Book to Movie: Death Ship (1963)

Book to Movie: Death Ship
Written by Richard Matheson based on his short story
The Twilight Zone, Season 4 Episode 6
Original Air Date: February 7, 1963

This was an interesting and engaging short story by Richard Matheson for season 4 of The Twilight Zone. The script deviates substantially from the story, but the script was written to work on television and Matheson makes story work well on the small screen.

The story tells the tale of three astronauts who are scouting for inhabitable planets that men can colonize to alleviate an overpopulation problem on earth. They find such a planet and spot a metal object on its surface. They go to investigate and find a crashed spaceship, just like their own. Aboard that spaceship are three bodies, just like their own. They have to discover the nature of this anomaly if they are going to escape.

In Matheson’s story, the captain is an authoritative, but sympathetic figure. On television, he is obsessive. He’s played to the abrasive hilt by Jack Klugman who is exceptional at playing abrasive people. It is this need for determining the how and why of the situation that drives the story as the captain becomes obsessed.

Meanwhile, his two crewmates just want to leave. They plead with the captain who insists on staying, making calculations to determine what that ship is and how it can have the three of them dead within its hull. Soon, his men start having visions of being home with people they’ve missed. The captain is there to interrupt their dreams and to assure them those dreams are not real.

Finally, the captain decides to lift off. They break free of the planet. But the captain insists on going back. Having established that they can take off safely, he is determined to return to the planet and prove to them that it was an illusion, assuring them that the ship will not be there when they return.

But there it is, just where they left it. The captain resolves to study the problem some more. His crewmen plead with him. We’re dead, they tell him. Just let us go, they plead. But the captain will not. Those crewmen’s souls are prisoner to their captain’s obsession.

Matheson’s tale dealt with the nature of space and time. His script is much more metaphysical and nearly crosses over into theological. The dream sequences (an addition to the story for television) are used well to heighten the despair we feel for this captain’s crew.

The DVD liner notes compare this to Ray Bradbury’s Mars is Heaven. But I think Matheson was going for something much deeper. In Bradbury’s tale, the crew were being deceived so the Martians could defend themselves. In Matheson's sequence, the men are hallucinating, but within some context of a physical afterlife rather than one artificially generated.

I’ve written of the symbiotic relationship between Rod Serling and Matheson and this is another prime example of it. Matheson is a gifted screenwriter as well as a writer of novels and short fiction. His scripts rank among the finest of the Twilight Zone. But Serling was as gifted in writing for television as any person whose ever written for that medium. When they worked together, no writer or combination of writers ever penned such compelling television drama, even if it was within the confines of science fiction.

Matheson and Serling were the McCartney and Lennon of television.

Hearts in Atlantis By Stephen King

Hearts in Atlantis
By Stephen King
Copyright 1999

This book contains two short novels, a novella and two short stories.

Low Men in Yellow Coats
Ten year old Bobby Garfield has a new neighbor in the tenant that rents a room upstairs from an apartment he shares with his mother. Bobby takes an immediate liking to Ted Brautigan who introduces him to adult science fiction and literature and discusses the subjects with him as an adult.

Set in 1960, Bobby lives in a lower middle class section of a Bridgeport, Connecticut suburb. He pals around with two friends, John Sullivan (known to all as Sully John or S.J.) and Carol Gerber. Sully John is his pal, but Bobby develops a strong affection for Carol, with whom he shares a first kiss while at rest on the top of the Ferris wheel.

Ted surreptitiously hires Bobby to be his lookout. He wants Bobby to watch for lost animal posters and oddly drawn hopscotch patterns. These, he tells Bobby, are signs that the men who are looking for him are near. He says that Bobby will recognize these men because neither they, their strange yellow coats, or gaudy cars belong in the neighborhood – or any neighborhood. Bobby and Ted have to be secretive because Bobby’s mom is a suspicious, greedy woman, bitter about being widowed by a gambler who could not resist betting on an inside straight.

Bobby’s mother decides to attend a real estate seminar with her boss and some of his colleagues. Without any other option, she leaves Bobby in the care of Ted Brautigan. After passing a couple pleasant days in Ted’s room talking about books and drinking root beer, Ted tells Bobby that they must go to a seedy part of Bridgeport so Ted can place some bets. He needs to raise getaway funds because the Low Men know he is in the area.

Bobby and Ted make their trip to Bridgeport. While Ted is in the bar office placing bets, a server recognizes Bobby because of his resemblance to his father. Bobby learns that, far from being a lout, his father was a man who would “give you the shirt off his back and never bought a drink for a drunk.”

Ted and Bobby return to their home and await the results of the fight upon which Ted has placed his bet. Bobby goes to the park and finds Carol beaten badly by some private school kids that have picked on them all summer. Her shoulder is dislocated. Bobby scoops her up and takes her back to Ted who says he can put her shoulder right.

Just as Ted has finished putting Carol’s shoulder back, Bobby’s mom returns from her trip. She arrives with her face and body bruised and beaten. Bobby, gifted with a little extra insight for having been in contact with the magical Ted, surmises right away that his mother has been beaten (and probably raped) by her boss and other men.

Bobby’s mom is enraged when she walks in the door and finds a bruised and beaten Carol Gerber sitting on the lap of the elderly gentleman to whom she has entrusted her son. Full of rage at men from her own unpleasant encounter, she immediately jumps to the prurient conclusion that Ted has abused or raped Carol. Bobby and Carol protest that Ted had healed Carol, not hurt her. Not to be dissuaded from her rage, Bobby’s mother tells Ted that if he can get gone from the house in the time it takes her to walk Carol home, she won’t call the police. Ted promises to get gone.

On his way home from the park the next day, Bobby spots a lost pet poster that names Brautigan and provides a strange number to call. Bobby calls the number where an alien voice tells him to stay out of the affair. Knowing that he Low Men are on to Ted, he gets a cab and heads for the bar in Bridgeport to intercept Ted who will be going there to collect on his bet.

Just as Bobby finds Ted, the Low Men find them. Cornered in an alley, Ted promises to go peacefully if Bobby is let go. The Low Men have no interest in Bobby, who lacks Ted’s special talents, so they readily agree. Ted tells Bobby to collect the winnings and then go on with this life. He promises Bobby a post card from time to time if he is ever able to send one.

Bobby returns home to have his suspicions confirmed: his own mother called the number on the poster to turn in Ted Brautigan and collect the reward.

The denouement of the story is the profound change that comes over the once innocent, likable kid that was Bobby. He turns over the money he collected on Ted’s bet to his mother to do with as she pleased since it was money that seemed to make her happy. He starts to feel full of angst and rage. He beats one of the kids who beat up Carol, using a baseball bat. He starts smoking, drinking, and shoplifting. The kid who was so likable and well read has been hardened into a mean and dishonest adolescent.

His relationships with his two closest pals also falls apart. Sully John spent a large part of the summer away at camp. He came back with a new set of friends that did not include Bobby. He and Carol also drifted apart as they developed separate interests. Both of his former chums know that Bobby has changed dramatically – for the worse.

Bobby encounters Carol one day in the park, each of them headed for separate destinations – and destinies. Bobby tells her that he and his mother are moving to Massachusetts and hands her his new address. She scurries away, telling him that she must get home to make salad for dinner. As they part, Bobby screams, "I love you!"

Bobby moves on to Massachusetts and a new school where he soon gets into trouble. He is sent to reform school twice. Meanwhile, his mother has prospered in her real estate venture and is happy except for her only son. As the story winds down, his mom comments that between the two of them, they have really messed up their lives.

The story ends with Bobby’s mom telling him he has mail. Figuring it to be one of Carol’s increasingly infrequent letters, he rushes to open it. It is indeed a letter from Carol, but it is curt and to the point. Ted had mailed Bobby a message and wanted her to pass it along. Bobby opens the separate envelope hoping to find a post card. Instead, out fall rose petals. Bobby knows that Ted has once again escaped his prison and is roaming some other world.

