SOURCE: A review of Four Past Midnight, in locus, Vol. 25, No. 4, October, 1990, pp. 23-4.

Bryant is an American science fiction novelist, short story writer, playwright, and critic. In the following review, he finds the novellas in Four Past Midnight highly entertaining.

At least for us outsiders, there seems to be a lesson in Stephen King's new collection, Four Past Midnight. Just as happened in the similarly structured four-novella set, Different Seasons, the master story-spinner of the American century demonstrates what he can do when he writes comparatively short and direct, punching right to the heart and brain, cutting to the bone, tapping tear ducts and adrenal glands as though they were sugar maples. I say "comparatively" because King's novellas in this book are about as long as other people's entire paperback originals back in the dear, dead days before literary gigantism became both a menace to North American...