Roald Dahl’s They Shall Not Grow Old stands out. Vincent’s Zombies on a Plane — which is about, well, have a guess — is a knockabout piece of fun.

Two Minutes Forty-five Seconds, by Dan Simmons, is a genuine downer about an engineer on a murder-suicide one-way trip, all layered with subtle references to Nasa’s Challenger disaster.

The Fifth Category also has real-world connections. Sniffing around the edges of America’s post-9/11, Guantanamo Bay exploits, the author, Tom Bissel, explores the damage done to the soul of a person who would commission torture of other people and later justify to themselves and others the use of of torture. Now that’s real horror.

John Varley’s Air Raid is an at-times hilarious tale of time travellers snatching people from a plane doomed to crash. It’s pacey and good fun.

My own aviation horror stories generally relate to times in which I was banking on getting a Business Class upgrade but found myself instead seated way back in — gulp — Economy Class. I still break out into cold sweats, dear reader.

I’m not generally a fan of horror books or films (for the quite logical reason that I don’t enjoy have the bejesus scared out of me) but I’ve always been fascinated by Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson.

It was adapted to the small screen for an episode of The Twilight Zone, starring a dashing you William Shatner as a nervous airline passenger who notices a flying, humanoid creature walking on the wing of the plane and tearing pieces of metal out of the engine.

Cheerful stuff. Later, this story was worked into the The Twilight Zone film of 1983, with John Lithgow occupying the seat formerly filled by Shatner (that’s the version I first encountered).

When I fly these days (and, yep, I fly a lot), I don’t particularly like to have a window seat, partly because I find the sight of the wings to be a little unsettling — those metallic probes jutting out, hopefully, into nothingness as a reminder that we funny little mammals are not meant to be flying. I’ve always wondered whether, somewhere in my subconsciousness, it was seeing that Twilight Zone movie as a kid that planted a nervous little seed, which blossomed into a full-grown adult who doesn’t like looking out the window.

A nifty stocking filler for a non-nervous flier. — Winston Aldworth,  Travel Editor, New Zealand Herald

There is a certain majestic nature to being far above the clouds, crossing the country or an ocean while receiving small bags of snacks and watered-down drinks. Air travel has long been the go-to means of getting from one place to another, especially with the ongoing technological advancements for the general public. However, Stephen King and Bev Vincent seek to dispel this bucolic myth with their collection of short stories about flying, all of which explore levels of fear or evil when it comes to being in the air. The collection of seventeen pieces keeps the reader enthralled, with stories from many authors who penned their works at different times during the progress of flight over the past century. From stories about cargo trips back from Jonestown, to ever-elusive gremlins on the wing, through to pieces about a nuclear war commencing during the middle of a continental flight and even the joys of having an airplane before a crime scene during an in-flight murder, King and Vincent seek to spook the reader just a little as they learn about the many ways in which flight could be anything but safe. With wonderfully gripping pieces, some as short as a single paragraph, the editors offer a jam-packed adventure that would put any security scanning line to shame when it comes to horrific experiences. A great anthology that will keep many a reader wanting to plant their feet on terra firms for the foreseeable future. Highly recommended for those who enjoy short stories that differ greatly from one another and those who are not put off by some of the predictable disasters that could await any airline passenger.

Having long been a fan of Stephen King—and an avid flier—I was eager to get my hands on this piece to see the sorts of authors and stories that were gathered to create this nightmarish collection. Not only are the pieces entirely unique from one another, but they span the entirety of the flight experience. Some authors penned their stories not long after the Wright Brothers made their brief sojourn into the air while others tackle topics of a Cold War era or even when travel was as sleek as could be imagined. This great cross-section of writing enriches the collection even more, though there is a theme of fear within each piece. As the editors offer a brief synopsis of the piece to come, the reader is able to place it into context and can—should they wish—notice the chronological and technological progresses made in air travel. As the reader is introduced to scores of characters in a variety of settings, they can relate to as many as they like while endeavouring not to scare themselves with vivid imaginings of what could go wrong. The choice of stories was wonderful, as was the varied lengths of the pieces on offer. However, perhaps I should not have read this days before I would board a plane. Now then, which button was actually used to bring down the plane and not summon assistance for additional pretzels?