This is the only story in the book that touches upon the Dark Tower story. Ted Brautigan is a breaker, just like the kid from Black House. He has escaped his prison beneath the Dark Tower and made his way into our world.

The Low Men are called this because, as we learned in Insomnia, there are many levels to the tower. These inhabitants of the lower levels are the drones for the power that is the Crimson King.

The rose petals we know came from the field of deeply rich red roses that grows all around the Dark Tower.

Low Men in Yellow Coats did not move the Dark Tower saga forward in any way. It drew a character from that story, brought him into our world, and made him the subject of the story. This book was published in 1999 – two years after the last Dark Tower book. It provided just a little taste to whet the appetites of fans of the story. It would be our introduction to the concept of breakers – a concept fully fleshed out in Black House which was published five years later.

Hearts in Atlantis
The title story of the collection tells of a young college freshman at the University of Maine and his formative first year at the university. The story is set against the backdrop of the radicalization of the peace movement as war and anti-war events unfolded in 1966.

Peter Riley compares his college to the lost continent of Atlantis because he sees all of the people important to him slowly sinking into an ocean where they will drown. Their anchor: the game of Hearts. Most of the residents of his dormitory are hooked on playing the game and neglect their studies in pursuit of “the bitch” which in Hearts is the Queen of Spades. While they neglect their studies, the fear of losing financial aide, dropping out, and upgrading to A-1 draft status is in the back of their minds, but they can’t quit playing.

Peripheral to this story is Carol Gerber, who is a student at the University of Maine and holds a work-study job in the school cafeteria as a dishwasher – a job she shares with Riley.

They fall in love. Carol has broken it off with her boyfriend, Sully John, while Peter has put off telling his high school flame back home that he has fallen in love with a college student.

Carol shows Peter a photograph of herself, Bobby Garfield, and Sully John when they were kids. She tells him the story about how, on the hottest day of the year, Bobby Garfield had snatched her up off the ground and run uphill to his home to get her assistance. She tells him it was the greatest act of kindness she’d ever had done on her behalf. She hints that something bad happened to Bobby in Vietnam.

While Peter’s obsession with Hearts continues to wreak havoc on Peter’s academic standing, Carol becomes increasingly radicalized by the anti-war movement. She is photographed at a protest for a newspaper and is fearful of what her parents will find out about her activities. When Carol decides to drop out of school, Peter is devastated. They make love one time, then she leaves the school with a note that says their lovemaking should serve as a goodbye and implores him to please not try to get in touch with her.

As the Hearts games march on, the war in Vietnam starts to become a stark reality rather than a movie playing out on television. They also become aware of the growing anti-war movement. A hardcore anti-war activist, Stokely Jones, who walks on crutches and mutters the phrase “rip-rip” obsessively as he crutches his way across campus introduces them to the peace symbol that he displays, painted on the back of his army fatigue jacket. They have little idea what the symbol really stands for, but they like it, so Peter and his buddy Skip start wearing it on their shirts.

One snowy night, an alarm is raised on campus for someone has vandalized one of the buildings. Spray painted on the building is an obscenity directed at President Johnson and a demand for an end to the Vietnam War. Peter and his friends are among the first to arrive and observe the crutch marks in the snow and know who defaced the building.

The story climaxes as Peter is dealt the best Hearts hand he’s ever been dealt. He prepares to “shoot the moon” when someone notices Stokely Jones crutching his way across campus at a feverish pace. The Hearts game is ignored as everybody turns to watch for the inevitable moment when Jones will slip on the ice and fall down. When it happens, everybody falls into fits of unstoppable laughter.

It occurs to a few of them, even as they are laughing, the Jones has fallen into a stream and could drown and would certainly freeze to death. The men on the floor abandon their card game to rescue Stokely Jones from certain death. They carry him to the infirmary where he is admitted with pneumonia. Surprisingly, even in his delirium, Jones is bitter about having been rescued.

Days later, their floor proctor and the dean interrupt their card game to inform them that Stokely Jones is the culprit who vandalized school property. Their evidence: Jones displays that symbol “invented by the Russians,” their floor proctor informs them, on his jacket.

In a sobering moment for all of these young men, the rivalries and petty disputes are put aside and they come together to defend Jones, whom none of them liked. Each claimed to display the peace symbol on some garment long before the vandalism. The evidence becomes to soft for the accusation to stand and Jones is off the hook.

That ordeal sobers Peter and his friend Skip who resolve to try to salvage their academic careers. They avoid the Hearts table, hire tutors, study at all hours, and plead for mercy with their professors. In the end, they get the grades and stay in school. Most of their floormates were not so fortunate. Many went to Vietnam.

Just before Christmas break, Peter receives a package from Carol. It contains a card, a letter, and a news clipping. The clip is a picture of Carol at an anti-war rally, with blood running down her forehead. The letter tells him that she misses him, but they are two trains that passed each other going different directions. Peter weeps silently for his lost love.

This story, written a first person narrative told 30 years after the events, hints that bad things are in store for Carol and Carol has a few bad deeds of her own in store for others.

This story was an incredibly moving tale. I normally feel my gorge rise when I hear a graying ponytail wax nostalgic about the 60s. However, this story made me nostalgic for an era I can’t even remember.

King does not wax nostalgic about the 60s or the anti-war movement. The story is driven by Peter’s academic desperation and his obsession with Hearts. The peace symbol and anti-war protests are events that influence the characters and the story. But the story blissfully, does not revolve around the anti-war movement.

King questions different elements of the anti-war movement in his tale. Jones is not grateful, but angry, for his dorm mates defending him by saying they also displayed the peace symbol. Jones says they STOLE it from him. This is an allegory for what weakened the peace movement. It was not organized and no one was in charge. Certain leaders claimed “peace” and the symbol that went with it, but none established primacy or leadership. Many peace groups were rivals and there was much infighting over who would lead the movement and speak for the movement. We see something similar happening in today’s quasi-populist uprising known as “The Tea Party.”

He also questions the actions carried out in the name of peace. We know that Carol will become so radicalized that she participates in a bombing that kills chemistry students. Similar events were perpetrated by the Weathermen Underground, an anti-war movement whose goal was to stop the war by toppling the current political power structure.

King saves himself by not injecting his politics into the story. Stephen King is an on the record, honest to gosh, unrepentant liberal. On occasion, his politics have found their way into his fictional writing, always to the detriment of the story. Here, telling a story against a backdrop of political and social divisiveness, King dismisses politics entirely from his narrative. For that, we should be grateful. Politics would have only ruined this story.

There is no supernatural element to this story. It is purely mainstream fiction. Like most of King’s mainstream works, it ranks among his best.

Blind Willie
Bill Shearman, Vietnam veteran and the man who was once a boy who held a little girl in a little park in a little Bridgeport suburb so a big boy could beat her, lives a triple life. Every day, he departs his home as Bill Shearman, operator of a one man land speculation business. He arrives at that office, which is a dummy company. He drops off his business accoutrements, then goes to another office – that of a heating and cooling company. There, he changes into an HVAC tech named Willie Sherman. He takes with him a case that contains a third set of clothing and some other items to a Manhattan Hotel where, in a public bathroom, he changes into Blind Willie, homeless Vietnam veteran. He then goes about his day begging.

His take is lucrative and he does it to support himself. He also does it as an act of penance for what he did to that little girl in Bridgeport and for stealing Bobby Garfield’s baseball glove with the Alvin Dark autograph.

Shearman served as an officer in Vietnam and he served with none other than his childhood nemesis, Sully John. When John is hit by enemy fire, it is Bill Shearman who rescues him.

Shearman has also followed through newsclips, the life of Vietnam radical and federal fugitive, Carol Gerber.

Blind Willie’s day ends when his sight starts to return. He runs his wardrobe marathon in reverse and takes the train home each day to his loving wife.

