Twilight Zone Action Figures

Twilight Zone Action Figures -- cool, I think.  But not at $10 each!  (entertainmentearth.com)

Makes me wonder what action figures might be cool from the SK universe.  I did see a Pennywise action figure.  Not sure what to do with it without the loosers club.  I would like actions figures from The Stand.  The whole gang.

Under The Dome Traces The Twilight Zone

The last episode of Under The Dome really interested me.  The dome went dark just as the town prepared to hang Barbie.  This episode reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, I Am the Night, Color Me Black.

In the  Twilight Zone episode, the sun doesn't rise on a small town as they prepare to hang a man who is possibly innocent.

Here's the wikipedia summery on I Am the Night, Color Me Black:

Sheriff Koch (Michael Constantine) can't sleep the night before the execution of a man, as he feels conflicted about the situation. Ella, his wife (Eve McVeagh) is no comfort as she snarls, "What time do they string him up; you know what I mean...what time does he get hung?" Her attitude represents the hateful sentiment of the town that looks forward to the fate of Jagger (Terry Becker), a man who is to be hanged after being wrongfully convicted of killing a bigot in self-defense. On the day of his execution, the sun does not rise in the morning. 

There is still some dispute as to whether Jagger is guilty. However, Jagger is hanged anyway, much to the delight of the town. The town reverend (Ivan Dixon) steps in and says the sky is black because of all the hatred in the world, namely the hatred surrounding Jagger's execution. The sky becomes even darker after the execution. Later, a radio broadcast reveals that the town is not the only place where this disturbance is happening. The sky has turned dark over North Vietnam; a section of the Berlin Wall; a political prison in Budapest; Chicago; a street in Dallas; Birmingham, Alabama; and other places of hate around the world.

Ray Bradbury Dies

AP reported that Ray Bardbury died in Los Angeles Tuesday night at the age of 91.

Bradbury is best known for his novel “Fahrenheit 451", which a lot of us had to read in school.  He also wrote short stories and poetry.  His show, The Ray Bradbury Theater, was a blast!  I loved it.

According to the AP article, he was active into his 90s, writing everyday in the basement office of his home.  His wife Maggie died in 2003; they were married in 1947.  Together they had four daughters and eight grandchildren.  It takes a real man to raise girls!

His website described his office:

Ray's office is in his basement, a fascinating warren of rooms beneath his Los Angeles home. In the main room, you can see Ray's desk and typewriter where he works every day. The room is lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but as you can see, the shelves hold much more than books. There are toys, stuffed animals, masks from around the world, gifts from fans, and souvenirs picked up over the years having to do with books, theater, television, and film. 

He scripted the 1956 film version of Moby Dick and wrote “I sing the body electric” for the Twilight Zone.  Plans were in hand to use Bradbury more for Twilight zone, but never materialized.  He also wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

HERE is a listing of all his work in chronological order.

Bradbury designed Spaceship Earth for  Disney's Epcot.  A crater on the moon was named after one of his stories "Dandelion Crater" as part of the 1971 Apollo 15 moon landing.  (HERE)

According to Raybradbury.com, Bradbury was awarded the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, an the National Medal of Arts in 2004.

Yahoo News cites  Texas A&M Commerce English Professor Robin Ann Reid, "The universe is a little emptier right now . . . There's less of that sense of joy and exulation that he was writing in his works all the way to the end."

The Yahoo article also notes:

Bradbury recently wrote a short essay responding to his favorite Snoopy comic strip about how much rejection he faced when he first began writing. "Starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn't realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn," he wrote.

Bradbury said on his 80th birthday,

"The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you'll come along." 

Stephen King and Ray Bradbury:

Stephen King was born in 1947, the same year Bradbury’s first book was published.

Both King and Bradbury  have had close connections to  Hollywood, often writing scripts for their own works.

Crumley at Bradbury’s message board noted this:

There is no doubt that King is an admirer of Ray - even if his work is not really in the same vein. DANSE MACABRE makes many praising references to Ray. "My first experience of real horror came at the hands of Ray Bradbury," King writes, and describes how as a boy he listened with delightful terror to a radio play of 'Mars is Heaven'. King also comments on how Bradbury is peerless: "But for me, Bradbury lives and works alone in his own country, and his remarkable, iconoclastic style has never been successfully imitated. Vulgarly put, when God made Ray Bradbury, He broke the mold."

Elements of Bradbury's work (especially of the earlier, darker stories) can be seen in King's work - sometimes in theme (eg. the dark flipside of human nature, the way that evil is sometimes the victor), and sometimes in style (eg. black humour, eerie & surreal landsapes). To anyone who reads both authors, the influence is clear.”

Check out the 2:50 mark of Bradbury's biographer, Sam  Weller, as he discuses Bradbury's influence on Stephen King. "He told me, that it was his first encounter at the hands of fear was because of Ray Bradbury."

TELL ME YOUR FAVORITE BRADBURY STORY

I have three favorites.  First, I loved the short novel The Martian Chronicles.  Originally, Bradbury said he had a bunch of short stories about Mars, but when he came to Los Angeles, no one wanted to publish short stories.  So he wove them into a single story.  It is delightful; both novel and poetry, the writing is awesome.  For just a taste of it, check out the section titled “Rocket Summer.”

I also loved the book of short stories, The Illustrated Man.  These short stories are bound together by a mans tattoos, which are alive and moving as they tell stories.  The Velt is pretty good in that set.

And, I enjoyed his 1962 collection, R is for Rocket.  (Along the same lines as S is for Space.)  Bradbury short stories are just fun.  That’s how all his work is – delightful and fun.

