The Illustrated Man By Ray Bradbury

The Illustrated Man
By Ray Bradbury
Copyright 1951

Prologue

A drifter meets a man along the road who, too, is a drifter – an out of work carnival worker. Despite the warm weather, he is heavily clad. When asked why, he reveals an endless series of tattoos that cover his body. He loathes them and the strange woman – an alien perhaps – who colored his flesh with the illustrations. He tells the man that, at night, the tattoos begin to move, and stories unfold; stories without happy endings. The men camp for the night and the Illustrated Man falls asleep. The drifter watches as the unhappy tales reveal themselves, one my one, upon the man’s inked skin.

The Veldt

Two parents of the future wonder if they’ve perhaps been over indulgent with their children who have become fascinated with their new, modern, nursery. In the house of the future, almost all services such as cooking and cleaning are performed automatically by the house itself. The nursery provides hours of entertainment through its walls which are projection screens that reveal whatever settings the children provide. This brother and sister have grown fond of the African veldt, and the dangerous creatures such as lions. The father resolves to shut down the nursery temporarily to instill a little discipline in the children. When mom talks him into turning it back on for just a little while, the kids act to make sure it never gets turned off again.

The Veldt is one of Bradbury’s earliest and most famous works. It was adapted for sci-fi radio drama in 1951 for Dimension X and again in 1955 for X Minus 1. It was adapted for television for the Ray Bradbury Theater and for the 1969 movie The Illustrated Man.

The idea of a house that made life chore free appears more than a few times in Bradbury’s fiction – perhaps most notably as the house in . . .And There Will Come Soft Rains that goes about performing its daily tasks long after man has ceased to exist and in I Sing the Body Electric. It is reflective of the post war economy and sociology of the early 1950s. After years of deprivation of consumer goods as the country fed the war machine, the efforts of research and development were funneled into inventing and improving consumer goods. The same phenomena emerged after World War I. Science fiction writers of that era did not foresee mankind’s focus returning to building better war machines for a 40 year long Cold War, nor the coming investment of research in development in information technology.

Kaleidoscope
A rocket ship is blown apart, leaving its crew to drift apart through space, living only as long as their oxygen lasts or they enter the atmosphere of whatever heavenly body they eventually encounter. They talk to each other as long as they can. As they talk, one astronaut comes to realize how small and insignificant his life has been – and how short, as if he were a shooting star, ablaze but for a moment.

This science fiction character study is short enough to be interesting and has a wonderful ending.

The Other Foot
In 1965, facing continued racial hostility and tension, blacks on Earth fled to Mars in rockets to build their own society. Word reaches Mars that a ship from Earth, presumably operated by white men, is on its way to Mars. They prepare to lynch the arriving astronaut upon his arrival. But when the man arrives, tells his tale, and promises complete supplication by all survivors of Earth’s nuclear war, the residents reevaluate the situation.

Bradbury’s thoughts on racism are obviously progressive for the time, but his expression of those beliefs would be considered old fashioned and condescending today. Perhaps that judgment is flawed by historical relativism on my part, but unfortunately, historical relatavism's fallacies are being visited upon classical literature today. Witness the bastardization of Twain's Huckleberry Finn

The Highway
A couple operate a rural roadside gas station in Mexico. They notice that a large number of vehicles are headed north on the highway, toward the United States. Finally, one of the cars stops long enough to tell them that atom war has come and the world is being destroyed. The couple is left wondering what The World is.

Perhaps a commentary on how isolated the lives of some people can be. Not an engaging story at all.

The Man
A rocket from earth arrives on a foreign planet. The captain expects to be greeted by the natives with pomp and circumstance. Instead, he finds out he’s been upstaged by an earlier arrival who has healed the sick, repaired the injured, and brought love and harmony to the world. Convinced that the new arrival is one of his competitors trying to dupe the people out of something he wants, he is determined to find the man. In the end, we learn that, no matter how he pursues, he will always be a moment too late.