Kudos, Messrs. King and Vincent, for this captivating collection. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and hope you’ll continue to collaborate again soon. — Book Reviews to Ponder

Stephen King is afraid of flying, as he makes abundantly clear in the introduction to this anthology, categorising it as an activity with “all the charm and excitement of a colorectal exam”, and never mind all those statistics showing how safe air travel is compared to other modes of transport. Flight or Fright contains sixteen stories and one poem. Two of the stories, by Joe Hill and King himself, are original to the collection, while the earliest of what we have on offer, Ambrose Bierce’s flash fiction from 1899, predates powered flight itself. King also provides story notes for each literary gem, while co-editor Bev Vincent in his afterword relates how the anthology came into existence, among other things.

Opening story by E. Michael Lewis is told from the viewpoint of a US loadmaster who, in lieu of his usual ‘Cargo’, ends up with the unenviable task of shepherding the dead bodies of children back from Jonestown. There are hints of the supernatural to the story, but hints is all they are, with the real thrust of the narrative having to do with men under pressure in an extreme situation and how they can become unnerved, even the most professional. It is an unsettling story primarily because it highlights the evil and inexplicable acts human beings are capable of. We have an outré entity in ‘The Horror of the Heights’ by Arthur Conan Doyle, a tale from the early days of manned flight, when heroic aviators competed to attain ever greater altitudes. In this story one man has a theory about what may exist at certain heights. While it remains a gripping read, the backdrop to the story has already been rendered null. The joy here is in reading of the aviator’s exploits, seeing the clues planted in the text as to what may exist up there, and the final, inevitable revelation as to the horror of the heights.

Perhaps the most famous horror story ever written on the fear of flying, Richard Matheson’s ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’ picks up on the idea of gremlins with a protagonist who believes that he sees a creature on the wing of the plane in which he is travelling, and that it intends to cause a crash. Wilson is unable to convince anyone else of the truth of the situation, is just another man afraid of flying who is willing to cause a scene, and the beauty of the story lies in his descent into madness and the ambiguity with which Matheson infuses the narrative, so that we can never really be sure to what degree the things he is seeing are real or simply the hallucinations of a frightened mind.

Ambrose Bierce’s one pager ‘The Flying Machine’ is more about human gullibility than manned flight, with people willing to invest in something as fanciful as the titular flying machine despite all the evidence that it is a very bad idea. It’s a neat idea that doesn’t outstay its welcome. In ‘Lucifer!’ by E. C. Tubb a man steals a time travel device from some future tourist, and though he can only go fifty seven seconds into the past it is enough for him to indulge all his vices, including gambling and murder. Finally he gets hoist by his own petard thanks to an unfortunate incident with an airplane. There are a lot of good ideas here, the story rich in invention and showing how this very limited form of time travel might be made to work, though ultimately it is a story about a bad lot getting his much deserved comeuppance, and as such it pleased me very much. An apologist for state sponsored torture gets on board the wrong plane in Tom Bissell’s ‘The Fifth Category’ and, like the protagonist of the previous story, ends up on the rough end of poetic justice. Bissell does a good job of critiquing American policy on the subject of torture and, in the character of John, provides us with an eloquent spokesperson, albeit one who lacks the self-honestly to see what he really is, with his love of putting things in compartments and thus enabling himself to pardon and justify the inexcusable. The telling is calm, but in the final analysis this is a very angry story, and rightly so.

