Stephen King's next book is 1000+ pages and based on the Simpsons movie - Page 2

It's a sequel. Frankenstein and Dr. Frankenstein in modern day New Orleans. Dr. Frankenstein keeps making a super race of clones to replace us while Frankenstein comes back from Tibet to stop him. The clones mutate into Resident Evil 4 monsters and there's a pair of cops.

I read Dean Koontz whenever I'm stranded at the airport. It's the only way to pass the time.

You people are masochists.

I'm sorry but there are plenty of less painful ways to pass the time at an airport than reading Koontz. An anal cavity search for example.

...and the King premise sounds okay (if not overly familiar) - but does it have a lamp monster?

1000+ pages? My God. This man needs a fucking editor.

I was thinking it'll end up being a Dark City type of thing.

Am I the only one who really enjoyed 'The Cincinnati Kid'? Granted it wasn't horror but still...

I think the only one i really remember NOT liking was Gerald's Game. Everything else ranged from halfway decent to pretty great. Maybe I just have low standards eh?
Though, despite owning them all, i've not read anything he's written since Cell. I think i might have a go at Blaze first.

Edit: Oh, Rose Madder was a bit forgettable too.

Never.

I wonder what novel lies beyond Under the Dome.

I liked it a lot too. Didn't need to be a $5.99 paperback, but I enjoyed it for what it was, a story about the nature of mysteries.

Two writers enter, no readers leave?

I would like King to stretch his wings and set this in Michigan. Or Kansas. Or Iowa. Or anywhere other than, once again, Maine. Because King? Nothing remotely exciting ever happens in Maine. Ever.

And if a giant Dome did appear over a Maine town, guess what? Nobody would ever know. Not even the people under the dome.

Ayuh. That's how they agree with you in Maine!

I have fairly low standards when it comes to Stephen King, I like everything of his that I've read (which is almost all of it) except the Dark Tower series, which is godawful. But I'm not a big fan of epic fantasy type things at the best of times, so I may be being too harsh.

This sounds to me potentially really good, one of my favourite things Stephen King does in his writing is the way he develops characters fast and effectively using show not tell. That's why I love the book Needful Things - you manage to get to know most of the population of a small town and really care about the vast majority of them. If he manages to pull that off again, I'll be impressed.

If this turns out like The Stand it will, of course, be amazing. The Stand is possibly my favourite Stephen King (with the exception of The Long Walk, my absolute favourite, and in competition with It, the Shining and The Langoliers) and something else along similar lines would be great.

So yeah, I'll buy this and read it. And unless he's REALLY lost it, I'll probably like it

I think the progenitor to this sounds like THE REGULATORS.

If it's a matter of the Regulators being an unfleshed out bit of throwaway, that he's finally fleshed out, this could be good.

I've really given up hope of him ever really making anything good any more, though. 1000 doesn't offer much hope of a tight, disciplined, well told story.

I agree that THE DEAD ZONE is one of his best. But underappreciated by many King fans is CUJO. The writing in that is just beautiful.

Not really Jesus-y, but they stopped being horror and became kinda-sappy "thrillers", if you can call them that. He hasn't done a real horror book in a long time, unless you count the Odd Thomas books, which I don't (nor the Christopher Snow unfinished trilogy, which is more freaky sci-fi than horror).

I liked Life Expectancy, for what it's worth. The Face was OKAY, too.

Phantoms is pretty much pure horror from what I remember - I last read the whole book when I was twelve though, and I've only just started re-reading it. The Taking is also strong on the horror, although sadly also on the wacky Jesus messages and child worshiping bullshit. It's some of his better writing though.

Really though, he's what I read when I don't have any more Stephen King. He's not a good writer generally, but he has a handful of decent ideas that make readable trash.

It's ayup, motherfucker. Your lack of proper New England dialect is a wicked pisser.

By the way, how do you pronounce that? It's been driving me nuts.

Stephen Colbert has it down pretty pat

Wait, are you people talking about Dean Koontz or Dean R. Koontz? I'm confused.

Odd Thomas pissed me off. I hate when a writer can't think of a single good reason to get character from point A to point B, so he blatantly has the character say "I just drove around until my psychic powers point me to where I need to go. Yep. I've got that."

On Writing is truly great. He should do more non-fiction. I'd like to hear more about the events when he was on all kinds of drugs.

Besides that, other stuff he's done since Misery...I liked a lot of Everything's Eventual.

The Colorado Kid was a waste of time.

Same here, particularly ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY, THE ROAD VIRUS HEADS NORTH, LUNCH AT THE GOTHAM CAFE (which is just awesomely insane), and 1408 which is one of my all time favorite haunting stories.

Life Expectancy is pretty damn good.

As far as King goes, i'm reading IT now for the first time, and it's amazing. Never did read The Stand, but that's next. A few years ago I read the entire Dark Tower saga, and was blown away.

He's written some off stuff, sure, but he's always been the goods to me.

The Dark Tower is better than anything, though.

The Taking got too preachy and sappy for me, but it could've been worse. The rain of jizz part was funny, though.

