Book Forty One 2014: 

Button Button by Richard Matheson

This is probably no different to many other collection of sci-fi short stories I’ve ever come across. It has the poor, the decent, the bizarre (Dying Room Only is pretty much a noir story and The Jazz Machine a freeform poem) and then the genuinely brilliant (that includes the title story, No Such Thing As A Vampire, Clothes Make The Man and Mute).

This is, I know Matheson is a genuinely great writer. I’ve read his rightly legendary (pardon the pun) I Am Legend and when you see how many of his other stories have made it into the pop culture pantheon (including the likes of Duel, What Dreams May Come and Nightmare At 20,000 Feet), I get the feeling there are far better collections of his work than this.

Not that it’s bad, just not the creme de la creme. Still, very decent.