1955 / Audiobook / 260 pages / USA
*****
Skipping the scene-setting preamble to get straight to the good bit, this real-time reconstruction (the audiobook gets it bang on at 2 hours and 45 minutes from iceberg to last gulp) aims for comprehensive multi-angle omniscience without being sensationalist, letting the hubris speak for itself.
1968-78 (collected 1978) / Audiobook / 336 pages / USA
***
A good value mixed assortment of gore, monsters, humour, harsh realism and Twilight Zones, just largely not my thing.
Faves: 'Jerusalem's Lot,' 'Night Surf,' 'Sometimes They Come Back.'
Worsties: 'I Am the Doorway,' 'Battleground,' 'The Man Who Loved Flowers.'
John Rozum, Kevin J. Anderson, Gordon Purcell and Charles Adlard, The X-Files: Night Lights
1996 (collected 1997) / 128 pages / USA/UK***
Rozum's X-Files is less convoluted than Petrucha's (almost like it was on request) and conservatively truer to the series and the characters, the eponymous two-parter making a decent run-of-the-mill not-episode. Which is more than can be said for X-Files novelist Kevin J. Anderson's cheesetastic guest spot where some people cosplaying as Mulder and Scully mumble unconvincing external monologues.
2001 / Ebook / 79 pages / UK
***
Some useful insights on the kid's-eye fairy tale approach, when he isn't fawning over the director, recounting the plot we've already watched or providing the comprehensive drama-free production history.
2015 / Ebook / 120 pages / UK
***
A balanced study of the various tales, when it's not going overboard on positioning the film within the entire history of horror and psychoanalysis.
