Human Nature Is Scarier Than Mother Nature in Joe Hill’s Strange Weather

Strange Weather consists of four short novels, each depicting a different, decidedly unusual weather event—”Loaded” depicts a mass shooting in Florida during a wildfire; the climax of “Snapshot” occurs during a humid summer lightning storm that mimics the flashes of an unsettling camera that steals memories; “Aloft” concerns a young man stuck on an alien cloud that collects unsuspecting air travelers for unclear reasons; and “Nails” centers on apocalyptic hailstorms of crystal nails that gruesomely murder anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside. The four stories form a kind of thematic chain, moving from a freak storm, to a hurricane, to truly alien winds, to a world-ending deluge. All four stories consider how human beings react when caught in circumstances well out of their control.
Like clouds looming overhead, there’s a certain tension and unpredictability to these events—a sense of foreboding, a feeling something is coming, but we’re never sure when. The crystal rains in “Nails” for example, can occur at any time, lending the story an air of unrelenting menace—at any given moment, the heroes could be exposed to the horrifying precipitation that seems to be replacing all other cloud activity. “Aloft” takes this even further, pairing an air of loneliness and isolation with the presence of an alien intelligence that seems to act as both an obsessive lover and an overzealous jailor. Even in the other two stories, which build to more traditional climaxes, there’s an omnipresent feeling of dread.

But if uncertainty is a resort of forces beyond our ability to control, like most good horror stories, Hill’s novels are more about people caught up in terrible events. The rain in “Nails” acts as a random element among many: there are also cultists, bigots, corrupt cops, and various other threats menacing our protagonist. “Aloft” is more about a descent into madness and obsession than it is about a sentient alien cloud creating a simulacrum of a lost lover. In “Snapshot,” the man who owns the mind-altering camera,  is, for all his unusual qualities, still relatively human. The perpetrators of the extreme violence of “Loaded” are all entirely human, but they appear outsized and menacing, lit by the flickering flames of an uncontrolled inferno, beyond remorse or understanding, as unpredictable as a sun shower.
Strange Weather speaks to the versatility of Joe Hill’s craft, telling deeply disturbing stories in which cataclysmic forces of nature seem like a gentle rain when set against the actions of villains who are all too human.
Strange Weather is available October 24 in a signed edition from Barnes & Noble.