The joy spills off the page and touches the reader.  He never spends (spent) long explaining how things work, he just leapt through the story itself.  I loved it!  He was very much a “don’t bother me with the details” type author.  How can a spacship do that, Mr. Bradbury?  No worries. . . he just writes on.

4/14/65 What If It Had Been Lincoln Instead Of Kennedy?

Time travel to save a president.  It's the theme of 11/22/63.  What if Kennedy's assassination could be pre-empted?  What affect would it have on the world to come? 

This reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode titled "Back There"
(aired 1/13/61).  Get Serling's opening lines: "Witness a theoretical argument, Washington, D.C., the present.  Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time.  A friendly debate revolving around a simple question: Could a human being change what happened before?  Interesting and theoretical, because who has ever heard of a man going back in time -- before tonight, that is.  Because this is. . . the Twlight Zone."

In Rod Serling's script, Lincoln cannot be saved. . . but time is altered!  The one policeman who believes Peter Corrigan, a man who traveled back in time to warn the world Lincoln would be shot, becomes a wealthy man.  His heir was an attendant at the beginning of the story, but when Corrigan returns to the future, the attendant is now a wealthy man because his great grandfather had been the only policeman who believed Corrigan.

Serling: "Mr. peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place called back there, a journey into time with highly questionable results, proving on one hand that the threads of history are woven tightly and the skin of events cannot be undone, but on the other hand there are small fragments of tapestry that can't be altered. . ."

I like the episode a lot! It makes me anxious to see how King will carry this out.  Not in a  30 minute snippet, but in a long novel. 

Links between Lincoln and Kennedy are numerous.  I once got a penny with Kennedy's profile drawn over Lincoln's, and attached to it a list of similarities.  This is an example of that list (from wikipedia),

• Both presidents were elected to the presidency in '60.
• Both presidents were elected to the United States House of Representatives in '46.
• Both were runners-up for the party's nomination for vice-president in '56.
• Both their respective Vice Presidents/successors were Southern Democrats named Johnson born in '08.
• Both presidents were concerned with the problems of American blacks and made their views strongly known in '63. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, which became law in 1863. In 1963, Kennedy presented his reports to Congress on Civil Rights, and the same year was the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  
• Both presidents were shot in the head.
• Both presidents were shot from behind.  
• Both presidents were shot in presence of their wives.
• Both presidents were shot on a Friday.  
• Both presidents were accompanied by another couple.
• The male companion of the other couple was wounded by the assassin.  
• Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln automobile, made by Ford.  
• Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who told him not to go to the theatre. Kennedy had a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln (who was born 100 years after Lincoln, and whose husband Harold's nickname was Abe) who warned him not to go to Dallas.  
• Both Oswald and Booth were killed before they could be put on trial.
• Lincoln and Kennedy each have 7 letters.  
• Lincoln and Kennedy both have five syllables in their full name (which counts Kennedy's middle initial).
• John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald each have 15 letters and 3 words.  
• There are 6 letters in each Johnson's first name.
• Booth ran from a theatre to a warehouse, Oswald ran from a warehouse to a theatre.

Don't get too excited about that list, though -- a lot of it has been debunked.  I do wonder what the world would have been like if Abraham Lincoln had lived.

Twilight Zone's Haunted Car. . .
The episode that aired after "Back There" is titled "The Whole Truth" and was about a used car dealer who suddenly is cursed by the inability to tell a lie.  Remind you of liar liar?  But wait. . . this episode is actually about a haunted car!  I kid you not.  The old man actually says, "This car is haunted."

King has the ability to take themes we are familiar with and max them up. 

King Review Of "“The Leftovers”

King's Review Of "The Leftovers"

Stephen King's review of "The Leftovers" is insightful, energetic and at points gently critical.  It is the kind of book we would expect King to enjoy -- a strange event that brings out the best and worst in people. 

The novel is about the rapture.  Only. . . it's not the "rapture of the Church" as a few modern evangelicals expect!  It's a rapture that is a bit messed up from Biblical expectations.  King does a nice job explaining the basic idea of the rapture.

King writes, “The Leftovers” is, simply put, the best “Twilight Zone” episode you never saw — not “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” but “The Monsters Are Us in Mapleton.” That they are quiet monsters only makes them more eerie."

The reference to Twilight Zone is cool! 

King praises "Perrotta’s beautifully modulated narration."  This kind of generous review should put a big smile on Tom Perrotta's face.


On a theological note. . .

The Leftovers deals with the doctrine of "the rapture of the church" and the way some people go to seed on this one teaching.

In terms of Christian theology, the "rapture" is brand spankin' new on the scene!  It was invented in the last 150 years. 

The church has discussed the exact nature of the "tribulation" since the second century.  But the idea that there would be a Coming BEFORE the Second Coming (which would technically make the Second Coming the Third Coming) would have flat out mystified first century believers.  No where did the New or Old Testament promise a secret rapture separate from the Parousia (Second Coming.) 

So to be clear, the Bible does warn of a fiery end to planet earth.  That's considered basic Bible, accepted by ancients, moderns, liberals and conservatives.  It does teach that believers will be "saved" from the day of wrath.  We are told in Scripture that there will be a final judgment and a new earth.

But with the rapture teaching, things get changed a bit.  Believers not only expect to be saved on the day of judgment, but expected to be raptured out before things get really bad on earth.  But, simply put, that is not the hope presented by the Scriptures.  The promise of Scripture is that God would protect his people in difficult times, not suck them out of the world.  The hope of the believer relates to God's strength in a wicked world -- not in a sneaky ticket out of dodge.

I point this out because King does not say anything about the Second Coming.  He accurately discusses the rapture, which is also the subject of the book he is reviewing.



thanks to Bryant Burnette for the link.

