Book Review: FULL THROTTLE: Stories

FULL THROTTLE: STORIES
WILLIAM MORROW/HarperCollins – @WmMorrowBks @HarperCollins

[This review originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: Joe Hill
ISBN: 978-0-06-220067-9; hardback; 6 x 9 (October 1, 2019)
496pp, B&W, $27.99 U.S., $34.99 CAN

Full Throttle: Stories is a 2019 short story collection from author Joe Hill.  Originally a hardcover release, Full Throttle: Stories, which is Hill's fourth short story collection, contains 13 short stories of varying lengths.

Hill, whose birth name is Joseph Hillström King, is the son of legendary horror novelist and dark fantasy author, Stephen King, and novelist, nonfiction author, and poet, Tabitha King.  Hill is also a novelist and comic book writer (best known for the Locke & Key series from IDW Publishing).

Joe Hill collaborates with Stephen King on two of Full Throttle's stories.  Hill will never be the author that his father is, nor does Hill have to be Stephen King, who is one of the greatest short story fantasy authors of all time.  Hill only has to be himself, and Hill is quite the inventive, ingenious, and imaginative short story writer himself.

From the tale of a vengeful trucker ("Full Throttle," co- written with Stephen King) to the funky, near-future, have-and-have-not sci-fi (“All I Care About is You”), Joe Hill takes readers on a non-stop, break-neck journey through his own version of “The Twilight Zone.”  This is Joe Hill's trip through “Tales from The Darkside” in such edgy fare as the cautionary faerie fable (“Faun”) and the historical parable (“The Devil on the Staircase”).  Once you sit your ass inside this crazy ride, you won't have any choice but to go along Full Throttle, dear readers.

After being part of the British pop music recording duo, Eurythmics, for a decade, singer-songwriter Annie Lenox embarked on a solo career, beginning with the 1992 album, Diva.  I remember reading a review of her second album, Medusa (1995), in which the author of the review stated that every album should have two “great” songs.  I don't remember the name of the author or the place of publication of that review, but the review has had a deep influence on how I regard short story collections.

I insist that every short story collection have at least two stories that I consider great in order for me to consider the collection worth reading.  I also need to find two great stories in order for me to honestly recommend the collection to people who read my reviews.

Full Throttle: Stories only has one story that I consider piss poor, the werewolf-ish tale, “Wolverton Station.”  It is the kind of misfire that a published author can get published, but a novice author would need a miracle to get a recognized literary journal or fiction publication to publish such a minor tale.  “Wolverton Station,” the third story in the collection, is Full Throttle's “unlucky number 13.”

Otherwise, Full Throttle: Stories is one of the few great short story collections that I have read that are not written by someone named Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) or Stephen King.  The collection's best story is “Late Returns,” the lovely fable of the complexities and misunderstandings in parent-child relationships.  The Hallmark Channel could mine this story for a long series of made-for-TV movies.  I think what makes the story so memorable and exceptional is that it deals with the unasked questions, but also with the answered questions we don't realize were answered ages ago.

It was hard to choose a second favorite or second best, but I am going with “You Are Released,” an eve-of-apocalypse tale about Captain Leonard Waters, his crew, and the passengers of the 777 commercial jet airliner, “Delta 236.”  It puts readers in a front row seat to nuclear Armageddon, but it also exemplifies the hope, love, and reconciliation that humanity can have if it so chooses.

Joe Hill's two collaborations with Stephen King are heartbreaking, but for different reasons.  The first, the title track, “Full Throttle,” is a crime thriller that recalls road-rage-revenge films like Duel (1971, Steven Spielberg) and Joy Ride (2001, John Dahl).  The second Hill-King collaboration, “In the Tall Grass,” recalls King's short story, “Children of the Corn” (1977) and that classic tale's dark blend of blighted small town America, Americana, and paganism.

Hill actually tops the Americana of “In the Tall Grass,” with a brilliant spin on American separatism and inherited mental illness in the crazy and crazily brilliant “Mums.”  That story summons the is-it-or-isn't-real surrealism of Henry James' “The Turn of the Screw” (1898) and plants it in the black soil located in the dark corners of American culture.

So there is all kind of good stuff in Full Throttle: Stories.  It is a must-have for fans of dark fantasy short story collections.  I think the stories in this collection also suggest that, while he is in his late 40s, Joe Hill is just hitting his stride as a master of speculative and fantasy prose short fiction.