Some genuinely good Koontz books (aside from the ones I mentioned already) are: Watchers, Icebound, Phantoms, Dark Rivers of the Heart, Mr. Murder, Strange Highways, and his best book IMO Tick Tock.

The Bad Place turned into a superhero novel for some damned reason, and Darkfall was like a book adaptation of an unmade mid-80's horror flick. And I hated the motherfuck out of Twilight Eyes and The Funhouse.

Yeah, that's one (and only one) Koontz book that could make for a really fucked up and fun movie in the right hands. The flashback hospital scene alone would be worth it.

"Man in the Black Suit" too. I actually remember enjoying the title story as well, even though I know the concept is completely unoriginal and something King and other horror writers have done hundreds of times.

I just got 20th Century Ghosts by his son, Joe Hill. Looking forward to it.

Didn't King write Storm of the Century, the tv mini-series from a few years ago? Because this sounds quite alot like it only with, you know, a dome instead of a storm keeping them isolated.

Now that is good. Joe Hill is definitely the better writer. I recommend his novel Heart Shaped Box as well, about a man who buys a ghost on the internet. It terrified me XD

Is THE BAD PLACE about the teleporters and the guy with the six testicles giving him retard strength and teleporting power? I laughed my ass off at that one.

The only Koontz I liked was TWILIGHT EYES. I haven't read him in years, since at least 20.

Utopia was a hoot. How is that not Bruce Willis' next movie?

Holy shit, I remember that only because my dad mentioned it once. That concept wigged me out as a kid.

Let's see how this is for me ..

Golden:

Cujo, Salem's Lot, Dead Zone, The Shining, Rage, The Long Walk, The Gunslinger, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Body, Pet Sematary, Misery, The Stand (original version, though the ending almost puts it in the mixed bag category). "The Ledge" "Quitters Inc." "One For the Road", "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut", "Gramma", "The Jaunt", "The Reach", "My Pretty Pony", "Survivor Type"

Mixed Bag:
IT (wish it didn't have the gang bang), Desperation, Dreamcatcher, Drawing of the Three, The Running Man, Thinner, Dolores Claiborne, Gerald's Game, Cycle of the Werewolf, Carrie, Firestarter, (I love Charlie and her dad) "Secret Window, Secret Garden"

Bad:

Christine, Tommyknockers, Insomnia, Needful Things, Bag of Bones, The Stand Complete and Uncut, The Dark Half, Rose Madder, The Regulators, The Wastelands (and the rest of the Dark Tower books) The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (barely worth of being called a story ... absolute garbage), The Plant, Hearts in Atlantis (but I liked the original version of "Blind Willie" prior to this collection) From a Buick 8 ... And I'm behind on a lot of his new ones, but I expect they are mostly awful.

Ouch - I pretty much agreed with you till I got to the bad list. There's a few Stephen Kings that are bad (Apt Pupil is too nasty for it's own good, the Dark Tower series is terrible, Cell is ok but no where near as good as King usually is, and a few of the short stories are patchy) but I love Christine, Needful Things, the Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and From a Buick 8. I prefer the Stand Complete and Uncut to the original as well, but I'm a speed reader so I have a bias in favour of books that last me more than a couple of days.

Tommyknockers is pretty bad though. I kept reading it and finding a bit I liked and enjoying it, and then it went off on a tangent and ruined itself again. I kept WANTING to like it and completely failing.

Maybe I should have put Christine in the "mixed bag" list. But something about the way it was written really turned me off. Needful Things made me angry, because it was the first book of King's where I thought I was supposed to sneer at everyone in town and root for their deaths, including that poor kid with the harelip (cleft palate). It wasn't like Salem's Lot at all, it was Mean (or I felt it was).

As with all King, there are still moments. The bit about the fishing rod got to me emotionally. The ending was funny in a violent slapstick way ... I loved the guy with the dynamite, turned out to be my favorite character. The homophobic portrait of Georgie (the fat guy) was repulsive, though.

What's your take on Talisman, Rod? That one is probably in my top 5 (assuming it counts as a King work).

Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis are probably the two best works King has done in at least a dozen years.

I dunno, I only read it the one time. I loved the character of Wolf, but other than that, I can't remember much, except that the kid felt like vomiting whenever he drank the magic juice that took him to the territories. That was wrong, somehow.


I disagree. Both of them made me see red. Very sloppy, very padded, very insincere. Uncontrolled rage seeping through the pages of both.

Naw, Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis are indeed the best work King has done in many a moon.

And if you like neither The Stand or The Dark Tower series calling yourself a die hard King fan is a little iffy. Though I agree Drawing of the Three is a weak entry, as is Song of Susannah.

All I remember about The Bad Place was the scenes where the guy suddenly starts shooting blasts from his hands like some kind of superhero. And the whole thing started out like a horror book! It was stupid.

I didn't even finish Twilight Eyes. I hated that book.

Based off the wikipedia summary, The Bad Place sounds like the work of some perverted crazy person.