A guilt ridden man seeks redemption of a sort in ‘Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds’ by Dan Simmons, a bright, short story that effortlessly blends together guilt and bad memories, cleverly conflating the crash of a Gulfstream jet with the image of a rollercoaster ride into oblivion. Cody Goodfellow’s ‘Diablitos’ has a man who smuggles stolen cultural artefacts back into the States become the victim of an ancient curse, with things going very wrong on board the plane he takes. It’s a familiar plot, but made special by Goodfellow’s epic writing style and the horrific images of plague and disaster with which he fills the tale. Time travellers from a post-apocalyptic future seek to save the remnants of mankind by stealing people from doomed airplanes in ‘Air Raid’ by John Varley, another story with a science fictional twist and a wealth of incidental invention to carry us through to the bittersweet end note.

One of two previously unprinted stories, Joe Hill’s ‘You Are Released’ was my personal favourite. It is told from the viewpoint of passengers and crew on board a plane that is in the air when what appears to be a nuclear war breaks out. Hill captures perfectly the tone of voice of each member of his diverse cast, their growing sense of panic as events unfold and it becomes obvious that this is not an exercise or a false alarm. It is, out of all these stories, the one that feels most pertinent to the world as it is today, the story that has the greatest chance of coming true, and all the more unsettling for that. From strongest story to the one I felt was the weakest with ‘Warbirds’ by David J. Schow. A man whose father served in the USAF during WWII seeks out a member of his father’s old crew to verify an “urban” legend that has haunted him. There’s a wealth of detail here, and it was made all the more interesting for me personally in that the air crew operated out of a base in my native village of Shipdham, and yet in among all that detail it felt very much that Schow had lost sight of his goal, so that at the end I wasn’t much clearer about the point of it all than I was at the beginning.

Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Flying Machine’ is an elegant fable set in ancient China, but at its heart is a harsh moral lesson about the uses to which new technology will be put, the beauty of the words and the underlying sense of sorrow at what takes place demonstrating Bradbury’s oeuvre at its very best. ‘Zombies on a Plane’ by Bev Vincent does pretty much what it says on the tin, as a group of survivors try to escape the zombie apocalypse that has engulfed the civilised world by taking to the skies in a plane. This is a tense, cinematic tale, one that brings to mind the remake of Dawn of the Dead, but ends with a reminder that we always carry the seeds of our own destruction with us, that fate is a hard and uncaring taskmaster who’ll catch us on the way out if he misses us on the way in. Set in WWII, ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ finds Roald Dahl in a bittersweet mood, his explanation of what happened to a missing airman presenting us with a vision of a post-death gathering of slain pilots, a hint at something truly celestial, a brotherhood that endures beyond death and eclipses mortal rivalry.

Peter Tremayne’s ‘Murder in the Air’ presents us with a variation on the locked room murder mystery, a dead businessman found in an aircraft toilet. Fortunately criminologist Gerry Fane is aboard the plane to cross question the suspects and come up with an explanation for the seemingly impossible crime. Engrossing and thoroughly entertaining, this had about it the feel of a cosy detective story, but one decked out in modern technological trim. The protagonist of Stephen King’s tale is ‘The Turbulence Expert’, employed by a mysterious authority to travel on planes for reasons that become horribly obvious as the story unfolds. It’s a novel idea and developed with King’s usual flair and gift for making the impossible sound not only credible but eminently likely. Nor does the author stint on the horror of the situation, as his hero’s “gift” hinges on his ability to visualise and live through plane crashes. Finally we have prose poem ‘Falling’ by James Dickey, which is based on a true story and gives us a stream of consciousness account of the last moments of an air hostess who has been sucked out of a plane at 33,000 feet up. It is a powerful piece, made all the more so by the vividness of Dickey’s imagery, and the at times almost erotic manner in which he depicts his character’s plight.

Overall this was an excellent anthology, one that captured the very best in airborne thrills and spills, but it probably won’t find an audience among those intent on convincing us that it really is more dangerous to travel by car, or be showing up on the bookshelves in airport stores any time soon. — Black Static

Inflight Entertainment

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