Tales by Moonlight

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Editor & Foreword), Stephen King (Introduction), Janet Fox (Contributor)

Tales of horror and suspense detail an evil presence guarding a pond of floating corpses, a close-up view of one of the strangest deaths in time travel, an attractive hitchhiker from a dark plane of existence, and others.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled between giving this a three or a four. Most of the stories are by relatively unknown writers, especially at the time this collection was put together. And there aren't many really standout stories. But overall the collection has lingered in my mind and there was just a lot of good atmospheric horror here. I don't think there are many 'great' stories, but there are no clunkers. And it shows that there is a huge amount of talent in the writing world that generally goes unrecognized.

[Christopher Hivner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology contains 20 stories of light horror/fantasy and for me it was very uneven. At least a third were clunkers. Some were badly written while others just didn't go anywhere. Some of the best tales were the fantasy pieces. "A Wine of Heart's Desire" by Ron Nance was a treat, mixing adventure and humor in a well-told story. Phyllis Ann Karr has two stories here in a world she created and both were well written and imaginative. In the horror genre I liked Janet Fox's "Witches", Steve Rasnic Tem's "The Sky Came Down to Earth", "Spring Conditions" by Eileen Gunn and George Florance-Guthridge's "See the Station Master". The final story "The Inhabitant of the Pond" by Linda Thornton had a few creepy moments but I felt there was so much more potential for the story that wasn't realized. It was overwritten in the language used and the formality of the some of the dialogue. These two things blunted what could have been.

The book begins with an odd introduction by Stephen King where he calls out certain stories for being, in his words, "exquisitely awful". I've never read an intro where the author did anything but heap praise on the book in question, but I guess King was just being honest. There are good stories in Tales by Moonlight, just not enough of them.

[Brian Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have said, this was an uneven collection with a few standout tales. Nothing was ‘bad’, but definitely a lot of forgettable. Seems like the editor was intent on including her friends’ work. Usually in a collection I’ll look up a few of the authors to track down more of their work, and that didn’t happen here with the exception of the last story.

It’s worth noting, as in other reviews, that the 1985 coked-out Stephen King introduction is kinda nuts. I guess when King writes you an intro, you just go ahead and print it.

[Strawberry Witch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully uneven in the way that the best anthologies always are. You have to wade through some clunkers to get to the gems, but gems there are. Perfect cover art, too.

[Armada Volya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of stories, each being relatively short, which worked really well for me, since I never had to close the book half way into the story. Some of the stories were odd and didn't do it for me, but there were plenty of good ones to make up for it. Because of the cover, title and Stephen King's introduction, I was under the impression that this was going to be a horror collection, but there are also many fantasy stories.