Willie Shearman lives a triple life, a mental legacy of a playground fight and a tour of duty in Vietnam. He is not a happy man, but he feels good about the penance he is paying by living out the life of a beggar.

Why We’re in Vietnam
John Sullivan, Vietnam veteran and successful Chevrolet dealer, goes to the funeral of a man with whom he served in Vietnam. There, he finds his old, “new lieutenant” who took over when the unit's first lieutenant was killed in a fire fight. They talk about the events that unfolded around them there and the effect they have on them today.

Sully John is haunted by the ghost of a young Vietnamese mother who was slaughtered by a member of his unit. Her visage appears to him from time to time, never speaking never acting. Sully John lives with a horrific memory of his unit invading a village and members of his unit bent upon killing whatever was there. A private named Malefant, who had flunked out of the University of Maine because of his obsession with Hearts, gets the killing underway when he stabs this unarmed woman repeatedly with a bayonet. The lieutenant approves the execution of one of the men bent on killing. The death under friendly fire sobers everybody up. Another My Lai is avoided.

Sully John and the lieutenant discuss the war’s effect on their generation and how things might have been different. Sully John leaves the discussion that his generation was among the most selfish in history and missed an opportunity lying before them to make deep, meaningful changes in American society.

On his way home from the funeral, Sully John gets stuck in traffic. As he waits at a standstill, the mama san appears in his car. Suddenly, furniture and home appliances begin to fall from the air. Sully John and other people flee from the scene and are crushed by refrigerators, couches, and curio cabinets. Mama san utters her only words she has ever spoken as she beckons John to her. He goes. As he approaches her, a leather baseball glove falls to the ground. He sees the Alvin Dark autograph and the name inscribed on the thumb.

The story ends as the lieutenant sits at his kitchen table, reading a newspaper article about how his war buddy died of a heart attack while stuck in traffic.

The story draws its title from a novel of the Vietnam era by Norman Mailer.

Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling
Bobby Sullivan returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of his childhood buddy. After the funeral, he makes the rounds of the old neighborhood, including his old house and the park where he, Carol, and Sully John had played as kids. He has brought with him a radio and a package. He tunes in the radio to an oldies station and opens the package. It contains an Alvin Dark autograph ball glove.

As Bobby sits and listens to the radio, a woman approaches him. He immediately recognizes Carol, his first love. She says she’s not Carol. Her name is Denise Schoonover. She, too, was there to see their old friend into the ground.

He, bald, she gray, sit and discuss their lives 30 years before and the course their lives took. Carol says her former life is dead to her. She was seduced by a man who seduced young people and made them do horrible things. She has put that past behind her. She has moved on.

Bobby has moved on from a life of crime to something more respectable, working as a carpenter. He has a wife and kids and a home. The book ends with them looking at the package that had arrived for Bobby through Sully John’s estate. It contained the glove, which Carol knew Willie Shearman had stolen because she’d seen him using it later. Stuffed in the glove was the title page of Lord of the Flies which is one of the books Bobby was turned on to by Ted Brautigan. Inscribed on that page was a heart with an arrow through it, a plus sign, a peace symbol, and equal sign followed by the word information – an inside reminder to Carol of the love she lost at the University of Maine. Bobby is convinced Ted mailed the package to bring him home and together one last time, their broken ka-tet brought full circle.

Hearts In Atlantis is one of Stephen King’s more critically acclaimed novels. Perhaps critics missed the genre references in the opening story. But they are correct to herald it. I was moved by the story and its characters.

As I stated earlier, I can’t stand to listen to hippies wax nostalgic about the 60s. I’ve read enough and studied enough and examined the decade without romantic attachment. I’m much happier to have grown up in the 1980s and Reagan’s America.

However, King does not romanticize. Each of his characters emerges from the decade broken somehow. King is perhaps too hard on his generation when, as the novel winds down, he criticizes them for trading peace and love for junk bonds and cocaine. As much as I used to enjoy occasionally baiting my late mother into an argument about how her generation was the most spoiled in history, the Baby Boomers deserve credit for bringing about positive cultural, political, and social change.

After they were done throwing a fit over Vietnam, it was those same Boomers who threw a fit over Watergate and Richard Nixon. While I am a Nixon admirer for his intellect and political instincts, I have to concede that Watergate and Nixon being forced from office cleaned up politics. It may not seem so to the casual viewer, but politics and government is cleaner today because of Watergate.

They also made it ok to be opposed to war. I have supported every military venture this nation has entered into since the end of the Vietnam War, but I shudder to think what our nation would be like were it not for pacifists and the anti war movement that comes to the fore with every military engagement. While we should, as a nation, not always heed their advice, we should listen to them, for often, they are the conscience of a nation prone to working itself into nationalistic frenzy when attacked or antagonized by another nation.

King is right to not spare his generation’s most radical members in his story. The Weathermen Underground is one of the most despicable groups ever to form in the United States – and it is clearly the Weathermen Underground that King has in mind when he recounts Carol’s life journey. Perhaps their was a touch of the Symbionese Liberation Army in there, too. But as much as the sixties were about peace and love on the home front, there was as much disorder and harm created by the movement.

Certainly, we can interpret the demise of John Sullivan as the death of the Age of Aquarius as he is bombarded with household furnishings and other possessions that the Baby Boomers sought to acquire as they grew up and abandoned their ideals.

As much as Ray Bradbury chronicled pre-depression America with his tales of Greentown, IL, Stephen King is a chronicler of his generation with books such as this and It which masks a tale of growing up American in the 1950s with a horror story. Bradbury broke the barrier that has held back three generations of genre fiction writers from being recognized as “serious” writers with something important to contribute to literature. Perhaps King will one day get his due. With this novel, he certainly earned it.

Book to Movie: Third from the Sun

Book to Movie: Third from the Sun
The Twilight Zone, Season 1, episode 14
Original air date: January 8, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling based on the short story by Richard Matheson
Director: Richard Bare

In 1959, Rod Serling took Richard Matheson’s early work, Third from the Sun and rewrote it for the television series, The Twilight Zone. In doing this, Serling took a rather pedestrian story by Matheson and made it into a masterpiece of television.

Serling injects an antagonist – a coworker (or perhaps supervisor) that is curious about what William Sturka (played ably by Fritz Weaver) is up to in his avionics project. He’s also a fount of information on the latest political developments as civilization heads toward its ultimate war. This coworker is nettlesome, irritating, and smug.

Serling also injects an accomplice. He is a test pilot who has flown the spacecraft and knows how to fly. Together, they plot to get their families off of the planet before war can claim them.

Their nettlesome coworker drops by as they plot their final moves. He drops innuendo and intimidates them. The tension in the scene, shot from bizarre angles is some of the most discomforting dramatic television I’ve ever watched. After he finally leaves, the families collect a few belongings and head for the base where their spaceship is stored.

Finally, as the families approach the base (or plant) their coworker is there to try to waylay their plans. The families make a mad dash to the spaceship, fighting of the guards. They take off and head toward the third planet from a distant sun – a planet they call Earth.

Serling and director Richard Bare create some nice sets as well that make for a more complex tale than the brief one told by Matheson. Sturka (who is not named at all in the short story) and his buddy work at a place similar to Los Alamos. The opening scene is a guard, checking employees in, reading off their departments – “germ warfare, chemical warfare. . .” That sets a creepy tone.

Science fiction aficionados will recognize the interior of the space ship as that of the space ship in Forbidden Planet.

In reading the notes that come with this and every Twilight Zone episode, one learns of the symbiotic relationship that existed between Serling, Matheson and writer Charles Beaumont. The three of them formed the nucleus of what would become perhaps the best written television show in television history. Matheson adapted many of his short works and drafted original scripts, with Serling and Beaumont to serve as critics and cowriters.

The Twilight Zone is one of the few television shows I consider to be true masterpieces of the small screen. In an age of small budgets and primitive special effects, writers such as Richard Matheson, Rod Serling, and Charles Beaumont weaved tales that capture our imagination without one saccharine piece of eye candy. That is a rare talent in television.