"...It is ultimately revealed that Frank Pollard is the brother to the mysterious madman as well as twin sisters. They were born from a mother who was the product of an incestuous relationship. Her father was a hallucinogenic drug-abuser and her mother was his sister. She is a hermaphrodite and impregnated herself with her own seed. As a result of this compounded inbreeding, Frank and his siblings developed unusual psychic abilities. Frank, wanting a normal life, tries to escape from his family while being pursued by his brother who seeks to either bring him back or kill him, and nothing will stand in his way. After a message from Julie's younger brother, who has Down Syndrome and possesses minor psychic ability himself, Bobby, Julie, Frank and his family begin speeding into a final confrontation... "

That reads like one of those games where you fold a piece of paper so each person can only see the previous sentence when they add their own, and end up with a "story". Only everyone involved is drunk and horny and mean-spirited.

Harmony Korine needs to make this movie right now.

It should be worth noting that FRANKENSTEIN also had a tough lady cop with an autistic brother. Jesus Christ Dean...Jesus Christ...

LIFE EXPECTANCY is his best work, though some of the horrible bad days did get a bit repetitive...that opening though...mad genius.

One thing I hated, and this is a flaw Koontz commits every...damn...time, is that the insane clown antagonist (I know, I know, but it works up until that point) randomly starts making racist remarks. Koontz apparently can't trust the audience to not sympathize with the villain, so he makes all of his villains pedophile racist Nazis who kick puppies and worship Satan.


ODD THOMAS does have that fantastic imagery of dark wraiths floating around that only you can see, but if you acknowledge that you see them they will kill you instantly.

Oh, and DRAWING OF THE THREE has, bar none, the best written gun fight ever written.

Don't like to consider myself a "die hard King fan". I was one, but he kicked me in the nuts too many times for me to trust him anymore. Tommyknockers was a great big red warning "This author will publish bullshit". He's consistently been happy to publish bullshit since. What was Regulators but a big greedy pile of audience milking bull?

If you think Bag of Bones is King's "best work", you really should go back and reread Salem's Lot, and you'll realize why Bag of Bones SEEMS good ... it's deliberately trying to ape qualities of earlier better works, Salem's Lot in particular (I believe.) Reread one after the other and you'll see what I mean.

And I liked the Gunslinger and much of Drawing of the Three. I just felt the rest was cheating, and bullshit, a story he didn't really want to tell anymore, and ultimately didn't tell. (The Blaine story at the end if Wastelands and beginning of Wizard and Glass was fun, though).

I said that Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis was his best work in the best of his past decade or so.

That is undeniable really. For better or for worse the King who got hit by the van is far kinder and gave up drinking is indeed more relaxed than the King of the past.

But so be it. The qualit of his writing has not changed.

Truth. In fact, that is the most memorable part of the book for me. Way more entertaining than the hand eating crabs and other ridiculous bullshit.

Although the door that Roland goes through to meet the guy that killed Jake was pretty fucking awesome as well.

This thread is kind of making me want to go back and read the Dark Tower books, but I'm not a masochist, and there is no point in reading only the first four just to be let down (all over again) by how stupid the last three were.

I would say that Desperation and Dreamcatcher are the only works of his that approach the quality of old (pre-Tommyknockers). Dreamcatcher gets a bad rap because it's first third is bullshit, but then it settles into a pretty well told story.

Desperation was great for a third, and then got boring. But, for God's sakes, "Low Men in Yellow Coats" from Hearts in Atlantis is execrable trash, and the stuff King clumsily stitched into the "Blind Willie" story to tie it into the "Low Men..." tale is awful. He's basically lying to his readers, saying "I wrote Blind Willie as part of a larger tale" when it isn't so. (and Low Men is a deliberate and cynical and insincere linking to The Dark Tower stories as well).

I don't agree that the "sober" King is "more relaxed". I think he's way more openly misogynistic. Witness the way he treats Bobby's mom in "Low Men".

I think the quality has definitely changed. Mostly, I think that King really is only capable of writing at his old level in short story form, but he insists on taking the short story concept and bloating it out into Novel length stories that don't deserve all the paper. For instance, I just ran into a short story at the end of "Blaze", which was apparently included as an ad for DUMAS KEY, and King actually says that he expanded that short story into the novel of DUMAS KEY. (Memories, is the name of the short story, I think). Anyway, the short story was very good, full of feeling, description ... he was packing it in. Why expand it when you've already done your job in 20 pages or so? What more can you have to say about it? What ends up happening is that King just pads, insincerely, ruining an effective little tale with deliberate rambling and jokes and bullshit and repetition, just to get something called a "novel" out there. Like me in high school, trying to pad out an essay to the required length.

There is that really, really strange part in THE TALISMAN. As a guy born in the late eighties, I don't know what it was like back in the seventies, but apparently...well, I'll just sum up the passage I'm talking about:

"Jack Sawyer, 12 year old boy, was used to older men touching his inner thigh. It's just the sort of thing that happens, like an attractive woman must get used to getting groped on the street every once in a while. Usually he would just say 'No thanks' and that would be the end of it."

Not word for word, but basically that's what was said.