What are you reading?

[Mr.Obvious]

And plenty of sequels.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

He does have a good angle on the plane facts.

[Unbeliever]

I was able to get all 13 books in 4 volumes.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Sounds like Jack L. Chalker, he of the flaming word processor.

[the_antithesis]

So, I read Dreamcatcher by Stephen King and I have thoughts.

I first encountered this story through the movie. I remember thinking that it felt like reading a Stephen King novel. I can't quite explain the reasons for this. I think it's because other adaptations tend to leave out or reduce things. I can see the director going through the book and coming upon something and going "Ha, ha. No, Stephen. We're not doing that." It felt like a slavish adaptation or one that captured the flavor of read a King book. I still don't know what that may mean or if it's true.

Decades later, I finally read the book. It is one of two books that he's apologized for and weirdly, both Dreamcatcher and Tommyknockers are about aliens. I guess he has other alien books. Under the Dome? IDK And he's probably apologized for every single one of his books at one time or another. But these two he apologized because he felt the quality wasn't good. Dreamcatcher does have problems. Let's count them.

1) he was on a lot of drugs when he wrote. Much like Tommyknockers, although that was cocaine. Cocaine is why movies from the 80's are the best because they could get producers high on cocaine to agree to the dumbest shit. However, Dreamcatcher was not cocaine, so it's probably differently than if it had.

2) It was Oxycontin because he'd been hit by a truck. He was in a lot of pain and couldn't write for more than a few hours and wound up writing the whole thing longhand. That pain shows through. His novels are often unpleasant, being horror stories, but it seems excessive here.

3) Much of the concepts here have been used elsewhere. This may be just what having a 30+ year career is like. You are going to tread ground you've been on before. Or it's a factor of the circumstances where he wasn't really able to come up with fresh ideas at the time. I don't know but It, Stand By Me ("The Body"), It Grows On You (from Creepshow), Firestarter, Tommyknockers, And probably others I'm missing. I wouldn't call it a greatest hits so much as just borrowing ideas he'd already used elsewhere.

4) Overall, though, the story feels half-baked. The concepts here are very esoteric but they don't quite gel. The ending of the book has an epilogue where character discuss what happened in a vain attempt at explaining it to the reader. It don't work.

So, not a strong outing, but it's probably one that should never receive a re-edit. It's an unpleasant novel because it came from an unpleasant place. Like a confession elicited under torture. It is not eloquent because it is raw.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Or it could be just a day in the life of a horror aficionado. I was like that at one point. When I was swimming down the Mekong to get back to base I'd travel (ie. float) at night and hide during the day. Brush piles along the river were handy impromptu pied-à-terre but I scared the crap out of a couple of locals who moved some firewood candidate and found a face looking up at them. This is when I started creating movies in my head. Discipline required to keep the story straight and fear to keep me hidden and not screaming when I bump the steel sticking out of my leg.

I actually wrote all that up and sent it to Stephen a few years later. He wrote back and said "If you ever need a job, come see me."