Book to Movie: Duel (1971)

Book to Movie: Duel (1971)
Screenplay by Richard Matheson
Directed by Steven Spielberg

Before there was Jaws, before there was E.T., before there was Raiders of the Lost Ark, there was Duel. Steven Spielberg delivers a riveting chase story that was true to the vision of its author.

In 1971, Richard Matheson took his 30 page short story which appeared in Playboy Magazine earlier that year and retooled it into a full length feature screenplay. Dennis Weaver plays David Mann, the innocent salesman driving a 1970 Plymouth Valiant, pursued by a mechanized horror embodied in a tractor tanker rig driven by a nameless, faceless demon who has no other goal than killing him.

The movie moves forward just as the story. Mann innocently passes the slow moving tanker This starts a game of cat and mouse that starts as passing and cutting off each other and escalates to battle of man and machine (or Mann and machine) in a fight to the death.

Matheson pads his story some and gives us a few interludes that aren’t in the story. There’s a great scene when Mann stops at a roadside gas station that also serves as a snake ranch. Mann weaves and dodges on foot as the semi, which seems to be imbued with supernatural handling and acceleration, chases him while setting loose hundreds of snakes by smashing their cages. The scene is well written, well shot and well directed and really adds to the tension in the story.

Late in the movie, there is an interlude with a broken down school bus. The setup of the scene is a bit foolish. Mann inexplicably stops when the driver of a school bus flags him down. Why, after it has become abundantly clear that there is a 40 ton death machine bent on killing you, would you stop to help someone along side the road? Mann stops and agrees to use his 1970 Plymouth Valiant to try to push a school bus to the crest of a grade so he can coast down the hill and bump the engine.

As Mann pushes, his bumper gets stuck under the bus and his car is trapped. The truck returns. Weaver scrambles and works the car loose and takes off. The truck makes a U-turn and its menacing grille bears down on the bus and the school children standing around. You’re sure that the truck is going to kill them all just to terrify Mann. Instead, it takes a break from its maniacal pursuit to help out the driver and his charges.

Matheson pauses to develop his climax a little better in the screenplay than he does in the story. Early in the movie, Mann stops for gasoline. Keep in mind, this was in a time when an attendant pumped your gas, checked your tires, and looked under the hood. The pump jockey tells Mann he could use a new radiator hose. Mann puts off the repair. We who have read the story know what happens because of that moment of neglect.

The movie finale is wonderfully shot and quite dramatic. The tanker truck and the orange Plymouth Valiant plunge into a canyon and explode in an impressive display. Mann looks on impassively.

In Duel, the movie, Matheson achieves something rare: he took his written work and improved it on screen. I can’t think of any other writer who has done this. Stephen King never improved any of his own work by translating it to the screen. Others, such as Brian DePalma, did with Carrie, but King never accomplished on his own.

Nor is this the only instance where Matheson took one of his stories and improved it for the visual media. Many of his Twilight Zone scripts were superior to the stories upon which they were based. Matheson is a rare kind of writer who moves so easily between stories and scripts.

Matheson preserves the key psychological component of the story, which is of course the anonymous nature of the driver. Just as in his story, the only glimpse Mann ever gets of his nemesis is a nondescript arm and an obscure profile. The truck is gray, dingy, and menacing. Credit Spielberg and his crew for finding a truck that ugly and a gifted stunt driver and bringing Matheson’s 18 wheeled terror to life. It’s unnatural ability to accelerate and handle the twisting and turning curves that challenged Weaver’s Valiant just added to its menace and provides just a hint at something supernatural about Mann’s adversary.

The only bit of foolishness is the scene in the truck stop which is written well in the story, but falls flat on screen. Mann engages in excessive inner dialogue voiced over by Weaver. It’s tiresome and dull. Also, Weaver over acts in the scene. It was this scene that Matheson used in the story to build Mann’s paranoia. It seems as if he tried to lift the story directly from the page instead of rewriting it for the screen.

That one scene notwithstanding, Duel is a superb movie – every bit as enjoyable as the story. Matheson is one of the giants of screenwriting. Spielberg is one of the giants of the movie world. This union produced one great movie.

Duel: Terror Stories by Richard Matheson

Duel: Terror Stories by Richard Matheson
By Richard Matheson
Copyright 2002

An Appreciation by Ray Bradbury (Followed by some introspection and reflection by Brian Schwartz)
In this introduction, written in 1988, Bradbury recalls receiving fan mail from Richard Matheson, a young, aspiring writer with a few published stories to his credit. Bradbury does not recall what precisely he wrote back to the young writer, except to thank him for his compliments. Bradbury hopes he advised the young writer to write every day for the rest of his life.

He goes on to praise Matheson as one of the most important and prolific writers of his day, even if his work is not as well known as those as Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke. Bradbury goes on to decree that Matheson is a mainstream writer and ridicules the New York critics who ridicule him, Matheson, Asimov, Stephen King, and countless others who write genre fiction.

Bradbury’s very short introduction to the book says so much and speaks to me as a person. First and foremost is that admonition that rings in my ears all the time and makes me feel guilty: WRITE EVERY DAY. I know I should. I wish I could. But the daily distraction of life, vocational and leisure, keep me from writing every day as I should. Once upon a time, just a few short years ago, I had a job that had me writing – writing creatively – every day. But that vocation and those circumstances have passed and alas, the reports I write at work and this blog represent my current output of written words.

The second point is Matheson’s lack of fame. Even casual fans of horror are sometimes not familiar with his work – or they don’t know they are enjoying his work. I remember seeing The Last Man On Earth as a child and, despite the pitiful cinematography and sound of the low budget move, being riveted to the story. Thank you very much Vincent Price for overcoming the cheap production values to bring Matheson’s tragic character to life, giving him depth, and making him sympathetic.

But it would not be until I was an adult that I would learn that this movie was not the product of some anonymous British or Italian screenwriter. The reason the poorly made movie was so good was because it had been penned by one of the masters of genre fiction.

As I read more ABOUT Matheson in some of Stephen King’s articles and books on the subject of genre fiction and writing, I came to realize that I had indeed enjoyed a great deal of Matheson’s work. The great Twilight Zone episodes such as Little Girl Lost, Third from the Sun, Steel, and others came from this man. Also, the American International Films (sort of an American version of Hammer Studios) movies where Matheson adapted Poe stories into full length motion pictures were a staple of my childhood. The movie Duel entertained me one late night in my early adolescence and I did not know that I was enjoying the great works of two masters of their respective fields – Richard Matheson and Stephen Spielberg.

Matheson’s credits on IMDB.com are as prolific as his list of published novels and short stories. Unlike Stephen King’s body of crossover work, there is a balance of original screenplays and screenplays based on his work. Matheson is not only prolific, he is versatile – perhaps more versatile than any writer in history in successfully crossing back and forth between story writing and screenwriting. I know of no other who does it so well.

Finally, there is that ability to easily work between fiction and horror – an ability matched only by Bradbury himself. Matheson wrote material that was pure science fiction, purely horror, and stories that blended both elements just as Bradbury did. King and Dean Koontz, the two most prolific genre writers of our day do the horror stuff as well as anyone. But when they cross over into science fiction or fantasy, the results are uneven.

Richard Matheson is one of the five most important writers of our time. It was he who inspired Stephen King. It was he who inspired George Romero and John Carpenter. It was he who gave the great Stephen Spielberg his first vehicle to tell a strange and terrifying tale. I would dare say that no other person has had such a profound influence on two distinct, but related writing formats. It’s a great shame that not more know that they have partaken of this man’s work and enjoyed it.

Duel
A salesman is traveling across a desolate part of California en route to San Francisco when he encounters a slow moving tanker truck on a two lane road. He passes the truck so he can maintain his speed and make his sales call in time. But the trucker has other plans. A chase ensues across the deserted highways as the man named Mann battles for his life in a road rage fight for his life.