Twilight Zone Magazine February 1985

I like to time travel. Maybe it's just time surfing. Captain Kirk is able to time travel by sling shotting his space ship around the sun. I do not have a space ship. Of course, Marty McFly had a car that could leap through time. Geez that movie was fun! Stephen King's next novel is about time travel, but I'm not real clear yet on the means by which movement through time is actually accomplished.

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Anyway, my means of time travel is old books and magazines. Actually, magazines are the best! A book stays focused on its subject, but a magazine gives you a full flavor of the time.

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So, via my Stephen King / Peter Straub edition of the Twilight Zone Magazine, I'm headed back to 1985. Come on, this is fun. Besides, I know half of you are at work right now anyway, and this has got to be a better trip than what your boss thinks you're doing.

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Advertizing Defines The Times

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Ads really define the times. No one in 1985 was begging you to visit their website, but there are a lot of book clubs to join.

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There is an ad for L. Ron Hubbard's new book, Battlefield Earth.

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Also there is an ad for Robert McCammon's Usher's Passing. Headline, "King, Straub, and now Robert McCammon." The text reads, "Wildly enthusiastic reviews greeted Robert R. McCammon's recent bestseller, Mystery walk. Now, in this new novel, Usher's Passing, McCammon's dazzling imagination tracest he descendants of the infamous family of Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher.". . . it sold hardcover for 14:95

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The back cover sports a full page, color ad for John Carpenters STARMAN. "In 1977 voyager II was launched into space, inviting all life forms int he universe to visit our planet. Get ready. Company's coming." Opens December 14 at a theater near you.

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By the way, there is a lot of hype in this magazine for the movie 2010. Even a full color article.

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Stories include:

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Nostalgia: "OLD DARK HOUSE FOR REND" by Ron Goulart. Did you see the movie of this? Old Dark House is a classic from 1932, directed by none other than James Whale, who also directed Frankenstein.

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"Changing Of The Guard" by Anne Serling, adapted from the teleplay by Rod Serling. I saw this episode! Oh yeah. . . I've seen them all.
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"The Time Wife" by Thomas Tolnay. "She looked exactly as his wife had looked twenty years ago. How could any man resist?" Here's a good line from the story, "I couldn't possibly tell my wife that there were two of her in the world." ha! that would be a problem.

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"Twisted Shadow" by Robert F. Funkley. "The garden was a cozy English world of serenity and peace -- all except a certain shadow that pointed the wrong way." This line here is pretty good: "She is being buried -- heaven protect her! Alive!"

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"Laughs! Thrills! Romance!!" by Ron Wolfe. "he had missed his chance for all of them -- and now it was too late."

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"Legacy" by Leigh Essex. "A daughter inherits many things from her mother. . . and love may be the least of them."

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The Quest For The Talisman

The cover article, "Stephen King, Peter Straub & the Quest for The Talisman" was written by Douglas E. Winter. It closely mirrors his chapter in The Art Of Darkness.

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Winter is excited that the work was exchanged "electronically" by "telephone modem communication between their respective word processors." Today, we would go. . . "yah!" But I guess passing information electronically was high tech stuff in 1985. But actually, this information was being sent back and forth in 1982!

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On Thanksgiving of 1982 Kign and Straub met in Boston. Late that night they undertook the "great Thanksgiving putsch" and gave the book its finished structure.

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King notes that he read everything Mark Twain wrote. Everything! Of course, King says that a lot of what he wrote he did to pay for his house, so it wasn't all good. There are a lot of references to "Reagan's America" and the nuclear threat. It was seen, at the time, as a dark period.

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Winters explains that the book has some pretty raw sex in it because the authors wanted to be sure they did not write a juvenile, Walt Disney book.

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SELECTED QUOTES:

Here are some quotes from King and Straub. Quotes make up the meat of the article, which were probably the notes Winter built his chapter from.

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STRAUB: "It was totally at random. When one of us took it, usually he went on until he reached a point at which he was comfortable dropping it. So we pretty much ignored our assignments and went on until a natural break. By and large, we started off writing it rigidly, and ended up doing it instinctively, which was by far the better of the two ways."

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KING: "It was a little bit like playing tennis. He would send what he had done and then I would work for three or four weeks and send the stuff back to him. And I really enjoyed the process -- partly because writers are so lazy. It was wonderful; the book would grow without me doing anything. But it was also a little bit like the old days, when I got the Saturday Evening Post with its serial stories. When Peter said he was going to send me something, and I would get excited because I was going to get to read some more of the story."

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STRAUB: [about editing each others work] "I think we both must have been a little touchy about that. Anyway, we accepted whatever the other guy did until the book was done. Then, in the final editing, we each took a free hand with the other's stuff. and there were times when I wished we could have done the whole book like that, becasue it was a wonderful and profound experience, and something very few writers ever get the chance to have. It's like having an X ray of someones mind when you review his material that way."

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KING: "The problems with The Talisman were always problems of length. The book had been conceived as a 'get it and bring it back' story, as opposed to The Lord of the Rings, which is a 'take it and get rid of it' story. But we began to realize that we had only mapped out half of the book -- that is to say, we had mapped about to the point where Jack gets it, and we had left bringing it back to another planning session. Except that by November of 1982, we already had something like six hundred pages of copy. So, we're sitting and looking at each other saying, 'We've got to do something.' We kicked around a lot of ideas, because there were lots of incidents we had planned for the way out that we hadn't got to yet, and we started realizing that this was going to be long."

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STRAUB: "It would have been a four-thousand page novel, and Steve and I would both be dead, if we were still trying to write that thing."

