Dark Visions

Dark Visions is a 1989 horror fiction compilation, with three short stories by Stephen King, three by Dan Simmons, and one by George R. R. Martin. The book has also been issued, with the same seven stories, under the titles Dark Love, The Skin Trade, and Night Visions 5. Two of the stories by King, "Sneakers" and "Dedication", are also contained in his anthology Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and Martin's "The Skin Trade" also appears in Quartet: Four Tales from the Crossroads and Dreamsongs: Volume II.

Stories

Stephen King

• "The Reploids": Edward Paladin shows up in place of Johnny Carson on the Tonight show, while Carson is nowhere to be found. A subsequent investigation by detective Richard Cheyney finds strange items in Paladin's possession, hinting that he may not be from our reality: His passes for the studio are the wrong color, and he has a bright blue dollar bill with a picture of James Madison on it.
• "Sneakers": John keeps seeing a pair of old sneakers in the same toilet stall every time he enters the restroom. As time passes, flies build up around the sneakers, but no one else seems to know what is going on or even to notice anything. But he is certain that there is a ghost in the stall.
• "Dedication": A black house maid working in a hotel cleans the room of an eccentric alcoholic writer who is a frequent guest there. The maid consumes some of the writer's semen, left on his sheets, as part of a possible black magic spell in the hope that it will pass talent and ability along to her unborn son.

Dan Simmons

• "Metastasis": A man suffers a near-death experience in a car crash on the way to visit dying relative. After his crash he finds he has acquired the ability to see 'cancer vampires', hideous creatures which are responsible for the spread of cancer in our world.
• "Vanna Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell": The godless truth behind Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club.
• "Iverson's Pits": Dealing with horrors from the American Civil War.

George R. R. Martin

• "The Skin Trade": Martin's tale is a werewolf novella that was originally published in Night Visions 5 and has been optioned for film by Mike the Pike Productions.^[1][2][3] The novella won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella in 1989. In September 2013 Avatar Press began publishing a four-issue Skin Trade comic book series, written by Daniel Abraham and George Martin, with illustrated color covers and interiors by Mike Wolfer; it was completed in December of that year, and a graphic novel collected hardcover volume followed.^[4] In October 2013 WSFA Press published "The Skin Trade" in two variant, stand-alone First Edition states: a standard hardcover and a 500-copy signed-and-numbered limited edition.

References