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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780312878276
ISBN number: 0312878273
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: January 05, 2002
Publishing house: Tor Books
Sale Popularity Level: 106197
Studio: Tor Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Remember that monster on the wing of the airplane? William Shatner saw it on The Twilight Zone, John Lithgow saw it in the movie-even Bart Simpson saw it. 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' is just one of many classic horror stories by Richard Matheson that have insinuated themselves into our collective imagination.
Here are more than twenty of Matheson's most memorable tales of fear and paranoia, including:
'Duel,' the nail-biting tale of man versus machines that inspired Steven Spielberg's very first film;
'Prey,' in which a terrified woman is stalked by a malevolent Tiki doll, as chillingly captured in yet another legendary TV moment;
'Blood Son,' a disturbing portrait of a strange little boy who dreams of being a vampire;
'Dress of White Silk,' a seductively sinister tale of evil and innocence.
Personally selected by Richard Matheson, the bestselling author of I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come, these and many other stories, more than demonstrate why he is rightfully regarded as one of the finest and most influential horror writers of our generation.
Amazon.com Review:
This classic horror collection showcases the early career of one of the field's most influential and innovative writers. Much of Richard Matheson's work has found its way into pop culture: the title story became a memorable episode of television's The Twilight Zone, and horror aficionados reading 'Prey' will immediately visualize Trilogy of Terror's Karen Black hunkered down with a butcher knife. But this collection's power lies in its wide-ranging exploration of style and subject and the literary skill that Matheson demonstrated right from the start of his career. Many of his stories were decidedly unconventional when published (most in the 1950s and early 1960s), and still have the power to shock or to satisfy with their graceful inevitability. Matheson is not primarily a monster writer: rather, he examines how we create monsters from our own fears and frailties, and sometimes become the monsters ourselves. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is a must-have collection for Matheson fans and readers who like their horror spare, precise, and chilling. --Roz Genessee
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Rated by buyers 
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First off, this collection does not contain the story Duel even though the back cover says it does. You can get that story in an anthology collection of the same name but you can also get it in a much better collection The Incredible Shrinking Man as it also has Matheson's brilliant story The Shrinking Man (and incidentally Nightmare at 20,000 feet as well). You can also buy Shrinking Man on its own as a stand alone story if you have already purchased Duel by dropping the word incredible in the Amazon search engine or just clicking here. The Shrinking Man is a great story of a normal guy verse sudden life threatening situation what would you do type adventure which is where Matheson excels like no other author. About a guy who keeps shrinking and makes the ultimate enemy of a grey widow spider and up there with I Am Legend as to being his best ever masterpiece.
This Nightmare at 20,000 Feet anthology has a fair number of good quality stories inside. Matheson short story collections usually contain a fair few fillers, especially the ones that come with a big title story. There are a few inside here, such as Dress of White Silk, but not as many as other anthologies. What's good about these old stories (all with the exception of Prey were written in the 1950's or very first couple of years of the 60s) is that you can see where they have been the inspiration and skeleton for horrors and thrillers written in later decades which makes the book quite interesting. In fact Stephen King even gives a nice intro at the start acknowledging this.
So you've got twenty stories inside
1. Nightmare at 20, 000 Feet
2. Dress of White Silk
3. Blood Sun
4. Through Channels
5. Witch War
6. Mad House
7. Disappearing Act
8. Legion of Plotters
9. Long Distance Call
10. Slaughter House
11. Wet Straw
12. Dance of the Dead
13. Children of Noah
14. The Holiday Man
15. Old Haunts
16. The Distributor
17. Crickets
18. First Anniversary
19. The Likeness of Julie
20. Prey
Although there is not space to review them all. The best are 1.- every day guy sees a man on the wing sabotaging the plane who disappears whenever he tries to prove his existence. 13. - man gets pulled over in an isolated small town by the police who frustrate him by dragging out the procedure of giving him a ticket by taking him back to the station, with his anger he gets very hot indeed! 16. - friendly guy moves subsequent door and immediately introduces himself to everyone in the street then uses their weaknesses to torment them all! 20. Is a good wooden doll coming alive to kill human read that was clearly the inspiration for Chucky in Childs Play and other similar storylines.