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KING: "It's a very mythic book. to me, the most wonderful thing about it is how eighteenth and nineteenth century the book is in terms of storytelling, and also in terms of the effort to create large archetypes.

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We were interested in the concept of the hero in literature. we talked about the hero in terms of the quest, the mythicization of the hero, and the return of the hero to a lesser being when the quest is completed. Huckleberry Finn is a picaresque novel that doesn't have a specific object for its quest, so we focused instead on things like the story of Jesus, the story of King Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We talked about those things, and when we wrote the book, it filtered down like sediment."

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STRAUB: "Twain was on our minds at the start, but the finished book suggests that our efforts were more conscious than they really were. I do know that we had Tom Sawyer in mind when we named Jack; but we really didn't have Twain on our minds during the whole term of the book."

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KING: "It's about children who have power."

The Wordslinger: Full Dark Review

I was trolling over at Andy Williamson's website, The Wordslinger. He's got some great Stephen King posts, and had a review of Full Dark No Stars that I really liked. Hey, anyone who got hooked on Stephen King via The Stand and The Shining has got my ear -- because that's pretty close to the path I took. Notice his mention of King as our "modern day Dickens." Yes!
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The review is reprinted in full with permission below. Check out Williamson's new book, and his website.
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The Wordslinger gives Full Dark No Stars a hefty A-.
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The Wordslinger Review:

Hello boys and girls. It’s time for another book review, and today’s book is by our favorite boogeyman, Stephen King. So grab some marshmallows, pull up a log, hunker up here by the campfire, and let’s begin, shall we?
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While I do not claim to be Stephen King’s “number one fan” (such an oogy title can only place one in a cockadoodie category of lying old dirty birdies), I DO fully admit to being somewhat obsessed with the man’s voluminous (to put it mildly) oeuvre. This has basically been true since I was a teenager and read, back to back, The Shining and The Stand. Since then, I have pretty much read ALL the King I could get my hands on, quite often on the first day a new novel is released. His new book is no exception.


While King has referred to himself as “America’s schlockmeister,” he is infinitely more than that. With over 60 books published over the course of the last 36 years – bestsellers all – the man is a publishing phenomenon unto himself. Many readers understandably focus on the horrific themes in his stories rather than their humanity, but I would argue that said humanity is what makes his work so truly frightening. Such emotional involvement makes his tales infinitely scarier than they would be without it. He is, unquestionably, our modern-day Dickens.
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If King’s last book, Under the Dome, was a welcome return to the loooong form he honed with epic favorites like The Stand and IT, his latest, Full Dark, No Stars, is a return to the short form. These are not short stories – as previously collected in 1978’s Night Shift, 1985’s Skeleton Crew, 1993’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes, 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, and 2008's Just After Sunset. This collection of four novellas round out a trilogy which began with 1982’s Different Seasons (the collection that begat such film classics as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me) and 1990’s Four Past Midnight. While this collection is not as good as the former, it is better than the latter. It is also the darkest work Uncle Stevie has published in awhile. Not quite as dark as if his alter ego Richard Bachman’s name was on the cover, but still quite black. And bleak. Hence the title.
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And yet, even these bloody (and bloody good) stories each have a moral center. In fact, the quartet of morality tales presented here plumb the depths of human psychology in ways heretofore … unplumbed. “I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger …” King writes. “How many unsuspected selves could a person have, hiding deep inside?” That question forms the core of this collection, and asks that we as readers attempt to answer it. “What would I do in a similar circumstance?”
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The first story, 1922, tells of a farmer who not only murders his shrewish wife, but enlists the help of his son to do the dirty deed – the method may seem “dirt cheap,” but there is, of course, a high price to pay down the road. Even if it is just madness. And rats. Lots of rats. Yes, homage is being paid here to Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, but when the teller is this talented, one cannot help but be grippingly entertained.
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Big Driver concerns a female mystery writer who, while driving home from a book signing, is raped and left for dead. While that unsavory event does make one cringe, there is still humanity to the prose. We are not made to identify with the perpetrator, but rather the victim. When she, Tessa, recovers, she must decide whether or not to call the police, or take matters into her own hands. That she picks the latter is not surprising – this is, after all, written by America’s schlockmeister. Nor is it surprising that Tessa’s revenge is as carefully plotted as one of her mystery novels. What is surprising is the emotional resonance such a dark tale imbues. Then again, this is our favorite Uncle Stevie telling the tale. Maybe it’s not so surprising after all.
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The shortest story here, A Fair Extension, regards a dying man who makes a deal with the devil for more life. The catch is, he must pick someone else to be the recipient of his cancerous bad fortune – someone he hates. This story reads, of course, like a Twilight Zone episode penned by Richard Matheson (never a bad thing), but the ending is way too abrupt and left me wanting.
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The final tale, A Good Marriage, regards a woman who discovers that her loving husband of over a quarter century has been keeping secrets, dark secrets, very dark secrets – he may, in fact, be a serial killer. The tale also posits that perhaps it really is impossible to fully know another person, even a spouse, and how scary is that?
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King himself has been married to his wife Tabitha for almost 40 years – lest one think after reading these tales that he has it out for his own marital partner. In fact, he dedicates this book: For Tabby, Still.
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At 63 years of age, King probably has more books behind him than ahead. But if Full Dark, No Stars is any indication, the man still knows not only how to how to get under our skin, but to make us grateful for such an invasion. If only by making us confront our own inner stranger.
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Full Dark, No Stars may be unabashed pulp fiction, but it is also psychologically rich. It may at times be gruesome, but it is also emotionally rewarding. Then again, I’ve come to expect nothing less from Uncle Stevie.
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So, there it is, boys and girls. Time to head back to your cabins with your reading materials. You should each have a copy of Full Dark, No Stars, and a flashlight with which to read it under the covers – which is somehow apt. Just don’t let your counselors catch you. And if they do catch you, perhaps this book will give you some creative ideas on how to deal with such meddlesome creatures. MWHAHAHAHAHA!!
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http://www.thewordslinger.com/index.php
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BROODING by Andy Williamson
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Check out Andy Williamson's novel, Brooding. This looks like a healthy mix of all out horror and spiritual warfare. I'll tell ya what, nothing is scarier than demons!
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The website describes the book, "Nicholas Goodfellow is not the Devil, but he knows him."
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When the high-ranking, aristocratic demon first spies his new mission - a five-year-old orphan named Tyler Davis - he is insulted. But when he sees that his former friend General Valiant, one of Heaven's mightiest warriors, has been charged with the boy's keep, he knows that something is afoot.
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Tyler knows nothing of these spiritual beings. As the tenderhearted lad grows up under the twisted rule of his dictatorial grandmother - experiencing physical, emotional, and religious abuse - he runs away at the age of sixteen, collapses on the highway, and is adopted by a benevolent gang of Colorado bikers known as The Brood.
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Within this family, made up of wounded souls like himself, Tyler first begins to trust, falls in love, and learns some very effective ways of shutting out the past. But running from demons, psychological or otherwise, is a tricky business - sooner or later they must be faced. As Tyler does so, he becomes aware of the spiritual battle going on around him - a bloody war for his soul which will leave none of The Brood unchanged.
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This very human story is about forgiveness, redemption, letting go of the past, and how God can offer beauty for ashes to the most brokenhearted soul.
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It is a story for the walking wounded. It is a story for us all.

