Last month's Stephen King Challenge put me in the mood to read some Stephen King. Because I don't always enjoy his novels, I decided to go with one of his short story collections, his first of several released over the last forty-one years, "Night Shift".

The book kicks off with "Jerusalem's Lot", a prequel to "'Salem's Lot". It's told through letters and journal entries from 1850, a time when (Jeru)salem's Lot was a deserted village the people of neighboring towns avoided. Near the end of the book is a second related story, "One for the Road". It's set two years after the events of "'Salem's Lot", involving a family of three who take a wrong turn while traveling during a blizzard.

There are a few stories anyone more familiar with the feature film adaptations rather than the writing of Stephen King might recognize based on the titles alone: "Graveyard Shift", "The Mangler", "Sometimes They Come Back", and "Children of the Corn".

I can't speak for "The Mangler" or "Sometimes They Come Back", but the other two are moderately faithful adaptations. Being short stories, the movies had to expand their plots some, but "Graveyard Shift" is still about workers clearing out the basement of a rat-infested textile mill and "Children of the Corn" is still about a couple discovering a town surrounded by corn and full of demented children.

Then there's "Trucks", which served as the basis for "Maximum Overdrive". The main thing "Trucks" and "Maximum Overdrive" share is the basic plot of people trapped in a truck stop while the trucks drive themselves, mercilessly running down any humans who dare to step out into the open. None of the characters are the same, although some of the characters in "Trucks" share certain traits with the characters in "Maximum Overdrive", most notably the (Bible) Salesman. A few lines of dialogue from "Trucks" are also spoken word for word in "Maximum Overdrive".

I would include "The Lawnmower Man" with the above titles, but the controversy surrounding the 1992 adaptation is well-known. And if you don't know, the producers put Stephen King's name on the movie, but it turned out to have nothing to do with his story other than a man mowing lawns. King didn't appreciate that and sued them into removing his name. I'm one of those weird people who think the movie's good and in fact, I prefer it over the story, but who can blame him for suing?

"Night Surf" is worth mentioning, if for nothing more than that King recycled the idea for his other 1978 book, "The Stand". The two stories are only alike in that they're about a virus nicknamed Captain Trips killing off most of humanity. The characters are different and the problems they face in the aftermath of the virus's devastation are different. Still, it's interesting to see where one of King's most renowned novels got its start.

Possibly my number one favorite story is "Battleground", the tale of a hitman versus a box of toys sent to him by the mother of his most recent victim, a toy-maker. Toy soldiers to be exact, which are somehow alive, and their miniature guns are just as real. It might sound like a silly concept, but the story is as brutal as you can expect from Stephen King.

Other favorites include: "I Am the Doorway" (an astronaut returns to Earth with some thing), "Gray Matter" (a bad beer leads to bad things), and "Quitters, Inc." (a man endures unusual treatment to help him stop smoking). There's also "The Ledge", where a man caught having an affair with another man's wife is forced into circumnavigating the thin ledge of a high-rise's penthouse if he wishes to continue leading a happy life.

While I enjoyed "The Ledge" despite it being more of a thriller than horror, it reminded me of the "Creepshow" segment "Something to Tide You Over". Specifically, the husband getting revenge on the man banging his wife by putting him in a situation he likely won't survive. The endings are slightly similar as well. Since "Something to Tide You Over" isn't based on any of Stephen King's stories, I'm thinking "The Ledge" crossed his mind once or twice while writing the screenplay. A few years after "Creepshow", "The Ledge" along with "Quitters, Inc." appeared in the movie "Cat's Eye", another screenplay written by King.

Many of the stories in "Night Shift", including some I didn't mention, have been made into short films, sometimes more than once. This is thanks to King's Dollar Baby arrangement, where he allows students and aspiring filmmakers to adapt his short stories into short films for just $1. As cluttered as all those short film credits have made his IMDb page, it's impossible to criticize that level of generosity.

As a whole, I really liked "Night Shift". There were only a few stories I didn't care much about and none I outright disliked. The great thing about a short story collection is, like any other form of anthology, if you aren't enjoying one story, it'll be over soon enough and there's a chance the next one will be better.