Strange Weather is a collection of four novellas by a favored horror novelist of mine, Joe Hill. I listened to it on audio, and was pleased by the four different narrators, two of them Star Trek alum!

Snapshot (4.5/5)

Set in California in 1988, awkward and friendless Michael helps his elderly former babysitter back home when she is found wandering the neighborhood. Shelly, suffering from dementia, tells Micahel of a strange man who has taken pictures of her using a Polaroid-type camera to steal her memories. Micahel agrees to be her occasional caretaker and learns that her ramblings were actually correct when this evil man comes after her again. After the deadly struggle, there is a surprisingly long conclusion where teen Micahel grows up and takes steps to help Shelly escape her mortal life from her ignoble life in a nursing home. This was a sad and poignant story about the loss of identity and family ties. Voiced well by Wil Wheaton.

Loaded (4/5)

This story was rough. An unhinged mall security guard seemingly saves the lives of others when a shooting between a jewelry store owner and his jilted mistress results in collateral damage at the mall. The readers know how he illegally gained his gun and how the shooting truly unfolded, but to those in his community, he is hailed as a hero. But a single mother journalist, who has her own story of an unjustified shooting in the past, begins to find holes in the guard’s story. The conclusion was deadly and heartbreaking and proves the quote: “Guns don’t kill people, people do”.

Aloft (3.5/5)

A young man’s first parachute jump goes haywire when as the last to jump of his friends, he lands on a strange cloud that had looked like a UFO…and is. Stranded there this ship senses him and taps into his mind giving him a cloud woman based on his unrequited love, but he knows it is but a fantasy and stumbles upon the remains of three people from the 1800s who had perished there after crashing their hot air balloon on the UFO. He discovers the alien (the description reminded me of the tentacled alien found on the animated The Simpsons) and then makes the decision to jump using the old hot balloon silks. I wondered how he would explain that he landed two states away from his jump point.

Rain (4/5)

On an ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, a deadly rainstorm suddenly appears- raining down crystal spikes that kill anyone unlucky enough to be outside. A woman who had been excited that her girlfriend was moving in that day, instead sees her beloved die. She then takes off on a post-apocalyptic road trip to tell her lover’s father what happened and, of course, is besieged. There are a few political digs towards Trump/Pence that will amuse you (me) or make you mad. Voiced by the indomitable Kate Mulgrew aka Captain Janeway.

All four stories had different feels, from very dark to almost light-hearted. In his afterward Hill said, “Short novels are all killer, no filler” and I agree. I love short stories (that’s why I love the LeVar Burton Reads podcast so much) because they get straight to the point, for there is an economy to the writing that is stronger than some authors who write 500+ page books that are overflowing with unneeded details. This is yet another book of Hill’s that I would recommend to others!

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