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http://theheartlandchronicles.com/

Full Dark No Stars heads into sunlight

Reviews are popping up everywhere. Along with them, Dread Central posted news that a third trailer has been released on youtube. All very nice! I can hardly wait.

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So here are the necessary links to get yourself ready for a serious reading frenzy this coming week.

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Third trailer: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/40785/third-official-trailer-stephen-kings-full-dark-no-stars

Here's a rather cranky review. You know, you should read cranky reviews of King sometimes, just to remember how messed up critics are. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8111101/Full-Dark-No-stars-by-Stephen-King-review.html

The peninsulaqatar is much kinder to King's latest offering. After musing about the possibility of another set of four novels in another 20 years or so, the review dives in with almost gleeful joy. "These are stories of retribution and complicity: of crimes that seem inevitable, of ways that we justify the world to ourselves and ourselves to the world. Powerful, and each in its own way profoundly nasty." Ah, we all hope so! http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/saturday-editions/131592-stories-of-retribution-and-complicity.html

Comparing It To Different Seasons:

All the reviewers cannot help but hearken back to Different Season's and Four Past Midnight. Often they come away feeling Full Dark No Stars is a lesser work. But I would suggest that at least in the case of Different Seasons, the stories have gotten better with time. First, many of us have been endeared to them because of great audio performances by the likes of Frank Muller. Then they were brought to life before the camera. As I recently read Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, I came away thinking the movie made the story better. The stories get better with age.

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Comparisons To Four Past Midnight

Four Past Midnight is getting a lot of lumps these days. I do not think it has necessarily aged as well as Different Season's has. The reason? Same as above. But instead of getting better with age, Hollywood has caused some of these stories to spoil in our minds. In particular, The langoliers is a great novel that is painful to watch on screen. But, as King has pointed out, no matter what they do in the movie, the book is still there to read. The story is not hurt one bit.

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I once heard someone complain that The Sun Dog showed King's obsessive editing. I read that story as a teen, and loved it. I gulped it down. It was literally a page turner for me. And being young, I wasn't paying attention to how the story was crafted, how the meal was cooked, I was just enjoying the meal. I liked it a lot. I came away saying, "This thing is just like a Twilight Zone!" In fact, it might be worthy of one of those hour long Twilight Zone's!

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I do think that the story Secret Window was made better on screen. It was sweetened. Some seeming loose ends were tied up.

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My point in all that is simply to suggest that anyone reviewing a book before it's even been released to the public might judge it too quickly. Give a book time to settle into our culture.

The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates

I just read The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates in Stephen King's book of short stories, "Just After Sunset." I really liked this story.
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Twilight Zone:
Many of the stories in Just After Sunset remind me of the feel of the Twilight Zone. This story not only has the tone of the Twilight Zone, it reminds me of a specific episode. The Twilight Zone's "Long Distance Call" is the story of a grandmother who just can't let go. It's actually not very good.
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King's story is about a woman whose husband has died in a plane crash. As his funeral is being planned downstairs, his wife gets a call from him! He warns her of some upcoming events. The story ends with a Twilight Zone like twist.
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Death
So how does the dead husband describe death? Interestingly, it's grand central station! But don't think the light at the end of the tunnel is a train engine, because there are no trains. There is an escalator that goes somewhere. (I would not push the down button on any elevators, gang!)
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And time is slippery. That is, time on his side is not the same as it is on ours. That reminded me of elements in the dark tower.
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Just After Sunset is proving to be a true King classic, chalk full of strong stories.

Richard Matheson On Screen

Matthew Bradley, author of Richard Matheson on Screen, posted recently that his book is now available for purchase. I haven't read it... yet -- but it looks interesting. He got a pretty good guy to write the forward; Richard Matheson!

