Shock Waves

Shock #4

by Richard Matherson

A look at the ugliest doll ever seen, a self-murderess, the man who bled oil, a machine that promises never to stop, the lights around the moon and other horrors bizarre, believable and bone-chilling!

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fantasy

183 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of the stories in this book but the longest story was also the dullest and most disappointing, which really lowered my overall rating.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the final volume in the series of Matheson collections with the Shock title. I always wondered why they called this one Waves instead of simply continuing as #IV; it's no different in theme or concept than the first three. It's a nice selection that spans work from pulps in the early 1950s to original pieces from 1970. My favorite story was Prey, from a 1969 issue of Playboy, which was subsequently adapted to film very nicely, and my least favorite was a novel fragment that they must've included just to fill up some pages. Matheson was a fine craftsman with an eye to the O'Henry twist and while some bits and pieces have begun to show their age here and there these are still entertaining and amusing reads.

[Still · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the work of Richard Matheson.
A great many of his short stories and a few of his novels have been adapted for film and television.
The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Omega Man (and its remake I Am Legend), Duel, and some of the best episodes of TV's The Twilight Zone.

Shock Waves is the fourth in a series of 4 collections published by Berkley Books in 1979.

All of these stories have "shock" or suprise endings in the O. Henry tradition. A couple are futuristic, one is a Western, a couple are thrillers. All are very well written.
Matheson's writing is so clean and so perfect in every detail.
The man was a craftsman.

My favorites in this collection were "Finger Prints", "Deus Ex Machina", "The Thing", "The Conqueror", "Dying Room Only" and "Prey".

"Prey" many will remember from Matheson's adaptation for the made-for-tv horror anthology Trilogy of Terror -the one with Karen Black being terrorized in her own apartment by an evil doll.

Recommended!

[Mike Lind · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this one up primarily for the story "Prey"--the basis for the third story in the 1975 movie "Trilogy of Terror" starring Karen Black. Man, that little Zuni fetish doll scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid. Anyway, the movie follows the story almost exactly (not surprising, considering that Matheson also wrote the screenplay).
The other stories in the collection make it worth picking up.

[N. M. D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the first story in this collection of shorts, a man leaves his wife in the car at a mall parking lot, while feigning the loss of his keys so that another man he's arranged to murder her can pick them up and drive her away. The story focuses on the tension and inner turmoil of the man as he takes his son through the mall to meet Santa, trying to distract you from the fact that it makes no sense. In the end, the killer, who was paid in advance, doesn't take her. The lead has been cheated. Why, then, did the killer even show up? He doesn't steal the car, so the keys are useless. He already had his money. The story uses its suspense to distract you from it's nonsensical nature. This first tale not holding water was immediately concerning. Was I to suffer through a whole book of poorly conceived stories?

Thankfully, the answer is no. Why on Earth this story was put first is beyond me. The last story is also a bit of nonscensical clunker, but sandwiched between those cheap pieces of chemical-packed .99cent white bread from Walmart that never expires are some of the finest meats I've ever encountered.

These are remarkably short and efficient stories that make their point quick. Some are only a few pages long. Even with that, the characters still feel sufficient for the story. His grip on how to write a short--what to keep and what to leave out--is nothing short of masterly. It's the kind of book a writer should go back to for reference.

There's also a wonderful amount of variety. Some horror, some sci-fi, even a western. Some are moral tales, some loosely impressionistic, some surreal, some straight-forward, sad endings, happy ones, first person and third, traditional format and epistolary.

The biggest bummer is the three chapters from a proposed 2000+(!) page book about spiritualist mediums and child abuse that never got finished.

I didn't realize just how many of Matheson books have been adapted into big films. I knew I Am Legend and Hell House, but not Stir of Echoes, What Dreams May Come, or Trilogy of Terror. He's definitely on my radar now. Somehow I also didn't realize this was the fourth book in the series, preceded by Shock 1, 2, and 3, which I'm already in the process of acquiring.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few authors created tension in their fiction as well as Richard Matheson, be it science fiction, horror, or western. My favorite story in this uneven collection, "Dying Room Only," about a woman whose husband just disappears after going into the men's room of a seedy restaurant, is a perfect example. "The Conqueror," a western story about a city boy that challenges the fastest shot in town, is another taut tale. Of historical interest is "Come Fygures, Come Shadows," a 46-page fragment of a novel about ESP/mediums that Matheson never finished, though a hard-to-find 140 page version of it was published in 2003, thirty years after this collection.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good set of stories. I really enjoyed A Drink of Water and Advance Notice, but Wet Straw reminded me of the days when I scoured the library for excellent ghost stories.

[Aaron Martz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three stories in this collection are knockouts. Among them is Matheson's third story about a man who finds out he's a robot, which joins the other two from Shock II. Finger Prints is this collection's most subtly effective, about a man disturbed by the relationship between a sexually repressed woman and her verbose deaf colleague. Also included is one of Matheson's most famous stories, Prey, which was turned into a highly effective segment of Trilogy of Terror, but works even better as a short story. The violence is so palpable, my hands and feet hurt after reading it. Two stories, A Drink of Water and Dying Room Only, had such incredible setups - setups which really could have gone anywhere, and with Matheson should have gone anywhere - that I was disappointed when Matheson went the traditional route, ending one with a lame joke and the other with a TV movie wrap up. Dying Room Only reminded me of the du Maurier story Split Second. Its setup is vaguely similar. Comparing the two stories, you can see how du Maurier went for broke and Matheson wrote the magazine version.

[RubiGiráldez RubiGiráldez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es curioso que esta colección de relatos pase de dos primeros recopilatorios increíbles a otros dos en los que, aunque se sigue presenciando la relevancia e influencia histórica de Matheson en diversos géneros, sí que parecen ser más "cajón desastre". Al punto de tener un "planteamiento de novela" en forma de relato largo conceptual, una historieta western o la historia que daría a pie a la "Trilogía del Terror" televisiva de Dean Curtis. Seguimos topandonos con buenas muestras de suspense literario, pero el SHOCK en esta última tanda es totalmente tibio.

[DecayingPumpkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Daniel Garrido · Rating 4 out of 5]

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