19th Level

I'm working my way through season 2 of Netflix's Stranger Things . I've commented previously that one of the things I find fascinating about the show is I was the same age as the characters at the time the show takes place - in fall of 1983 I was 12, just like the characters on the show. With an 12-year old with a massive taste for reading (some very advanced stuff), I've had cause to reread It  to make sure I was able to discuss it with her. It's caused me to reflect on the amount of fiction, film, etc. where some or all of the protagonists are children - preadolescents to adolescents. Just from media consumed in the past few months I can think of: The main protagonists of Stranger Things The Losers' Club of It Ellie in The Last of Us Mark Petrie of Salems' Lot Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Seasons 1-3) I'm also contemplating the overlap of these with young adult fiction - both feature children - typically of early to mid adolescence - while ...

I liked it. I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting to. The reviews and word of mouth for the film adaption of Stephen King's The Dark Tower  were not just bad, they were awful. But King' Dark Tower series is one of my favorite reads of all time - I was going to see it for myself. I was feeling rather under the weather on Saturday, still getting over some nasty head congestion, but with such awful reviews I was a bit concerned the film would be in for a very brief engagement. My 12-year old, Jasmine, was very interested in seeing it. She's just about finished reading The Gunslinger . Of my two daughters, she's the geeky one, the one into comics, the one who has already read some Jack Williamson.  Much to my surprise, I really liked it. Idris Elba made for a great Roland and Matthew McConaughey was a villainous delight as Walter/The Man in Black. It was critical to get someone good for Jake Chambers and Tom Taylor did a fine job. These were not q...

It's been a long time since I read Stephen King's The Dead Zone. I believe I received it as a Christmas gift in a boxed set back around 1987. First published in 1979, The Dead Zone isn't really a horror novel - it is more a crossover of a political thriller and a tale of a man gifted/cursed with psychic powers. What I found striking was how the book both worked as a period piece and how it is relevant today. It tells the story of John Smith - yes, that's his real name. Ever since an accident he had as very young boy (one he has no memory of) he's had the occasional psychic flash. This is illustrated in the beginning of the novel, set in October of 1970, where he and his girlfriend Sarah, both first-year teachers, are at a carnival and he has a wild streak of luck at the wheel of fortune. However, his luck soon turns ill as he gets in a car accident which puts him in a coma with nearly no chance of recovery. We follow Sarah as she meets Johnny's parent...

He touches his wife’s smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood . . . its beliefs and desires.   - Stephen King, It It defeated me the first time I attempted to read it. I was introduced to Stephen King by a classmate in, if I recall correctly, in my junior year of high school. I borrowed a number of her copies and acquired my own from the local Waldenbooks. For whatever reason, I was never quite able to finish It . I made it through many of his books ( The Gunslinger and The Stand  were my favorites at the time) but It was a bit too much. Fast forward to 2011 and I finally got around to completing It , reading it in audiobook form. What's really odd is what a gap was. My recollection is I tried reading It in 1989 or so, so it was about 22 years later. It itself takes place in two time periods, 1958 and 1985, with the 11-ye...

I've been digesting the Dresden Files Accelerated RPG off and on over the past several weeks - an activity balanced by family, work, finishing my graduate class, and running my Fate Accelerated Star Wars game. Reading through Dresden Files I've been giving a fair amount of thought to the type of campaign I'd run. I lean pretty heavily towards the urban jungle environment like the Chicago of the Butcher's Dresden Files series of novels - Chicago plus trips to Aztec pyramids, the Nevernever, and other places in our world and others. I've been eyeing re-purposing my homebrew superhero city Port Henry for that purpose. With the 20th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer  upon us and trailers for It , based upon Stephen King's novel, I've also been thinking of adventures in a smaller town. Buffy  was set in the fictional California town of Sunnydale while It is set in the likewise fictional town of Derry, Maine. You've also got Stranger Things tak...

Stanley Kubrik's film version of The Shining  casts a rather long shadow over King's original novel. Jack Nicholson did a masterful job portraying Jack Torrance, caretaker of the Overlook Hotel as he goes insane. However, the Jack Torrance of the film is rather different from that of the novel. To paraphrase Stephen King, of course he goes crazy. He's played by Jack Nicholson. So let's take a look at the novel on its own. Set in the then-contemporary mid to late-1970s, it tells the tale of the Torrance family. Jack Torrance, the father, is a moderately successful writer who was fired from his teaching position for beating up a student who had slashed his car's tires. Jack is a recovering alcoholic who did not stop drinking because he broke his preschool son's arm but because he and his wealthy friend, Al, after a night of drinking, struck a seemingly abandoned bicycle on the road. What was it doing there? Did they hit someone? Jack as a child adored his ow...