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Bradley certainly has the credentials to offer up a book about Matheson. His own website notes, "He is the author of Richard Matheson on Screen: A History of the Filmed Works, the editor of Matheson’s Duel & The Distributor, and the co-editor (with Stanley Wiater and Paul Stuve) of The Richard Matheson Companion, revised and updated as The Twilight and Other Zones: The Dark Worlds of Richard Matheson. Bradley has written introductions to limited editions of Matheson’s I Am Legend, Hell House, Noir: Three Novels of Suspense, and What Dreams May Come" http://bradleyonfilm.wordpress.com/about/

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McFarland offers this description of the book: "Though innumerable biographies have been written about novelists, playwrights, and poets, screenwriters are rarely granted this distinction, even ones as prolific and successful as Richard Matheson. He has occupied a unique position in cinema as the writer or original author of films from The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957 through I Am Legend in 2007. This book documents his rise to prominence, parallel literary career, and role in the horror and science fiction renaissance. In chronological order, the exhaustively indexed narrative examines each film written by Matheson or based on his work, with sections devoted to episodic television (including The Twilight Zone) and unproduced projects."

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The book is listing at $45 and can be purchased here: http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4216-4

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King and Matheson:

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I'm most familiar with Richard Matheson from The Twilight Zone. However, he appears to be a favorite of Stephen King.

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King has talked about how Matheson inspired him. He wrote in the introduction to I Am Legend, "When people talk about genre, I guess they mention my name first, but without Richard Matheson I wouldn’t be around. He is as much my father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley’s mother. He came when he was needed, and these stories hold all their original hypnotic appeal."

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The novel Cell is dedicated to Matheson. His familiarity with Matheson's work is evident in Danse Macabre, where Matheson gets no less than eight mentions.

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King and his son Joe Hill partnered with Matheson in an audio book called Road Rage. King and Hill wrote "Throttle" while Matheson contributed his novella "Duel." Duel was made into a movie by Spielberg.

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Marriage

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Matheson offers an interesting insights on marriage and writing. This is from William P. Simmons interview with Matheson which originally appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine.

Matheson says, "you can see my mentality change in the stories which I published in chronological order. In my earlier stories, when I lived by myself in Brooklyn, marriage was like some frightening phenomenon to me. It did not turn out well in my stories. Then I came to California, met my wife, fell in love, and got married. So after that scary things happened to the man and his wife. Then we had children. And that changed my attitude even more. Scary things now happened to me, my wife, and my children. They became a part of my life. Every writer, I think, only profits by being married and having a family.

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When Simmons asked if there was more he wanted to say on the subject, Matheson said, "To get married and have a family, is to grow up and mature. It’s the only way. You can read philosophy books for a hundred years, but if you don’t get married and have a family you will never get it. They soften you and shape you, mature you. Absolutely." http://www.rodserling.com/wsimmons/Richard_Matheson.htm

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Makes me interested in reading things by King before he was married. Of course, most of that kind of stuff is strictly off limits to us mortals.

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Brian Keene:

That king has eclipsed Matheson in popular culture is expressed by Brian Keene (a wonderful author in his own right who does not like being compared to Stephen King). Keene retells this conversation with his mother:

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My mother often calls to tell me that Stephen King is on The Today Show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Tonight, or whatever else she’s watching. She clips articles from Time Magazine and People, and gives them to me when I come to visit. And then she says, “Why don’t you go on these shows?”
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“I don’t know, Mom. I’ve been featured twice in The New York Times. And Fangoria put me on page sixteen! They never put authors at the front of the mag. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Yes, but you haven’t been on The Today Show like Stephen King.”
“I was on The History Channel, Mom.”
“But not with Matt Lauer. You should ask Stephen King to get you an interview with Matt Lauer.”
“You should investigate some of these new Alzheimer’s medications.”
“I bet Stephen King is nice to his mother.”
“I doubt it. She probably asks him if he knows Richard Matheson.”
“Who?”
“Exactly.” http://www.briankeene.com/?p=2289

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That's funny!

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Okay, there's a lot more connections to be made in the future. But I just wanted to say that it's exciting to have a new Matheson book out.

King Characters Worthy Of Haven

As always. . . just for fun

I wrote a post on the Carrie remake that pondered if Carrie White could possibly live in Haven. Well, probably not. Then I watched Fire Starter 2, Rekindled. Not really worth a review! Stephen King has said that he still thinks about to particular characters: Danny from The Shining and Charlie from Fire Starter. Hopefully Dr. Sleep is being joyfully created on a computer somewhere at this very moment!

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Now that we've gotten a glimpse of what Haven is about, consider what King characters could live in Haven. I'll start with the obvious, feel free the post your ideas. I'll include people who died in the King novels, or my list would be superly short.

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1. Carrie White, Carrie.

2. Danny Torrance, The Shining. (I'm still excited about Dr. Sleep.)

3. Charlie McGee, Fire Starter.

4. Johnny Smith, Dead Zone.

5. Andy McGee (and wife), Fire Starter.

6. John Coffey, The Green Mile.

7. Thad Beaumont, The Dark Half. ? Probably not, unless George Stark can come along. (For those of you tracking the Twilight Zone connections, I'm almost sure it's a nod to Charles Beaumont.)

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Short list, right? And notice something: Most of the list comes from the very early King works. Of course, Green Mile isn't so early, but the rest are all before Needful Things. It points out a change in the pattern of Kings writing.

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Early on King used characters who had a supernatural ability -- or possessed something supernatural. So Arnie had Christine and Louis Creed had the Pet Cemetery. Later novels have less people with secret powers and more unusual situations. the Tommyknockers is not about people with special abilities, but people who gain abilities because of an outside circumstance.

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Okay, who did I forget?
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Could Carrie White Live In Haven? -- http://talkstephenking.blogspot.com/2010/06/could-carrie-white-live-in-haven.html

The Kind Of Television Suited For King

Simple Point: I wish there was a "Twilight Zone" like series featuring Stephen King's work.

