There are other Barron works and collections in my review history where I sort of roll my eyes at his shtick.  "What if those pulpy adventures really, if u think about it, starred a bunch of real shitheels?!" "Yea man, I know, that's why we have postmodernity. Like everything in all of contemporary genre literature exists as a response to this realization" "But what if they were real bad AND they came across something else real bad" (sigh) "Okay, fine, sure".  And in the first story of this collection you're kinda feeling like he's just doing it all again - imaginative enough to get you over the bumps but a bad omen.  Then in the second story, he pushes his protagonist just a bit further over the line into loneliness and pathos and it REALLY works.  The whole rest of the collection is equally terrific.  He resists his worst tics and develops his strengths - imagination, the embodiment of our point of view character, cosmic horror at its finest. Don't miss this terrific collection - even, or especially, if you got bored with Barron before.