Many writers of genre fiction are atheists or agnostics. Bradbury does not preach, but its obvious that he is talking about Jesus Christ or some other deity. (He never directly names Christ, but the deeds of the man fit the commonly held conception of Christ). He also provides a little commentary about how one goes about (and does not go about) finding Christ, for Christ does not deign to race mere mortals.

The Long Rain
Four astronauts on Venus search for the sundomes on Venus whilst enduring day after day of constant rain. Slowly, the drumming of the drops, the constant dampness and bleakness of their situation

This is bedrock Golden Age science fiction. It is atmospheric; it has drama; it has action. It’s a well told story that was an absolute pleasure to read.
This story was made into an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater and was included as one of the stories told in the movie version of the book.

The Rocket Man
A character study of a professional rocket pilot told from the point of view of his son. When he’s home, he tries to keep his eyes from the sky because he longs to be there. When he’s in space, he tries to keep his thoughts from his family because he longs to be with them.

This was supposedly the story that inspired the famous Elton John song of the same name. I’m not a big fan of character studies, but this one was acceptable.

The Fire Balloons
This is the story of Father Peregrine and Father Smith of the Martian Chronicles. Arriving on Mars, Father Peregrine is determined to find the native inhabitants, prove that they have souls and save those souls. What he finds is an advanced race who, by eschewing all physical being, have achieved moral perfection.

This is essentially the same story told in The Martian Chronicles. Just as entertaining in this collection as it was in the context Bradbury’s anthology telling of the rise and fall of man’s settling of Mars.

The Last Night of the World
People all over the world have the same dream, that their world will end the next day. A couple reflects on how they, and the rest of the world will confront this madness. Will there be panic and mayhem, or will calm prevail with its certain inevitability. The couple decides on how they will meet their end.

This short story really lacks any moving plot, but Bradbury makes us ponder in what fashion we would meet our end, knowing it is coming for ourselves and for everyone. I think many would have met it in a more “R” rated fashion than Bradbury’s characters. But this was the 1950s and polite writers did not write about such things.

The Exiles
A rocket ship is on its way to Mars and its crew is beset with problems, for witches on Mars are conjuring spells to slow their arrival. Mars is a land of exile for authors like Edgar Alan Poe, Arthur Machen, and Ambrose Bierce whose works and very existence have been stricken from the annals of Earth. Then there is the snob, Charles Dickens, who feels he doesn’t belong is such company.

My summary might read silly, but in an age when Huck Finn is sanitized for offensive languages and politically correct though and speech codes prevail in academia and in the workplace, Bradbury seems more prescient than silly. Soon, the anti-smoking Nazis will erase all references to smoking from old movies. Remember, you read it hear first.

No Particular Night or Morning
An astronaut aboard a rocket begins obsessing over the existence of what he cannot see. If he can not see it in its corporal form, he can not be sure it exists. It drives him and other members of the crew insane.

This story ranks among the weaker stories in the book. It tries to be 50 percent character study and 50 percent story and, in the space of the few pages it occupies, does neither well.

The Fox and the Forest
An American couple are enjoying themselves as tourists in Mexico. Except they aren’t really Americans and they aren’t really tourists. They are fugitives from the year 2155 where they are forced to work as cogs in the military industrial complex of a never ending war. They are being pursued by a hunter that will bring them back. To hide, they fall in with an American movie company who are on location shooting a movie.

This was good, old fashioned Golden Age fare at its best and a quite enjoyable tale. It was adapted into an episode of for the radio show X Minus 1 in 1957.

The Visitor
A group of exiles lives on Mars, sent there to die of a slowly debilitating disease. A rocket ship lands and a man emerges. This man shows that he can transport people within their minds back to the places and times he loved. The desperate men fight over custody of him.