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In the previous post I linked to Stephanie Earp's article, "Can Stephen King Work on TV?"

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I think King can work on TV. Of course, I'm excited about Haven. When it comes to television, I liked Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I'll review the 8 episodes another time, but here's why I like it; Short stories with a punch are one of the things constant readers have come to expect from King. In fact, every few years King gives us a book full of wonderful stories -- Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Everything Eventual, Just After Sunset.

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The format where you did short stories on television seems to be slipping away. I loved the Twilight Zone. It was written -- for the most part -- by three authors; Rod Serling, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont (the Twilight Zone's Richard Bachman!). While it was always Serling's show, the output was so enormous it took a creative writing team to make it happen.

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I wish we could have a Stephen King version of the Twilight Zone. Strange music, an introduction from Uncle Steve and a great story with a neck breaking twist at the end.

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They tried a remake of the Twilight Zone in the 80's. We all know how that went. And to be clear, I'm not saying King should do the Twilight Zone. However, the series had a format that would work for King's material.

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What made the Twilight Zone successful? A lot of things, but one important factor was Serling himself. Serling had immense control over the Twilight Zone! It was His show. You can read the behind the scenes story in Marc Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion, but the bottom line is that it was Serling's gig. He sold it, he wrote for it, he often re-wrote the scripts, and he introduced each episode. He became the face of the Twilight Zone.

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There were Others!

Of course, there was the Outer Limits and Science Fiction Theater -- but they weren't built on a single person.

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The Master of Suspense -- director of Psycho and The Birds -- had Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lots of fun! Can any of us forget those opening lines, "Good evening." We knew it would not be a good evening for someone on Mr. Hitchcock's show! This series was so good, they remade it.

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I also remember enjoying Ray Bradbury's Theater as a kid. I mention those because they are both based on a single person (in this case, respectively, a director and a writer). More recently we've had Tales from the Crypt, which King has written for, and each episode was introduced by the ghoulish Crypt keeper. I liked it! George Romero produced Tales from the Darkside.

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The forced time frame is also nice for short stories. Often King's work is actually hurt by cinema's need to flesh it out beyond the walls King created it in. You know, the best Twilight Zone's were the 30 minute ones. Season Four,w hen they went to an hour, stunk up bad! In fact, I can't think of a single episode from season four that was really wonderful.

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Still Waiting For Radio

Don't you miss old radio? I wasn't around for it! My wife said I was born an old man. Go figure. But I've said before that King's work would really work best on radio since it is the Theater Of The Mind! And it's been done. BBC gave us a faithful adaptation of Pet Semetary.

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Maybe some day they'll give us: Uncle Steve's Dark Kingdom.

Dome Journal #9

Monsters On Maple Street

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This book is starting to remind me of that Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters are due on Maple Street." One of the things I like about King's writing is that he develops themes we are familiar with in new ways. Some seem to see this as a weakness, I enjoy it very much. Besides, King has the ability to up the anti. And I always believe that King gets his ideas out of his own head -- he's not stealing from The Simpson's or Twilight Zone. Anyway, Serling only gave us a quick "what if. . ." while King gives us the full answer "this is what would happen!"

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Things that leave me scratching my head:

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1. Coggins popularity. He is presented as a Jim Jones type, an over-bearing preacher who controls his people. And apparently a Pat Robertson fan (truly, that's the scary part). But after the Dome goes up, there seems to be very little attempts by the congregation (whoever they are) to gather. Usually in times of crisis people gather at their church's. And cults draw especially close, since the ignorant "sheep" don't know what to do unless someone tells them.
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2. At the press confrence Colonel Cox is cut off by "that no spin yapper." ie: Bill O'Reilly. But he's not a reporter for Fox, he's a commentator. Thus allowing for more yapping -- sigh.
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3. Is the Big Jim character realistic? I spent a lot of thsi book thinking that Big Jim was not at all rooted in a shred of reality. It seemed like King just took everything we don't like in humanity and jumbled them together into this strange character called: Big Jim. So track with me:
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. . . no one likes used Car dealers, so Big Jim is a used car dealer.

. . . no one likes cults, so Big Jim is a member of a cult.
. . . no one likes politicians, so Big Jim is a politician.
. . . no one likes murderer's, so big Jim is a murderer.
. . . no one likes fake Christians, so big Jim is a fake Christian.
. . . no one likes drug dealers, so big Jim is a drug dealer.
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Now at some point here, I'm going: Can we just have Randall Flagg back? Big Jim is a used car polotician cult attending murdering drug dealer?

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And then we learn that Big Jim has gotten in trouble for unethical practices at his Used Car dealership. Can I just ask, real quick -- How does this guy get elected? Well, only in America! I once heard someone say that Ted Bundy could have been governor.
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But, the more I think about it, the more willing I am to buy in to Big Jim. Mostly, King's "feelin' it" comments nailed it for me. Big Jim is all about power and self confidence.

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My Grandfather pastored a church many years ago that was attended by Mr. Bill Suff. Worth mentioning because Mr. Suff was also a serial killer. Yep! he sang in the choir, and killed at night. Makes me wonder: Why would someone who has no problem killing buy into a faith that says that in the end, we stand before the judge of men. My only thought on that is that they think in Christainity they can find redemption -- or in Big Jim's case, power. One of those.

Stephen King And The Twilight Zone

This year is the 50th anniversary of Rod Serling's, "The Twilight Zone." Because Stephen Kng is a product of American culture, it is interesting to see the shows impact on his work. It is also worth noting that in the 1960's, Serling was as much a part of American culture as King is now.