Mechanized horror is hard to do because it is so easy for a writer to get caught up in the mechanics of the monster. Witness Stephen King’s The Mangler. It has been stated by a number of critics of the movie that what made the truck such a malevolent monster was the fact that you never saw the driver. This is true of the short story as well. There is no humanity in Mann’s adversary. Although Mann catches glimpses of the driver’s hand and a brief glimpse of his profile, he knows nothing about him or his seemingly mindless motivation to kill him. Furthermore, the machine has no humanity. When King wrote Christine, the evil car definitely had personality and motivation. Matheson’s truck, named Keller by the sign painted on the door, is like a serial killer; soulless and without motivation. A gripping tale.

This story was adapted to screen by Matheson and directed by Steven Spielberg. It starred Dennis Weaver as Mann.

The story was originally published in Playboy, April 1971

Third From the Sun
A scientist, sure that the planet is doomed to atomic extinction, prepares his family and their best friends to leave in a spaceship he has designed and built at the military base where he works. They ponder the moral implications of fleeing the planet rather than helping to save it.

This is an average short story. However, Rod Serling retooled it and made it into one of the most powerful Twilight Zone episodes ever. Instead of pondering the morality of their actions, the families instead deal with the tension of their plans being discovered and thwarted.

This story was originally published in Galaxy, October 1950.

Born of Man and Woman
An eight year old child, deformed and inhuman, is locked in a cellar by “its” parents and left to suffer out of sight and mind. He observes the outside world and comes to resent the neglect and abuse heaped upon it by its parents. He soon becomes resentful and resolves the next beating will be his last. . .

Exceptionally well crafted narrative! Matheson tells his story with simple, primitive, almost gutteral prose. The creature in the basement is truly amoral and dangerous!

Note: This story is spoofed to a degree in The Simpsons in a Treehouse of Horror episode when Bart is locked in the attic and forced to eat fish heads.

Born of Man and Woman was originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950.

When the Waker Sleeps
In a future where all labor is mechanized and all but a few men are born to leisure, a group of soldiers fights a never ending battle against alien invaders always seeking to invade and destroy the machines that maintain man’s leisurely existence.

This story had a great twist. Matheson uses a second person narrative to tell the story, making the twist entirely plausible. I can’t recall ever reading a story told in second person. A well written gem of a story!

When the Waker Sleeps was originally published in Galaxy, December 1950.

Return
A scientist departs on a mission of time travel 500 years into the future. As he leaves, he promises his wife he will return in time for supper. But something goes wrong in the time machine just as he makes the jump. He arrives alive in the 25th century and finds an advanced race of humans eager to talk to him to compile information for their library. But he is only interested in finding a way to get back to his wife.

Love is brought to the fore of more Matheson stories than any horror writer I’ve read. Matheson plumbs the depths of his married characters here and other novels such as What Dreams May Come. This story is similar in that a couple deeply in love are separated by life, death, and time.

Return was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1951

Brother to the Machine
In a future where man and machine coexist in society, performing the same tasks, jobs, and duties side by side, one man has had enough. He walks away from his job. In a society driven by labor, the slacker becomes the object of a search and destroy mission. The man, a military strategist throws of f the dehumanizing life of constant work and tries to flee the city.

This story was much weaker than most of Matheson’s work. I get the metaphor of the military strategist and the robotic nature of his work plotting troop movements all day. But the character was woefully underdeveloped and the metaphor never really fleshed out.

Brother to the Machine was originally published in Worlds of If, November 1952.

F---
A time traveler from 1954 to the future finds there is another “F-word” not spoken in polite company. It’s a word that you and I use every day for a substance that the fortunate of us encounter several times a day – sometimes more often than we should. This substance becomes an abomination because of an environmental cataclysm. The time traveler deals with his future shock and his cultural crime.

This story is best described as a farce. The title is designed to put our minds in a prurient place. But the source of the profanity is just a few inches north of the source of prurience. It’s a mildly entertaining tale, but a clever idea.

F--- was originally published under the title, The Foodlegger in Thrilling Wonder Stories April 1952

Lover When You’re Near Me
A warehouse manager is sent to manage a shipping facility on an alien planet. All of his workers are dull witted males. The only female of the race known to him is his maid and caretaker who calls herself, “Lover.” He finds his predecessor’s journal and reads a chronicle of a man driven to near insanity. Through Lover’s constant attention, he soon finds out what drove his predecessor to near madness.

What I appreciate about Matheson’s sci-fi – as opposed to the likes of Robert Heinlein, is his focus on character and emotion rather than technology. Like much of Matheson’s work, emotion is at the fore in this story and come to sympathize with the hero and his desire to be left alone.

Lover When You're Near Me was originally published in Galaxy, May 1952

Shipshape Home
A woman is convinced that something just isn’t right with the apartment building she and her husband lives in. The rent is too low and the custodian is a strange looking fellow. When she investigates, she finds that there are rocket engines in the basement and a third eye in the back of the head of the custodian, she convinces her husband and her neighbors. But if you think their apartment building is an alien ship, you are wrong. . .

The twist, such as it is, is not well concealed. The story moves along nicely and its primary character is strong.

Shipshape Home was originally published in Galaxy, July 1952

SRL Ad
A college student answers and personal ad placed by a woman who claims to be from Venus. He becomes the subject of her ardor and, as is tradition, the wedding will be on her home planet.

Told through an exchange of letters, this is a deftly drafted piece of dark humor.

SRL Ad was originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1952.

Death Ship
A rocket patrolling for planets to be candidates for human settlement finds a crashed rocket on one of those planets. When they board the derelict rocket, they find their own dead bodies in the crash. They struggle to understand the how and why of the situation.

This interesting tale was made into an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was a season four episode which was an hour long. Many of the longer Twilight Zones were dull, but this was one of the more intriguing and engaging.

Death Ship was originally published in Fantastic Story Magazine March 1953

The Last Day
A young man wakes up in an apartment full of drunken, stinking people on what is sure to be the last day of existence, for the Earth is moving toward the sun and soon it will be too hot for life to go on. He and another fellow decide elect to spend the final day with their families rather than in drunken acts of debauchery, so they head out into a world where civilization has collapsed. Their only goal is to get home. When he gets there, he spends those final moments with his mother whom he was at first reluctant to see.

This was less a story and more a character study of how people might react knowing that it was not only their last day, but everyone’s last day alive.

The Last Day was originally published in Amazing April/May 1953

Little Girl Lost
A man and a woman are awakened by the terrified screams of their daughter, sleeping in the living room on a fold out couch. Figuring that she was having a bad dream, her father goes to calm her down. When he gets there, he can hear her voice under the couch just as if the girl were sitting next to her talking. The only thing he can think to do is call his friend who is a physicist. His friend comes over and figures out where the girl has gone, but can not devise a solution. It is the family dog who finally figures things out.

It’s difficult for me to evaluate this story as a stand alone story for I have seen the compelling adaptation Matheson penned for the Twilight Zone. I can say as a parent whose child has been reported missing to the police, I can say that Matheson captures that emotion well in his prose. But, on the written page, the story is not nearly at riveting as the screen adaptation.

Little Girl Lost was originally published in Amazing, October/November 1953.

Trespass
A man returns home from a five month long business trip to find out that his wife is about three months pregnant. She swears that she has been with no other man and implores her to believe him. He is not as strong as Joseph and cannot get past his scientific knowledge of the coupling necessary for conception (at the time this story was written). While the couple struggles along in their badly damaged marriage, she develops a taste for broad education and devours books on world cultures, politics, and science. She also develops an incredible ability to recover from disease and injury. As the man watches these remarkable developments, he becomes convinced that his wife was the victim of an unspeakable act. He worries about the child that is coming. . .

