Legacy of Horror

I just finished reading Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts on recommendation from an old grad school friend of mine.  This friend and I share tastes in heavy metal and weird fiction, so this seemed like a promising book.  He told me that Hill is Stephen King's son and that the two shared some common sensibilities but that Hill had a better sense of humor.  Being a sometimes-fan of King, I took up the recommendation and found the book to be everything that my friend had promised.
The collection is strong with a few standouts.
The first story in the book, "Best New Horror," took me by surprise from the beginning.  The story is about a writer and editor of a famous horror collection, named Eddie Carroll, who is given a supremely creepy story that jerks him out of his complacency.  Carroll, wanting to include the story in his newest collection has some difficulty tracking down the author.  This is because the author is a bit of a drifter and has bounced around.  Carroll eventually does track down the author, but I will leave plot discussion at that because the reveal of the rest of the story is worth the read.  "Best New Horror" shares some common elements with King's fiction.  First, it tortures its writers the same way that King always has.  It also dabbles in the sort of metafiction that King always claimed was just "story-telling."  Hill handles it better, though.  He doesn't call more attention to it than necessary.  As postmodernism has shaded into post-postmodernism, the tropes become less tricks and become a part of the artistry.  So too, Hill buries the anxieties of writing and tiring of one's art in the story so that it seeps out in mood and characterization rather than being put into exposition.  The story shows more control of plotting than most of King's work.
The title story of the collection, "20th Century Ghost," is about a haunting in a movie theater.  The ghost of a young woman appears sporadically to lone move-goers, wanting to discuss whatever movie is playing at the time.  The elderly owner of the theater had first seen the ghost as a child and has tracked her appearances over his long lifetime working in and then managing the theater.  The ghost seems to only appear to those true cinephiles who will continue to work with film through their lives, though it is left to interpretation whether this is because of the ghost sighting.
Hill also ventures into the absurd in a story called "Pop Art."  In this story, the protagonist's best friend is a balloon.
Hill pays tribute to classic weird fiction in several of his stories, adding his own turn to each.  In "You Will Hear the Locust Sing," Hill invokes Kafka's Metamorphosis by envisioning a boy (Francis Kay, no less) who awakens to find himself transformed into a bug.  But rather than cower and efface himself to his family, Francis uses his new body to take revenge on those who have wronged him.  The story is thus transformed from Kafka's study in absurdity and futility into a fever-dream revenge story.  In "Abraham's Boys," the children of famed vampire hunter Van Helsing try to adapt to life in America after Van Helsing was forced to flee Denmark under a dark cloud.  Again, I don't want to get too far into plotting here because the treatment that Hill gives the character is better played out in the story than revealed here.
This short story collection is a great introduction to a newer generation of horror writing that travels some familiar territory in addition to providing some of its own original twists.  Hill, like his father, champions the downtrodden and seems to have a soft spot for troubled kids.  Unlike his father, however, Hill has a way of bringing out the humanity and hidden talents of these down-cast characters.  I was only two stories into this collection when I picked up a copy of NOS4A2 and I have every intention of diving deep into this author's work.