Bradbury tries to strike an emotional chord and fails to do so. While the story is the proper length for the tale he wants to tell, he does not do enough to develop the feeling of desolation and desperation in the characters to grip the reader and help him buy into their madness and desperation.

The Concrete Mixer
Martians decide they are going to invade Earth. A dissident Martian tries to explain how this is a bad idea because Earthlings have learned how to fight Martians through the various fictional accounts of Martian invasions that have been published. Faced with the alternative of death for treason, the dissident goes along with the invasion force. Instead of conquering the planet, they are welcomed by the earth men. Despite welcoming them, the Earthlings manage to conquer the Martians, but not through any means ever published in the John Carter of Mars series.

This story is about 30 percent Martian invasion and 70 percent commentary on the banality of 1950s California social scene. It is not weapons, but the superficial nature of mankind in California and the rampant consumerism of postwar era that defeats the Martians. It’s not a bad story for one that is blatant social commentary.

Marionettes, Inc.
A painfully married man has found the solution to being two places at once. One of him is at home, spending time with his possessive wife, the other of him is enjoying the Bahamas. He’s gone to Marionettes, Inc. and had an android duplicate made to take care of the unpleasant parts of his life. Except, what the man finds unpleasant, the android learns to love and decides to take over the man’s life.

This story was masterfully crafted, taking just three pages to develop a character and a plot. This is vintage Bradbury.

The story was expanded and made into radio drama for the science fiction series Dimension X and X Minus One and rank among the best of those series. It was also made into an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater.

The City
An earth rocket lands on a remote planet and finds an abandoned city. While they explore the city, the city is exploring them, analyzing them, and identifying them. When it identifies them as the same race of being that brought destruction to the city’s inhabitants, it takes action.

Stories like this typify Golden Age science fiction and make it so dear to me. Not weighted down in historical background, unladen with technical explanations, yet clever with a new angle on the dangers of space travel.

Zero Hour
A new kids make believe game has swept the country. It’s called “Invasion” and has kids all over the country taking orders from an “imaginary” creature who lives in shrubs and rose bushes. Except he’s not imaginary and his goals are very real. And the kids, they’re not playing. They are deadly serious.

You can see the roots of so many “kids turned to evil” stories in this such as John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (upon which the movies Village of the Damned were based) and Steven King’s Children of the Corn. This ranks as one of the top stories in the book.

This story was adapted to radio by Ernest Kinoy for Dimension X and X Minus One. Just as other Bradbury works stood out in these radio shows, the script based on this Bradbury work ranks among the best of those shows.

The Rocket
A poor Italian junkyard owner has saved and saved so that he can buy new metal recycling equipment to keep his business going. Instead, he buys a prototype rocket ship that has no motor or equipment. He fixes it up with video equipment and makes it look real so that he can convince his children that they are going on an adventure in space to see the moon and Mars.

This is a somewhat heartwarming story, but probably not the strongest story upon which to close the book.

Epilogue
The tales have unfolded on the Illustrated Man’s tattooed body. There is but one space left, and it is blank. Our hobo story observer watches as the space slowly fills in with a scene where the Illustrated Man is strangling him to death. He gets up and makes haste away from the place, ending the story.

The Illustrated Man is Bradbury’s best known and perhaps best overall collection of short stories. All were written when he was young and eager to get published. None of the stories are pathetically bad and some are among the best science fiction I’ve ever read.

This is not the last appearance of the Illustrated Man in Bradbury’s work. The tattooed man is a sideshow exhibit in the evil carnival that visits Green Town, Illinois in Something Wicked This Way Comes.

A movie based on three stories from the book was made in 1969 and starred Rod Steiger. It has been a few years since I’ve seen it, but my best recollection of it is that it was “uneven.”

