Midnight Graffiti

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It turns out that the cover illustration is actually by some total fraud named Martin Cannon, just some unfortunate slob without an original style of his own, proving he’s capable of producing something as derivative as possible of the style of Giger, sans talent. Several were interesting in portraying the point of view of part of society: Rainy Season, Say Hello Mister Quigley, Emerald City Blues, Rant. Among those I found to be particularly unreadable: "The Domino Man," "Salvation," and most of all, "Rant" by Nancy A. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, he became a teacher.

The stories range in intensity from the sheer grit of "Bad Guy Hats" to the quirky "Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland. The author uses the time-honored crutch of borrowing established characters (the inhabitants of Oz) and endlessly perverting their well-intentioned natures, only to have them caught up in a boneheaded nuclear catastrophe.

I don't think that the Anthology Experiment went over too well; back to reading something slightly more worthwhile, maybe some letters to the editor from back-issues of Club, if I can manage to pry the pages apart somehow.

After that, the remainder is really bad: very short tales “Cattletruck” by Cliff Burns and “Salvation” by Lawrence Person are both rather pointless and lame while striving to be meaningful and thought-provoking, and Joe Lansdale’s attempt at comedy with “Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland” falls flat.The rest of the stories in the book I didn't finish because either there was too much violence or I had no clue what went on and had to stop reading (something that I almost never do). I highly recommend this book especially for people like myself who just got into reading and wanted to find some different authors, this is a quick way to get a snapshot of their various writing styles and genre. This was a wonderful collection of short stories mainly for the sheer variety of genres, styles, and moods.