Амброз Бирс - Flight or Fright - 17 Turbulent Tales

Dan Simmons(1948-) was born in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional “Elm Haven” in 1991’s Summer of Night and 2002’s A Winter Haunting . Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art. Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years—2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York—one year as a specially trained BOCES “resource teacher” and another as a sixth-grade teacher—and 14 years in Colorado.

Peter Tremayne(1943-) now lives in London and first made a reputation writing supernatural thrillers before turning to crime fiction. As a former Celtic scholar he is internationally known for his long running historical crime series, The Sister Fidelma Mysteries. These are set mainly in Ireland in the 7thCentury, of which the 29thtitle has just appeared (July, 2018). Having appeared in numerous languages, an International Sister Fidelma Society was formed in 2001 in the USA and from 2006, a three day international fan gathering has been held in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, the “hometown” of the Fidelma character. Opening the 2014 gathering, Irish Government Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, described the series as “a national treasure.” Peter has written only a few non-Fidelma crime stories and “Murder in the Air” shows his talent is not confined to the 7thCentury.

E.C. Tubb(1919-2010) is a London-born writer whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. In a sixty-year writing career he published over 120 novels and 200 science fiction short stories. His output included historical adventure, detective, and westerns, but he remained best known for his numerous science fiction novels, of which Alien Dust (1955) and The Space Born (1956) were acknowledged classics. Tubb became famous for his long-running “Dumarest of Terra” series, the galaxy-spanning saga of Earl Dumarest and his search to find the legendary lost planet where he was born—Earth. They eventually spanned 33 titles, the final one, Child of Earth , appearing in 2009. Equally well known were his Space 1999 TV novelizations and his “Cap Kennedy” novels (writing as Gregory Kern). Some of his finest sf short stories were collected in The Best Science Fiction of E. C. Tubb. Tubb continued to write up to his death in October, 2010; his final work, Fires of Satan , was published in 2013.

John Varley(1947-) was born in Austin and raised on the Gulf Coast. His ticket out of the petrochemical stinks and hellish humidity was a National Merit Scholarship to Michigan State University with plans to be a scientist. Science turned out to be boring. So did English and, shortly after that, school itself. He stopped going to classes except the one where they showed classic movies. He hit the road with a friend, ending up in San Francisco just in time for the Summer of Love, which neither of them knew was going on. The first day there he sang and chanted with Allen Ginsberg in a hippie crash pad. He decided he was a hippie. He lived in Tucson where he met Linda Ronstadt before she got famous. He got caught in a traffic jam in upstate New York that turned out to be the Woodstock Festival. He couldn’t get out for three days. He dodged the draft. In 1973 he decided to become a Science Fiction writer. He was one of the first writers to be called “The New Heinlein.” This flattered and troubled him, since the Old Heinlein was a major role model—and not yet dead. His work has been translated into 16 languages he can’t read, including Esperanto. There was a ten-year hiatus in his career when he worked in Hollywood. He made good money and once had an office right at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio gate. He met Mel Gibson, Paul Newman, Sigourney Weaver, Charlton Heston, and many other stars. They were all shorter than he had imagined, except Weaver. (John Varley stands 6’ 6” without his cowboy boots.) Varley lived for a while in Portland, Oregon, with Lee Emmett, who has become his first editor. She’s good at it and full of useful suggestions. They shared a nineteen-year-old dog named Cirocco, who was the best Sheltie in Oregon. They lived for a few years in a motor home parked fifty yards from the beach on California’s Central Coast. They spent four years living in Hollywood in a neighborhood called Thai Town. They currently live in Vancouver, Washington.

Bev Vincent(1961-) is the author of several books, most recently The Dark Tower Companion , and over eighty short stories, including appearances in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and two MWA anthologies. His work has been translated into several languages and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the Edgar Award and the ITW Thriller Award. He is the 2010 winner of the Al Blanchard Award. For more, see bevvincent.com or follow him on Twitter @BevVincent.

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Flight or Fright Copyright © 2018

Edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

First Cemetery Dance Digital Edition

ISBN: 978-1-58767-680-2

Artwork © 2018 by Francois Vaillancourt

Cover Design © 2018 by Desert Isle Design, LLC

Digital Design by Dan Hocker

Introduction and story notes © 2018, Stephen King.

“Cargo” by E. Michael Lewis first appeared in Shades of Darkness, Barbara and Christopher Roden (eds.), Ash-Tree Press © 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Horror of the Heights” by Arthur Conan Doyle first appeared in The Strand Magazine © 1913.

“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” by Richard Matheson first appeared in Alone by Night , Michael & Don Congdon (eds.) Ballantine Books © 1961. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and Don Congdon Associates, Inc.

“The Flying Machine” by Ambrose Bierce first appeared in Fantastic Fables , Putnam © 1899.

“Lucifer!” by E.C. Tubb first appeared in Vision of Tomorrow #3 © 1969. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency and the Author’s Estate.

“The Fifth Category” by Thomas Carlisle Bissell first appeared in The Normal School © 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.