For those unfamiliar with vintage 1950s radio drama and who enjoy science fiction, I'd invite you to download episodes of Dimension X and X Minus One. Both shows did a superb job taking the short works of prolific Golden Age sci-fi writer like Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and Robert Heinlein and making them into exceptionally enjoyable plays for the theater of the mind. The writers for those shows such as Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts are all but lost to history. But when you hear those great stories played out through the audio medium, you appreciate how much these forerunners of television writing loved their craft and appreciated the work they so skillfully adapted.

Book to Movie: Creepshow 2 (1987)

Book to Movie: Creepshow 2 (1987)
Screenplays by Stephen King, George Romero and Lucille Fletcher
Directed by Michael Gornick

Five years after the decent success of the campy movie Creepshow which was written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero, a second trilogy of campy tales was released. Unlike the first movie, this movie contained an adaptation of a King short story, The Raft, from Skeleton Crew. The movie was panned by critics and tepidly received by horror fans. It lacked the camp, kitsch, and horror of its predecessor.

The first installment is called Old Chief Woodenhead and is set on a depressed Indian reservation. A white couple (played by George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour) operate a general store on the reservation which has hit hard times. Martha Spruce, angry that they are not making any money and that her husband, Ray, is being taken advantage of, wants to pack it in and retire.

That evening, Ray goes outside to put some new paint on his cigar store Indian, to whom he talks lovingly. The chief of the reservation visits and offers thousands of dollars worth of family heirlooms, donated by the people of the tribe, as collateral against all that they have borrowed from them. Ray and Martha, kind hearted people they are, don’t want the collateral, but the chief insists, saying it would turn his people from borrowers to beggars and dishonor them. They accept the jewelry.

As they prepare to close the store, the chief’s evil nephew (played eerily by Holt McCallany) shows up with a couple buddies to rob the place to finance a trip to Hollywood where he is certain his good looks will make him an instant star. In the course of harassing the couple, they accidentally shoot Martha, then off Ray who comes after them.

The thugs each go home to pack for their trip to Hollywood. While at home, each is pursued and eventually killed by the cigar store Indian, who for decades had been so lovingly cared for by the old man. Justice is served.

That morning, the chief returns to the store to find the couple dead and a bloody knife in the hands of the wooden Indian.

Like all Creepshow fare, the story has a comic book simplicity about it which is entertaining. But a couple things stand out in this segment. First, McCallany’s look in the segment is absolutely creepy. He looks like an American Indian, but not the nice kind of popular culture, but the blood thirsty savage used in anti-Indian propaganda. There’s no makeup or special effect that accomplishes this and outside this role, McCallany is an acceptable looking individual. Give McCallany credit for making himself look creepy.

Second is the excellent special effects and makeup done to bring to life the wooden Indian. Today’s computer generated effects would have made this look stupid. The role is played by an actor made up to appear wooden, even as he moves. This would have been easy to do badly on the cheap. Instead, the makeup people did it right.

The second segment is Stephen King’s The Raft. The screenplay was written by George Romero and does not deviate far from King’s story, Romero adds elements, such as a duck getting caught in the slick just as the kids arrive at the beach to show the audience some malevolence that the reader will get through the prose.

Just as in the movie, the kids arrive at the lake stoned and swim out across the lake in the cold, October water to the raft. Deke immediately notices that the oil slick is moving toward them, seemingly under his own power. Randy, his jock buddy, makes fun of him for being paranoid.

However, the fun dies quickly when the girl is snatched off the raft when a tendril of the slick reaches up out of the water and grabs her by the ankle. Her death is the best cinematography in the whole movie when she is pushed up out of the water to waste level, covered in the slime, screaming, “Help! It hurts!”

Just as in the story, Randy the jock gets it next when he is grabbed from between the slats on the raft and pulled down in between. Another great piece of cinematography is when the last thing to disappear between the slats is his hand and the boards pull off his class ring to leave it lying there on the forsaken float.

As in the book, the remaining two wait in the cold night with no plan of escape. The girl finally resolves that she must lie down and rest. She falls asleep. Deke keeps watch on the slick, but soon his hormones take over and he decides to kneel down and cop a feel. Just as he’s starting to really grope the sleeping girl’s breasts, she wakes up with the oil slick covering the side of her face.