The town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when roatation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul. - 'Salem's Lot  by Stephen King, Chapter Ten There's a point of view that one should only read a book once. After that, why read it again, you know what happened. Truthfully, for some books, most even, that's definitely the case. But for me, there's certain books I read over and over again over the years. Not to find out what happened, but to experience the book again. And to take away something new from it. The best books don't give up all they have of value on the first read. I mentioned a few posts back 1984 is a book I tend to read once a year or so. 'Salem's Lot  is another book that finds its way to me multiple times. Set in the then-contemporary early 1970's, 'Salem's Lot is the story of a vampire infestation of a small Maine town. But it's more than...

"I have never been what you'd call a crying man." - Opening line of 11/22/63 Hulu recently aired a miniseries based on Stephen King's 11/22/63  and with me geeking out in a superhero game set in the late 1950s, I've recently relistened to the audiobook version of the novel. The novel tells the story of Jake Epping, an English teacher in Maine of 2011. He's recently divorced with no children, mid-30s. Jake is a patron of Al's Diner, home of the insanely low-priced FatBurger. On the last day of school Al calls Jake at his school. Jake is a bit puzzled, as while they were on good terms, they weren't friends. Al asks Jake to come to the diner. Arriving, Jake is shocked to discover Al has aged several years and is in the late stages of terminal lung cancer. When last Jake saw Al, just the day before, he was a healthy man in his late 50s. Al quickly introduces Jake to a time travel that he discovered in his diner. Rather than deal with the disb...

"People grow up, they grow up and leave the kids they were behind." "Sometimes a little of the magic sticks around," Bobby said. "That's what I think. We came because we still hear some of the right voices. Do you hear them? The voices?"    After opening with two novellas Hearts in Atlantis closes with three short stories. 1983: Blind Willie The first of the short stories takes us to the 80s and follows Willie Shearman, one of the boys who beat up Carol in the first story. It is an odd tale, as he seeks to do penance for what he did in an odd way. Essentially he adapts a series of identities, including that of a blind Vietnam veteran, "Blind Willie", who begs outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral. From other reviews I've seen this seems to be the least popular story in the book. I can see why - it is a bit of a reach, all the identities Willie takes on, how he gets away with it, and most importantly, why he's doing all...

"I learned a lot in college, the very least of it in the classrooms." The first novella in King's Hearts in Atlantis, Low Men in Yellow Coats , is by far the longest in the volume, taking about 50% of the book. It concerned 11 year old Bobby Garfield and his friends John Sullivan and Carol Gerber meting Ted Brautigan. We learn Ted has some telepathic abilities and can pass them on to others, at least briefly. We also learn that he has some connection to the Dark Tower, the center of Stephen King's "universe". The second tale, entitled "Hearts in Atlantis", from which the volume gets its title, is also of novella length, though considerably shorter than the previous tale. It is also far less "fantastic", more grounded in reality. But it also shows the affects the previous tale had on Carol Gerber, now 17 and a freshman at the University of Maine. However, she is not the viewpoint character, rather that is Peter Riley, another freshman ...

1960: It was his first real kiss, too, and Bobby never forgot the feel of her lips pressing on his his - dry and smooth and warmed by the sun. It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting. 1999: "Sometimes a little of the magic sticks around," Bobby said. "That's what I think. We came because we still hear some of the right voices. Do you hear them? The voices?" Hearts in Atlantis can be considered his writing on his own generation, the one that came of age in the 1960s. Being born in 1971 I have to confess to not having any personal connection to the 1960s. But, one of King's greatest strengths is in his characters - they are real people with real wants and needs. I think that is what makes his addition of the supernatural to his stories so effective - even in the face of the supernatural we are still dealing with real people. Hearts in Atlantis  is a collection of novellas and short stories. I'll b...

Cover art to the revised edition of the Gunslinger "The man in black crossed the desert and the gunslinger followed."  - Opening line to The Gunslinger "You want to know about death. I left him a word. That word is NINETEEN. If you say it to him his mind will be opened. He will tell you what lies beyond. He will tell you what he saw.  The word is NINETEEN. Knowing will drive you mad. But sooner or later you will ask," - Letter form the Walter o'Dim to Allie, The Gunslinger "My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby." - Opening lines of "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning I first encountered The Gunslinger in my junior year of high school, in spring of 1988. I borrowed it from a fr...