Button, Button: Uncanny Stories is another consistently good collection. Like this book, the majority are of not only readable but fairly high quality. The only thing though that Button, Button lacks is a masterpiece, but if you liked this I'd grab that as well. But definitely read the everyday man verse sudden life threatening hurdle stories I am Legend, Shrinking Man, Duel and I'd also recommend Hunted Past Reason although it is not always liked by some people.
Rated by buyers 
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The great brilliance of Richard Matheson's work is not just his ability to use accessible language to gain our trust before he horrifies us; a trick Stephen King has used to a great extent, and one can see the influence in King's early work. Indeed, King wrote the introduction to this collection, and Matheson dedicated this particular "greatest hits" to King.
No, the great brilliance of Matheson is inherited by King and few others: the ability to make ordinary lives and fears into things of our nightmares. Scott's frustration in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN is of a man who cannot keep his job, support his family, who is physically smaller each day in a way that a frustrated man might understand. The struggle of an American man in modern life made real by science-fiction magic that is, in effect, beside the point. The point is the story, the struggle, the man, not the special effects. A lesson modern movies could learn.
In "Mad House," the main character is understood by us because he IS us. He is the voice of frustration, of potential unfulfilled, of every man or woman who ever thought, "I coulda been a contender." And like Marlon Brando's character, that voice seeks someone else to blame.
The supernatural aspect of the story, therefore, is almost beside the point. He's got us because it's real. Just as "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" resonated with every white-knuckle flier who saw Shatner peering out of the plane in grey and white and Lithgow freaking out in the 198X movie.
This collection does not have a weak story in it, and collects many of the best. It would serve as a good introduction to Matheson's work, and I consider Matheson to be one of the required reads of genre fiction - possibly of American literature.
Read the full review at CultureGeek: [...]
Rated by buyers -
Who doesn't remember William Shatner in the famous title story? The variety of stories included showcase Matheson's ability to write tales of terror in many different styles. These stories age well. If you didn't know better, you'd think many of them were written recently.
My only disappointment with this book is that the back cover states the collection includes the story "Duel." For whatever reason, that tale didn't actually end up in this collection.
Rated by buyers -
The horrors conjured by Matheson - many of which spring from life's mundane, everyday elements - are perfectly represented in this collection. Stephen King's introduction says that Matheson came onto the scene "like a bolt of pure ozone lightning", and it's true - almost every story is a breathless, take-no-prisoners ride that reads quickly and delivers the goods.
From paranoia to depression to lust, Matheson knows how to quickly set the mood and draw the reader in. Every story here accomplishes that.
I was only disappointed that the collection didn't include "Duel", as the back cover claims.
Rated by buyers -
Richard Matheson's collection of stories in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a wonderful journey into the weird and the strange. The majority of these stories were published in the 1950's, early in his career, and found in magazines such as Fantasy and Science Fiction and Weird Tales. The stories are still fresh and each has their own style and voice, making each story feel vibrant. Matheson has a unique ability to develop his characters very quickly and create believable situations out of the unbelievable.
Most of the stories in this collection use plots that rely on very ordinary and common elements that Matheson twists into anything but ordinary. Televisions are not what they seem, telephones become mediums for the dead, razors and dolls sometimes have minds of their own, and crickets can tell us something if anyone takes the time to listen. Even ordinary lives take on very disturbing action in terrific stories like Legion of Plotters and The Distributor. In Legion of Plotters, the daily annoyances of life take on frightening dimensions to one man who believes he is targeted by things such as a baby crying or a man sniffling on a bus. Matheson continues to break down the illusion of normalcy of life in my favorite story The Distributor. A quite functional suburban neighborhood will never be the same when the new neighbor moves in to distribute fear, mistrust and hatred.
The horrors in these stories are not overt, except for a few stories such as Blood Son, Slaughter House and First Anniversary. The stories are bizarre turns of the ordinary and the obsessions of Matheson's characters. Matheson's use of dialogue is terrific and he has a great ability to make us believe that these characters are not just losing their minds, but have stumbled upon some sort of cosmic abnormality in life that most of us can't see.
Breezy reading that keeps you guessing, from a really talented author that knows how to write one hell of a short story. My favorites in this collection include: Dress of White Silk (creepy), Disappearing Act (what if you never existed?), Legion of Plotters (is that sniffling man out to get you?), Long Distance Call (the telephone can be a menace), Dance of the Dead (Can you do the Loopy?), The Distributor (distributing misery) and First Anniversary (Do we know our spouses?). All good stuff.
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