9.5 out of 10

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


www.joehillfiction.com
www.facebook.com/joehill

The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.


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Short Story Review: “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”

WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
A short story by Philip K. Dick - Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux on Patreon.

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” is a science fiction short story written by the late author Philip K. Dick and first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1966 issue). The story has been republished several times in book collections, most recently in Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002), which is where I read it (although I first read this story in another book collection back in the 1990s).

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” was loosely adapted into the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Total Recall, which was directed by Paul Verhoeven. That film is the subject of a 2012 remake starring Colin Farrell and directed by Len Wiseman.

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” takes place sometime in an indeterminate future in which humans have traveled to Mars and colonized the planet. The story hints or suggests that some of the rest of the solar system has also been visited by humans and perhaps colonized.

The story focuses on Douglas Quail, a nobody clerk and salaried employee. Quail yearns to travel to Mars the way other men might yearn to bed a pageant queen. His wife, a harpy-type named Kirsten, is not interested in traveling to Mars, but does agree that her wimpy husband needs adventure. Quail knows that he cannot afford a trip to Mars, which is expensive, not to mention that few people are even allowed to visit the planet.

Quail visits Rekal Incorporated, a company that offers “extra-factual memory implants.” These memories, which are implanted into the customer’s brain, are more real than real memories because implanted memories don’t fade away. Quail’s extra-factual memory package includes an adventure on Mars in which he is an agent for the Interplan Police Agency. However, something goes wrong during the memory implant, when Rekal discovers that there is more to Quail’s memories than they or even he realized.

I’ve found Philip K. Dick to be one of the most imaginative science fiction authors (and one of the most imaginative authors, in general) that I have ever encountered. I think his best work is found in his novels, but in his short stories, Dick presented seemingly countless inventive scenarios.

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” presents a familiar theme in Dick’s work: how the human mind struggles with shifting realities. Usually, a lead character will find himself trying to discern which is the real reality or which is his reality. Another familiar theme is man vs. bureaucracy or man vs. man (individual or organized) that act in opposition to the protagonist. In this story, Quail’s desires and yearnings to both visit Mars and to have a more fulfilling life runs up against the reality of a disapproving wife, his finances, Rekal, and Interplan.

I don’t want to spoil this story for anyone who has not yet read it or who have read it and don’t remember the details. However, I must say that the scenes in which the Rekal operatives find themselves confronted by the secrets Quail’s memories hold make this story worth reading. It is classic Philip K. Dick – the little guy fighting and even striking back at the forces gathered against him.

B+

Prose to Film: Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick

ADJUSTMENT TEAM
A short story by Philip K. Dick

“Adjustment Team” is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick that was first published in Orbit Science Fiction (September-October 1954). It has been reprinted several times, including in the collection, Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002), which is where I read it. The story is the basis for the current film, The Adjustment Bureau, written and directed by George Nolfi and starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Anthony Mackie.

The story focuses on a real estate salesman named Ed Fletcher who accidentally sees the truth behind reality. On a bright sunny morning, someone from the Adjustment Team known only as “Clerk” must make sure that Ed is in Sector T137 which is scheduled for adjustment. Clerk assigns the task of making sure that Ed is at the right place at the right time to Ed’s dog, Dobbie, a “canine Summoner.”

Of course, things go awry. Ed arrives at his job and sees the world in an altered state. He ends up knowing something he shouldn’t know and is soon on the run from the Adjustment Team. How he resolves this crisis will determine his ultimate fate.

Like much of Philip K. Dick’s work, the “Adjustment Team” deals with themes of dislocation, paranoia, and unyielding bureaucracy, but there is, this time, also a theme of yearning for a connection with a higher being. When Dick has Ed meet the Old Man, the boss of the Adjustment Team, Dick has Ed begging the Old Man to understand his plight. It isn’t a stretch to see this as Dick’s take on the powerless everyman who seeks mercy and understanding from a higher authority – a tyrannical power inflexible about its rules. Still, the everyman believes that his request is reasonable, even in the face of a power that insists on the opposite.

Overall, Adjustment Team is a minor story. The characters are soft, although Ed Fletcher is more filled out. The adversaries are largely underutilized, although I’m sure the film, The Adjustment Bureau, makes more use of them. The ending of “Adjustment Team” suggests an optimism that is surprising, but that makes this story more charming than the beginning and middle indicate.

B