Have You Read This? Joe Hill's Strange Weather

The book in this month’s Have You Read This, Strange Weather, seems like a no-brainer in a season where I was, honest to God, wearing a t-shirt last week and worrying about windchills getting to single digits for this one. It most certainly fits this time of year, but I had actually planned on writing about Joe Hill’s novella collection for a while now. I had read a few of Joe Hill’s works, from his seminal graphic novel collection Locke & Key to his short story collection 20^th Century Ghosts. Sure, Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, as synonymous with horror as Hulk Hogan is with pro wrestling, but reading him for so long has meant that I have got to see him grow quickly as a writer and move ever so slowly out of his father’s shadow.

One could argue that the stories in this collection are held together by the subject of weather. Storms, in particular, are incidental plot devices in the first two tales, while the latter ones uses clouds and rain more extensively. The stories here really run the gamut between fantastical nostalgia to apocalyptic horror to real world suspense. The four stories chosen for this collection show how Hill has grown as a writer in different areas.

The first in the collection, “Snapshot,” is the most reminiscent of Hill’s father, using a mystical object to explore the real world terror of loss. Like any of King’s child protagonist, Michael has trouble fitting in, but this story is also about finding connections in the little moments we have with others and the horrifying consequences of having those moments with someone taken away. This story should resonate with anyone who has ever lost a loved one, particularly if that someone was stolen by degrees.

“Loaded” is a tale of real world terror that deals with the current epidemic of gun violence. There is no need for magic or demons from the Macroverse for horror when you have a man with a lot of anger and access to automatic weapons. “Loaded” not only pulls its horror from the headlines of school and office shootings, this piece also jabs at the media for being all too willing to put the “good guy with a gun” on a pedestal after he foils a shooting. As more of his story unravels, so does his sanity until he becomes a very bad guy with a gun.

“Aloft” is the piece that feels the most like Hill’s unique voice, not as much horrifying as it is fantastic, particularly when first-time skydiver Aubrey becomes stranded on a cloud that serves as both concierge and jailer, giving him whatever it can form from its vaporous substance but not inclined to return him to Earth. Though it’s more whimsical than the other selections and a welcome break, what really helps this story stand out from just an adventure piece as he searches for rescue is the double narrative that takes place before Aubrey’s fateful jump and how the world below him influences his thoughts and actions as he is stranded hundreds of miles above it.

“Rain” is a very standard apocalypse scenario but with a very interesting premise: what if the rain that fell suddenly became lethal, no longer falling drops of water but crystalline shards of death. The protagonist Honeysuckle is interesting and she encounters several oddball characters who help her but who also have no qualms about being violent now that society and civility is on the decline. This story also borrows from our world by referencing our current political leadership and Hill does paint a bleak picture of a world where the skies can rain death at any moment, but the end is also left with a surprisingly hopeful message, showing how people can be duplicitous and all too willing to hurt each other but are ultimately at their best when they have each other’s back.

More and more, authors are trying their hands at shorter works, churning out collections full of a multitude of stories, from novellas to short stories. Hill has demonstrated time and again that he has no shortage of imagination and can no doubt feed a reading public eager for stories that can be read during a lunch break or a wait in the doctor’s office. Even if the weather outside started raining frogs, I could relax knowing that, as the frogs pelt my window, that writers like Joe Hill will write plenty of fully-realized, well-written stories to keep me occupied, whether that storm lasts for an hour or a season.