Any well read reader of sci-fi knew where this story was going. However, as I read it, I reminded myself that Matheson was a pioneer in developing this type of alien impregnation story. He may not have been the first to write such as story (or perhaps he was), but he was one of the earliest and certainly refined the sub-genre with quality work such as this.

Trespass was originally published in Fantastic, September/October 1953.

Being
A man and a woman plan to travel across the U.S. from Los Angeles to New York to visit the woman’s family. They stop at a remote gas station for ethyl and water for their constantly overheating radiator. There, they are taken prisoner and kept in a zoo by a man who serves an alien being with an insatiable appetite.

As I read this story, the mental imagery unfolded in black and white. This story would have not fit into the Twilight Zone motif, but would have worked with the slightly campier and hard sci-fi oriented Outer Limits. There was a great deal of action for a Matheson sci-fi story which are usually more contemplative in nature. Oddly, Matheson never wrote for, nor were any of his stories adapted for The Outer Limits.

Being was originally published in Worlds of If, August 1954

The Test
In a future that uses geriatric extermination as a means of population control, a young man struggles to help his father study and practice for the test he will have to take to demonstrate that he still has the physical and mental stamina to participate in society. The father knows the test is beyond his ability, and reacts bitterly. The young man wrestles with anger with his father for being so unconcerned about his fate, and his feelings of guilt for looking forward to being free of the burden that is his father.

This story was a thinly veiled parable about the guilt that children and caregivers feel about the happiness they secretly feel when their charges finally pass. It’s real and it’s natural. I have felt it myself. So is the guilt.for feeling that way.

The Test was originally published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1954

One for the Books
A janitor at a college wakes up one morning to find he can speak French fluently even though he knew nothing of the language the night before. Soon, he starts mysteriously acquiring knowledge about physics, biology, sociology and anthropology. He loses the ability to control when he speaks English and when he speaks French. He constantly blurts irrelevant information at inopportune times. He is summoned to appear before a panel of psychologists who probe his level of knowledge in various fields. Finally, he walks away from the panel and heads home. As he leaves the building, he finds the true purpose of his knowledge acquisition.

What struck me immediately about this story was how it started much like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis with the strong declarative sentence. “When he woke up that morning, he could speak French.” Fred Elderman’s alienation is not so nearly dramatic as Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, but this is a great alienation story.

One for the Books was originally published in Galaxy, September 1955

Steel
In the 1990s, robots have replaced humans in the boxing ring. Robots duke it out while their owners collect the rewards. The owner of a decrepit boxer and his mechanic prepare their robot to fight a much newer and stronger opponent. Just before the fight, the robot breaks down. The owner decides to step into the ring and take on the robot.

I have seen the Twilight Zone episode too many times to read this story and watch events unfold as they did on that show. The Matheson's script was a better story than his story.

Full Dark, No Stars By Stephen King

Full Dark, No Stars
By Stephen King
Copyright 2010

This book contains four novellas.

1922
A man recounts in a written confession how he and his son went about murdering his wife and the tale of woe that followed their crime.

Wilford James is married to a harpy of a woman who needles him constantly about selling their farm and land she has inherited adjacent to the farm. She wants to vacate their farm in Hemmingford Home, Nebraska and move to Omaha. To preserve their agrarian way of life, James resolves to kill her.

He enlists the aid of his son, who dreads moving away from the young girl from the farm next door with whom he is in love. Wilford gets his wife intoxicated and it creates a scene so vulgar and shocking to young Henry that he ultimately helps his father kill his mother.

James buries his dead wife in an old well. As he is burying her, along with an unfortunate cow that is forced to serve as a cover, he sees rats attacking her dead body. Those rats haunt him.

Lawyers for the corporate farm are eager to find Mrs. James so they can complete the transaction for the land. The sheriff comes out to the James farm and makes a cursory examination of the premises, but buys James’ claim that his wife ran off.

Later that year of 1922, things start to go bad for James. His 14 year old son impregnates his girlfriend and she is sent away to a Catholic school in Omaha to have the baby. His son is distraught. The father of the girl is demanding partial payment for the girl’s school expenses. His son steals his truck and takes off for parts unknown.

James takes out a mortgage on his farm, ostensibly to make repairs and invest in the farm. The rats around the farm take on a menacing stance and begin to invade his house. One bites him and the bite becomes infected. A snow storm has cut him off from any assistance and he has no phone. As his fever rages, his dead wife, escorted by a coterie of rats, comes to him. She relates to him a narrative of her son’s life since his departure. He has resorted to bank hold ups to fund his pursuit of his life’s love. He eventually graduates to murder as he springs his pregnant girlfriend and takes to the lam. They are dubbed the Sweetheart bandits as they head west from Nebraska through Utah and into Nevada on a bank robbing spree.

Eventually, he is found by the sheriff who has come to tell him that his wife’s body has been found. Deep in fever, he is transported to the hospital where his gangrenous hand is amputated and his health restored. The sheriff tells him that the skeletal remains of a woman was found in a field several miles from Hemmingford. It seems to corroborate his story that she took off. James is off the hook for his wife’s murder.

But he’s not off the hook for the ultimate demise of his son and his young girlfriend. James believes that he hardened his son and robbed him of compassion when he made him a conspirator in his mother’s murder. He soon learns that his son and his girlfriend are dead. She by gunshot from a lunchstand clerk and he of his own hand.

James sits in a hotel room, recounting the narrative of his life in 1922 and his life in the aftermath of his tragedy. As he writes, rats gather in the room, inching ever closer to him. He rushes to complete his narrative. The rats draw closer. . .

The story ends with a newspaper account of the strange death of Wilford James in an Omaha hotel room.

This story restores my faith that King can still tell a well paced story without heaps of subplots, backstories, and character development. Told in a first person narrative, much like in Delores Claiborne the narrator tells the tale in chronological order with just enough reflection and introspection to make the character a sympathetic anti-hero.

King fans will recognize Hemmingford Home as the town in which Mother Abigail Freemantle of The Stand resided. However, no element of The Stand is touched upon in this story.

Bravo Mr. King for a well told, fast paced story!

Big Driver
Tess is the writer of a series of mystery novels based on a set of characters known as the Willow Grove Knitting Society – a geriatric crime solving club. She agrees to accept a speaking engagement in a Connecticut suburb. After the event, the promoter recommends she take the back roads through the countryside and recommends a route.

While traveling a remote section of road, Tess hits a pile of rubble in the road. Here tire is punctured and she is stranded near an abandoned gas station. She is discovered by a very large man who at first seems friendly and helpful, then turns mean and ugly.

He rapes her and strangles her. She feigns death and Tess is placed in a remote culvert where her rapist believes her to be dead. When she is finally convinced he is gone, she looks around and finds that she is not the first woman to be placed here and probably won’t be the last. She flees down the country road, away from the abandoned store and cold, damp culvert.

She makes it home and the next morning, she receives a call from a bar near where she placed her call for a car to pick her up. Her car was left in the bar parking lot and she has just 24 hours to claim her vehicle.

Tess goes back to the bar to get her car. While there, she asks the bar’s manager if she knows anyone matching the description of her assailant. The bar manager knows him, knows his name, and knows that he’s a trucker.

Tess tries to put it out of her mind. But the memory of those bodies in the culvert and the responsibility she would bear for those placed there in the future spur her to action. She decides to pursue her assailant, mete out revenge, and administer justice. As she does, she learns more and more about the twisted soul who raped her and his family of accomplices.

This story had a lot going for it. I liked the plot. I liked the sudden but slick transformation of the heroine into dark anti-heroine. I liked the demented nature of the rapist and his family. However, the way this story was written took me back to Gerald’s Game which for me is not a pleasant experience.

In Gerald’s Game, the heroine, Jesse Burlingame has inner dialogues with herself playing different roles inside her head. Some of this shows up in Rose Madder as well which I regard as one of King’s weaker efforts. For some reason he feels compelled to write female characters this way.