Randy’s had enough and jumps in to try to make it to shore. He swims with everything he has while the noticeably larger slick gains on him. He makes it to shore, stands up and starts to utter his sentence of triumph when the slick rises up out of the water and takes him.

The third segment, The Hitchhiker, is the worst of the three. A wealthy woman oversleeps at her gigolo’s house and must hurry home to beat her husband, lest he have to explain her absence. On the way, as she’s flying down the freeway, she drops a cigarette on the seat of her expensive Mercedes and takes her eyes off the road just in time to mow down a hitchhiker dressed in a yellow raincoat.

She leaves the scene, sure the man is dead, and resolved that her staying won’t change that. However, the hitchhiker, who others (including a truck driving Stephen King who say’s “He’s black, ain’t he?”) observe in the road, is on top of her car. He keeps trying to get at her inside the car, saying over and over again, “Thanks for the ride!” She shakes him off repeatedly, runs over him again, and rams him into a tree. (That Mercedes sedan does quite well off road).

Finally, she arrives at home, her Mercedes battered and beaten, but still running. She pulls into the garage just in time for the hitchhiker to thank her one more time for the ride before killing her.

The in-between sequences are acted in the beginning and the end, and animated in between. In the first movie, the kid reading the comic book was a much more sympathetic character with a verbally abusive dad who berated him for reading such garbage as E.C. Comics. This kid is chased by bullies who are animated poorly and the sequences come off as quite silly and detract from an already incredibly average movie.

“Chief Woodenhead” is fun to watch because of Holt McCallany’s performance. George Kennedy certainly didn’t put this movie on his resume. “The Raft” was good as well because it was well written and had some great money shots that really lifted the story. However, “The Hitchhiker” and the transition scenes really hurt this movie.

Certainly Stephen King has involved himself in worse projects (Maximum Overdrive and Sleepwalkers come to mind), but this movie ranks as below average in his big screen efforts. It lacks the camp that made the first one amusing and it does not rise to true horror, making it an average film at best.

Audrey Rose By Frank DeFelitta

Audrey Rose
By Frank DeFelitta
Copyright 1975

Whose child is she now?

Bill and Janice Templeton have constructed the perfect life for themselves. He is a successful Madison Ave. advertising executive; she a stay at home mom with a lovely and vivacious daughter named Ivy who attends an elite Manhattan private school. They live in a Central Park West apartment famous for being constructed by and for artists. They are happy beyond the dreams of most people.

Then Elliot Hoover entered their lives.

Janice notices that over a period of days, there has been a strange man outside of Ivy’s school, watching her and watching Ivy. One day, this man follows them home. Janice is concerned, but not overly worried because the city is full of crazy people.

One day, Ivy is forced to miss school because of a fever. Whilst at home with her daughter, Janice receives a phone call from a mysterious man, concerned about Ivy’s health since she was not in school. Now that the man has invaded her home life with his call, Janice resolves to tell Bill. Bill wonders if it is the strange man that he’s seen outside of Ivy’s school in the morning when he drops her off.

A few days later, the cab in which Janice is traveling is involved in an accident and she receives a minor concussion. While recovering her wits on the sidewalk under the watchful eye of a policeman, she realizes that she is late getting to her daughter’s school. In a panic, she flees the scene and heads for the school, only to find Ivy gone.

She hurries home in a panic. As she approaches her building, the mysterious stranger steps out of the shadows and assures her that Ivy is fine, that he has seen her safely across the dangerous intersections and to her home. He asks her and Bill to join him for dinner in their building’s restaurant for dinner where he will explain his surreptitious observation of their daughter.

Bill and Janice arrive at the restaurant to find the man sans the fake beard and mustache he’d worn while scooping their daughter. He invites them to join him at his table where he tells them his incredibly sad life story.

