I’m never quite sure how to review a short story collection. Recapping each individual story would get rather tedious, and there isn’t a strong thematic connection between the twenty-odd stories presented here apart from the fact that they’re all very definitely Stephen King stories.
The collection kicks off with its longest entry, the novella The Mist, which sets an appropriately eerie tone. As a bunch of Mainers ride out a bizarre cataclysmic event in a grocery store, their humanity is pushed to the brink. Several other stories explore similar ideas. In “Survivor Type” an ex-surgeon turned drug-runner washes up on shore after a shipwreck with no company other then his heroin and is forced into taking some desperate measures to feed himself. In “The Raft”, four college students swim out a little too far and find themselves surrounded by a deadly amorphous blob, while in “Beachworld”, two astronauts from a far-off future crash land on a desert planet where the sand has some curious properties.
Many of the stories explore King’s typical ground, the macabre and the supernatural. In “Word Processor of the Gods” an unhappily-married writer uses a gift from his whiz-kid nephew to literally change his life. In “The Reaper’s Image” a skeptical antiques dealer encounters a deadly mirror, and the title object in “Uncle Otto’s Truck” seems out for revenge.
The standout for me was “The Jaunt.” One of king’s most famous stories, it follows a family heading to Mars for an extended stay for the father’s new job. As they prepare to “jaunt” the father explains the process to his children, taking them through the discovery of the extraordinary process by which people can essentially teleport. Unfortunately, his desire to protect his children from the more sordid aspects of the story leads to disaster. Let that be a lesson to those who want to censor stories “for the children.”
There are some filler stories in Skeleton Crew, like the early effort “Here There Be Tygers”, the Charles Starkweather-inspired “Cain Rose Up”, and even a poem of all things, but overall Skeleton Crew is a strong collection that demonstrates all the weird and wonderful things King does best.