Tess channels her navigation system for advice. Gains insight from her fictional heroine of her mystery series, wisdom from her cat. As King tries to make the inner dialogues witty and insightful, they come off as dull and tedious.

I give this one mixed reviews. The really great story is overpowered by the subpar storytelling.

Fair Extension
A man on his way home from chemotherapy stops at a roadside stand on a lonely stretch of highway near the airport. There, Dave Streeter encounters a man who can’t give him eternal life, but can give him a “fair extension” of 10-15 years. All he needs to do is sign over 15 percent of his gross earnings every year and find a person whom he hates to pass along his bad luck and grief.

Streeter chooses what many would consider an unlikely candidate: his best friend since childhood. Put upon by the man selling favors to reach down deep and find his hate, it was this man whose visage he saw. He felt bitter resentment of having academically carried the football hero through school then watched as he got fabulously rich in the sanitation business. It was this man, who constantly expressed his gratitude and respect to Streeter, upon whom Streeter lays his curse that will guarantee him more than a decade of good health.

Streeter makes a miraculous recovery. His friend meets with misfortune at every turn. His sons are injured and mentally incapacitated. His daughter falls ill. His wife dies. His business goes bankrupt. Streeter’s wife is distraught over the constant misfortunes of their “friend.” Dave is cool with the bargain he struck.

His kids are doing spectacularly well and are wealthy and prominent. Dave has advanced his career in banking and making great money – fifteen percent of which he dutifully deposits in a Cayman Island bank. Things go well for Streeter. . .

I do believe Stephen King channeled Rod Serling when he penned this short story of just 30 pages. The bewitching character has the over the top charm and propensity for innuendo that are the hallmarks of a Serling villain. However, he lets you know right away he’s not a cliché when he tells Streeter, “I’m not a character out of The Devil and Daniel Webster.”

No. King’s Devil is less demanding than that of Faust and Benet. No souls for him, just his 15 percent cut for a “Fair Extension.”

One of King’s finest short works.

A Good Marriage
Darcy Wellburn: wife of a successful accountant, mother to two successful grown children, happy housewife, seems to have a perfect life. But one evening, as she searches for batteries for her television remote, she stumbles across her husband’s dark secret – a dark secret beyond her worst nightmares.

He learns of her discovery and lays out the grisly details of what he’s done in his secret moments for the past 30 years. He tells Darcy that if she decides to call the police, he will go with them willingly because he could never hurt her. However, he reminds her of the pain and embarrassment their children will suffer and the suspicion she will be under with their friends, neighbors and the whole world wondering if she knew. Forget it, he tells her, and life can go on and he’ll never do it again.

She resolves to move forward. With thirty years of practice, she’s able to carry out every ritual of their marriage flawlessly. However, she is emotionally empty. The sight of a mirror shows her the ghastly toll the dark secret has taken on her life.

One night, they go out to celebrate her husband’s acquisition of his Holy Grail of coin collecting. He gets drunk, and Darcy seizes the opportunity to send her husband and her dark secret into the next life. It’s a perfect “accident” and it seems Marcy has got away with ridding herself and the world of a monster. Her guilt subsides.

But her husband was not quite as perfect in the execution of his crime as he liked to think. One day, several months after her husband’s death, Darcy receives a caller. A man from the Attorney General’s office to see her husband about some murders.

One last time, Darcy channels her dark side to deal with the investigator.

This was a superb story with a well developed, believable anti-heroine. But she’s more heroic than the other anti-heroes in the book.

King calls the book Full Dark, No Stars because there is not supposed to be good. The heroes are dark. But I don’t think Darcy fits that role. I saw her as heroic. Yes, she had a self interest in not ratting her son out. But her first consideration in the equation was her children. And yes, she did benefit from her husband’s death. But the crime was not premeditated and she did rid the world of one of its most heinous killers. Her motives, while not pure, were lighter than darker.

Afterword
King has written often that the question he gets asked most often is “Where do you get your ideas?” He now answers the question reflexively after each book with an afterword for which his biggest fans are grateful.

1922 was inspired by a non-fiction book called The Wisconsin Death Trip. That featured a photograph of a town called Black River Falls. He was struck by the rural remoteness of the town.

Big Driver was inspired by a chance event at a truck stop. King makes no secret of the fact that he hates to fly. So he commutes everywhere. One time on a trip to a book signing, he observed a big, burly trucker changing a tire for a woman at a truck stop. He walked over to see if he could help. The truck driver said, “No. I got this.”

Fair Extension was inspired by one of King’s regular walking routes which leads out by the Bangor Airport extension road. Along that road, sidewalk hawkers are wont to set up. They inspired King to create his Serlingesque hawker.

A Good Marriage was inspired by the events surrounding the BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) killer that terrorized Wichita over two different time periods spanning almost 30 years. I picked up on the similarities right away. I did not notice a disclaimer that all characters in this book are fiction and any resemblance. . .I guess King was not compelled to deeply mask his story idea.

This was a fine collection of novellas. It is superior to Four Past Midnight but not nearly as good as Different Seasons. The one weak story was not too awfully bad to the point it could not be enjoyed and its best work ranks among King’s best short fiction.

A Time to Heal: The Autobiograhpy of Gerald Ford

A Time to Heal: The Autobiograhpy of Gerald Ford
by Gerald R. Ford
copyright 1979

Gerald Ford has always fascinated me. While Richard Nixon is the first president I remember seeing and hearing, Gerald Ford was the first one I paid attention to -- mostly because women kept trying to kill him and I didn't understand why.

He fascinates me because I regard him as one of the truly great Americans of all time. He was not a great president. His conduct of foreign affairs was uneven and his domestic policy was completely inept. However, there's nothing more American than serving when called upon. Gerald Ford did not seek the office of President. He was never elected to it. Yet, when his country needed him, he stepped up and served. When he carried out the most courageous political decision since Harry Truman's firing of Douglas McArthur, we turned on him. After he left the presidency, he largely faded from our view and our memory. Only his death and funeral would make Americans revisit his short presidency and discover what a great American he was.

The book opens with a narrative account of the final days of Watergate. Contrary to what history has told us, Nixon and Ford were close, personal friends and Ford took Nixon at his word when he said there would be no future revelations regarding Watergate. He was devastated and angry when the infamous smoking gun tape was made public and Nixon's fate was sealed.

Ford was the most uncomfortable vice president since John Tyler waited for William Henry Harrison to die. He could say nothing in Nixon's final days. He couldn't defend the indefensible position Nixon was in, but he certainly could not criticize him. All he could do was quietly allow the White House and his own staff to establish a transition team. Even that was risky, because had it become public, it would have made Ford look anxious to assume the presidency. Nixon's final day in the White House and Ford's brilliant inauguration speech where he declared "Our long, national nightmare is over."

Gerald Ford was born Leslie King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska on July 14, 1913. His father was a wife beater and well known jackass and his mother, Dorothy left him and moved to her parents' home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She would eventually marry Gerald Rudolph Ford. Ford who would rename the young boy Gerald R. Ford, Jr. Ford recounts when he was a teenager, Leslie King, Sr. came to visit him in Grand Rapids. Ford's bitterness is not entirely concealed and says the meeting left him feeling nothing for the man who sired him.

Ford doesn't provide a lot of detail about his childhood except to say he was frequently a hothead and his parents were strict disciplinarians. He did well in school and went to the University of Michigan where he was an All-American center. While there, he had to work two jobs and sell his blood to get by. Instead of joining the Green Bay Packers, he elected to go to Yale Law School.

While at Yale, the tall, blond, athletic Gerald Ford worked as a male clothes model and worked at a diner to get himself through law school. While he always listed his profession as lawyer, Ford spent little time practicing law. Therefore, Ford could be described as the first professional model to serve as President!