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King talks directly about the Twilight Zone in his book Danse Macabre. In particular, The Eye of the Beholder episode. But from reading King, it wasn't any one episode that influenced him, but the entire series. And, perhaps more important, the series eator, Rod Serling.

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King on the popularity of the Twilight Zone:

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"That the Twilight one is. . . near immortal is something will not argue with; in big city markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francico it sems to run eternally, hallelujah, world without end, sandwiched into its own twiight zone just after the late evening news and just before the PTL Club. Perhaps only suh anient sitoms as I Love Lucy and My LIttle Margie can compete with the Twilight Zone for that sort of fuzzy, black-and-white, campiristic life which yndication allows." (Danse Macabre, 220)

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King gives a lot of ink to the Twilight Zone in the chapter of Danse Macabre titled: The Glass Teat.

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"Of all the dramatic programs which have ever run on American TV, it is the one which comes losest to defying any overall analysis. It was not a western or a cop show (although some of the stories had western formats or featured cops 'n' robbers); it was not really a science fction show (although the Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows categorizes it as such) not a sitcome (although some episodes were funny); not really ocult (although it did occult stories frequently -- in its peculiar fashion), not really supernatural. It was its own things, and in large part that fact alone seems to account for the fat that a whole generation is able to associate the Serling program witht he budding of the sixties . . . at laest, as the sixties are remembered." (Danse Macabre, 229) See his further comments from on Serling on pages 230-238

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Richard Matheson's Influence On King:
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According to the Complete Stephen King Universe (a great book), King was heavily influenced by Richard Matheson, one of the Twilight Zone's key writers.
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In The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Zicree, King is quoted as saying, "[Matheson] was the first guy that I ever read who seemed to be doing something that Lovecraft wasn't doing. It wasn't eastern Europe -- the horror could be in the SevenEleven store down the block, or it could be just up the street. Something terrible could be going on even in a G.I. Bill-type ranch development near a college, it could be there as well. And to me, as a kid, that was a revelation, that wax etremely exciting. He was to puttng the horror in places that I could relate to." (p.57)
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Twilight Zone Episodes Influence On King:
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Think about it: Could the tite "The Dead Zone" have been at least inspired by "The Twilight Zone." It is certainly a story worthy of the Twilight Zone, isn't it?
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Paleycenter.org suggests that Christine was influenced by the driverless car from “A Thing About Machines." http://www.paleycenter.org/influencing-stephen-king-star-trek-cindy-sherman-and-more
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It is worth noting that a writer might have a thought planted from a T.V. show or a conversation, or any number of things. But as they add other ideas, the story becomes their own. And, just for my own notes, I seriously doubt there is a real connection between The Twilight Zone and Christine.
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If I may. . . I think if the Twilight Zone offered King anything, it was simply the power of a strong ending. Twilight Zone is all about the end. The story builds to a climax, gives a twist, and usually leaves you stunned. King has showed a gift for this same type of twisted ending, a skill perhaps enhanced by his love for the Twilight Zone.
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King Becomes Part Of The Legend:
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The admiration doesn't appear to be a one way street. Not only has King spoken of his love for the Twilight Zone -- the Twilight Zone has featured his work in many forms. Of course, the highest Twilight Zone honor is an episode. But there have also been contributions to the Twilight Zone magazine, and interviews. They obviously see that his work is compatable with their genre.
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In 1985 King's short story from Skeleton Crew, Gramma, was turned into an episode for the New Twilight Zone. Now I don't remember the 1960's. But 1985. . . I was a kid living in Los Angels. The Night Stalker was in our newspapers, Star Wars was all the rage, and the New Twilight Zone wasn't even spoken of. Go figure. And my parents were huge Twilight Zone fans. I guess this series just didn't take off.
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Twilight Zone Magazine
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April, 1981: The first issue of the Twilight Zone magazine had an interview with Stephen King.
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June, 1981: The Jaunt was published in Twilight Zone magazine.
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May, 1982: Several articles on the upcoming Creepshow.
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July, 1982: King did a review of the movie "The Boogens." (Neverheard of it!)
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September, 1982: Article on Creepshow
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November, 1982: King's article appeared "The Evil Dead: Why You Haven't Seen It Yet and Why You Ought To"
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April, 1983: Twilight Zone magazine had reviews of Creepshow and Different Seasons.
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June, 1983: Twilight Zone magazine published The Raft.
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December 1983: Articles on The Dead Zone appeared.
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Februrary 1984: Articles on Christine.
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June 1984: Reviews of Christine and Pet Sematary.
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August 1984: Reviews of Firestarter. (Movie)
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February 1985: Interview with Stephen King and Peter Straub about their book The Talisman. The cover for ths magazine shows both King and Straub wearing interesting headgear. (Straub looks like an SNL conehead)
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October, 1985: Has a letter from King to the editor.
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December 1985: An interview with Stephen King. (By the way, this issue is only $4 on ebay.)
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February 1986: The Twilight Zone Magazine prints King story, "The Fifth Quarter".
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December 1986: Interview with Stephen King.
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February 1987: Twilight Zone magazine review of IT.
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Interesting Links:
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The Shining and The Twilight Zone, http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-4121-Pop-Culture-News-Examiner~y2009m9d13-The-Shining-and-The-Twilight-Zone
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Listing of magazines and covers that Stephen King was in. Very well done! http://jerodandlisa.com/king/mags/S-Z/
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King's bio on the Internet Movie Database includes his Twilight Zone episode, Gramma. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000175/
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The Twilight Zone's influence On Stephen King, http://www.paleycenter.org/influencing-stephen-king-star-trek-cindy-sherman-and-more
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Watch more here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=3556683