Ford won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1948. With this addition, three future presidents (Kennedy, Nixon, and Ford) were serving in the U.S. House. Ford did well in sponsoring legislation, but was not a prolific floor speaker. When the Democrats cemented their large majority in the House in 1964, it was clear to House Republicans they were going to need someone who could schmooze Democrats if the Republicans were going to have any hope of influencing legislation. Ford was well liked on both sides of the aisle and was a natural choice for the few Republicans left in the House.

Ford led the fight against Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and tried to temper some of the more outlandish spending programs that Johnson proposed. While he was no Everett Dirksen, who was enjoying much more success in influencing legislation in the Senate where Republicans were also in the extreme minority, Ford did manage to stave off some of Johnson's more radical proposals. However, Ford stood with the hawks on Vietnam and supported Johnson's conduct of the war.

That Ford and Nixon were close friends is remarkable considering the contempt with which Nixon treated both parties in Congress as President. As a man who had served in both chambers, he should have known better. Ford often successfully defended the indefensible positions Nixon put him in as Minority Leader. He continued to support the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War and, against every conservative principle he held, supported Nixon's initiatives to expand government oversight of the environment, worker safety, and government imposed economic controls. Ford was the loyal lieutenant to Nixon.

Ford also staunchly defended Nixon as Watergate developed. As Spiro Agnew's career began to unravel, Nixon became desperate to find a VP who might be able to influence the House as the House Judiciary Committee might be considering impeachment in the near future. Ford was a natural choice.

Here is where we learn of the character of the man who was Gerald Ford. It was not something he wanted to do. He was asked to step up to the number two position in the most embattled administration in 110 years. While he led a squeaky clean life, he did not welcome the scrutiny the vice presidency would bring him. His wife, Betty, was an alcoholic and a drug addict. The scrutiny might have brought that to the public view and the pressure of the office may have aggravated it. Nonetheless, Ford accepted the responsibility.

After Watergate, Ford received a great deal of good will from the country and from congressional Democrats. That would evaporate quickly as he began to lay out his programs for dealing with stagflation that was sapping the American economy. Democrats thwarted his every initiative.

One initiative that seems laughable today was the WIN (Whip Inflation Now) program. This was little more than a PR campaign (including posters and buttons) to encourage the private sector to voluntarily impose wage and price controls. It was a complete and utter failure and was scoffed at by the media.

Of course, Ford's most profound act was the pardon of Richard Nixon. This would also be his most costly act. Ford struggled with this. His staff was split. His oldest and closest confidants said he had to pardon Nixon to put Watergate behind and move forward. Younger aides counseled that Ford ought to leave Nixon to his own fate and not be tainted with Nixon's misconduct. Ford had to consider the humanitarian aspect of Nixon's plight. Nixon was horribly despondent and at one point, near death with a blood clot. Emissaries from San Clemente reported that they thought Nixon was potentially suicidal. After considering all of his options, Ford issued a complete and unconditional pardon to Richard Nixon for any crimes that may have been committed during the Watergate affair.

The reaction was brutal and Ford was pilloried in the press and in Congress. Some congressmen suggested an investigation to determine if there had been a "secret deal" between Ford and Nixon to secure the pardon before Nixon appointed Ford. While nothing came of this, Ford's public approval tumbled overnight and his ability to govern was dramatically diminished. Nothing is more indicative of this than Ford's request to Congress to provide funding and military support to our allies in South Vietnam who were under siege from the North Vietnamese Army. Prior to this, presidents were afforded almost unfettered ability to control foreign policy. This time, Congress asserted itself and denied his request. Ford and the country could only watch helplessly as American allies in Vietnam waited hopelessly on top of the American embassy for help that would never come. Shortly thereafter, the North Vietnamese would slaughter hundreds of thousands in South Vietnam. That final flight from the roof of the Saigon embassy has developed into an indelible image of our nation’s fifty years of failure in southeast Asia.

Politically, Ford's greatest blunder was the appointment of Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president. Conservative Republicans, already unhappy with the leftist direction the party had taken under Nixon with wage and price controls and other government expansion initiatives, were outraged by what they considered a betrayal in the appointment of the liberal Rocky. It was the appointment of Rockefeller that spurred Ronald Reagan to seek the 1976 Republican nomination.

The battle between Reagan and Ford in 1976 was brutal. Ford entered the convention with a slight lead in delegates. Interestingly, Reagan, who made relatively few political blunders in his career, screwed up big time on the eve of the convention. To force Ford's hand on whether or not Rocky would remain on the ticket, Reagan tried to force Ford to declare his running mate before the convention. Unwisely, Reagan selected the liberal Pennsylvania Senator, Richard Schweiker, as his running mate. Conservatives were enraged and Reagan hurt his base. Ford decided to dump Rocky and selected Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas as his running mate. Any conservative delegates that were still in play came home to Ford and he won the nomination.

In 1976, Ford demonstrated what a deft campaigner he was. He and Dole came out of the Republican convention 30 points behind Carter/Mondale. Ford worked hard, as did Dole, speaking across the country. Ford was not a brilliant speaker, but his warm and engaging personality frequently won people over. Dole played the role of hatchet man, attacking Carter and Mondale without remorse.

Ford hurt himself badly while debating Jimmy Carter when he uttered the damning sentence "There has never been any Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there won't be under a Ford administration." Ford himself couldn't believe what he'd said. Conservatives, who were coming home to Ford -- mostly because of Bob Dole -- were once again put off by Ford. Dole didn't help when he alienated independents and moderates with his crack about all the people who'd died in "Democrat wars."

Despite these two major gaffes, Ford had pulled into within five points of Carter on election eve. The media saw it as a tossup. However, Carter took the south which Nixon had used as his Republican base. As Ford watched the election results come in and the southern states going into the Democratic column, he knew he'd lost. His family pleaded with him to wait for results from the west, hoping perhaps California might keep him in the race. However, Ford was smart enough to see that his fight was lost. He conceded to Carter that evening.

Ford was bitter toward Ronald Reagan. Reagan's challenge to him had hurt him. Reagan did more damage at the convention when, instead of extolling the virtues of the president, he made an impassioned speech to his conservative base. As Ford campaigned to keep the White House for the Republicans, Reagan remained on the sidelines. It would be four years before the two would speak again.

He also did not think much of Jimmy Carter. This can be detected in Ford's text as he described their transition. He did not think much of Rosalynn Carter who seemed determined to insert herself into the policy discussion between the lame duck and president elect.

We learn that, like most successful politicians, Ford relied heavily on the advice of his wife, Betty. Political wives play an important role in the lives of elected officials. They are the only person who cares only about the official. Advisers bring with them their own ambitions and prejudices. Wives care only about their husbands and family. Betty, even with her substance abuse problems, was a real asset to Gerald Ford. Had Nixon consulted Pat more frequently than he did John Dean and Bob Haldeman, perhaps Watergate would never have happened.

This memoir was the most extensive commentary Gerald Ford ever provided regarding American politics. He granted several interviews over the years, but they were usually short and not very introspective. Ford was perfectly willing to retire from the public eye and concentrate on serving on the boards of directors of various businesses. Unlike most ex-presidents who work hard to achieve elder statesman status to either rehabilitate or firm up their place in history, Ford was satisfied with what he'd done in his years of public service.

Ford's intelligence was often underestimated. While he was never called an "amiable dunce" as Clark Clifford once called Ronald Reagan, he never developed a reputation as a brilliant strategist nor was he gifted with a knack for policy development. However, in reading his memoirs, you find a man very comfortable with himself and his decisions. While their politics, demeanor, and conduct of the office were quite different, Ford very much resembles Harry Truman in his self-confidence. Ford's post presidential conduct resembled Harry Truman who left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in history.

America lost a national treasure when it lost Gerald Ford. Carter promised us he'd never lie to us and he almost made it. Ford was also just as honest and forthright in his conduct through his public career and was a superior president to Carter. Ford, who never wanted to lead the country, led it through its most difficult constitutional crisis as well as one of its most difficult periods of foreign relations. He will never get the credit he deserves simply because of the shortness of his presidency.