His name is Elliot Hoover. Once upon a time, he’d been a respected engineer and steel industry executive from Pittsburgh. His life crumbled, however, when, on one tragic afternoon in October 1964, his wife and daughter were involved in a traffic accident on a Pittsburgh freeway. After being hit, the car rolled over an embankment and caught fire. An eyewitness said that as the car caught fire and burned, they could see a five year old girl inside the car, clawing at the windows to get out. Hoover’s wife and young daughter, Audrey Rose, burned to death in the accident.

Hoover was devastated beyond consolation. Shortly after his family’s death, he visits a medium who tells him that his daughter is not dead; that she lives on in the body of another little girl. A couple years later, he is in New York on business and encounters a spiritualist at a party who tells him his little girl lives in the body of a girl born in New York City shortly after his daughter died.

He left his job and went on a spiritual quest to learn more about the afterlife. That spiritual quest took him to India where he learned of the Hindu belief in reincarnation. He fully embraced that belief, then set out to look for his daughter he knew to be reincarnated somewhere in the world.

His search led him to New York where he found that Ivy Templeton had been born just minutes after his daughter died. Ivy Templeton, their daughter, he tells them, is the repository for the soul of Audrey Rose Hoover. He asks the Templetons to allow him to become part of their lives and share in Ivy’s upbringing so he can be close to his daughter again.

Bill quickly dismisses Hoover’s tale. He tells him he is sorry for all of the horrible events that have transpired in his life, but he wants Hoover to leave him and his family alone. Bill and Janice leave the restaurant and Mr. Hoover to head home to their daughter.

The next day, Bill contacts his attorney who advises Bill that he should meet with Hoover again, this time at their apartment. The plan is to get Hoover to spill his wacky story one more time while the conversation is taped and the lawyer witnesses it. The material will then serve as evidence to obtain a restraining order against Hoover.

Hoover shows up at the Templeton apartment just as planned. Ivy is sent to a neighbor’s apartment. As Hoover starts to retell his tale, the Templeton’s phone rings. Their neighbor tells them they need to come quickly because Audrey is in the throws of a nightmare from which she will not awaken.

Bill, Janice, and Hoover rush to the apartment. There, they find Audrey running about the place, screaming, DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! and HOTHOTHOT! She runs into furniture and makes a shambles of the place. She runs to windows and touches them, only to quickly withdraw her hands as if they were burned. Bill and Janice try to awaken her. Bill tries to calm her, telling her that Daddy is here, but she wrestles free and continues her vain attempt to escape from whatever haunts her nightmare.

Finally, Hoover steps forward and says, “Daddy’s here Audrey Rose!” With a little more coaxing on Hoover’s part, Ivy finally falls into a restless sleep. An Angry Bill tells Hoover to stay away from his family and they take their child home.

The Templetons decide to contact a child psychologist that has treated Ivy before. This is not the first occurrence of these dreams, for they had also occurred over a period of days a few years before when Ivy was a toddler. The doctor examines Ivy, who has no recollection of the dreams, and promises to get back to the Templetons after doing some research. She finds that the first occurrence of Ivy’s nightmares correspond to Hoover’s first visit to New York when he met with the spiritualist.

A few nights later, Janice is home alone with Ivy while Bill wines and dines clients. The nightmare starts again. Janice his helpless to stop her daughter as she scurries around the apartment, falling down the stairs and knocking over furniture. As Janice is trying to coral her daughter, the house phone rings and the doorman informs Janice that Mr. Elliot Hoover would like to see her. In desperation, Janice asks that he be sent up. Upon arriving, Hoover immediately acts to calm the child by assuring Audrey Rose that daddy is here.

As he prepares to leave, Hoover gives Janice his journal that he kept during his sojourn in India. He asks her to read his observations with an open mind, combine them with what she has just witnessed, and ascertain whether or not he is earnest in his belief.

This time, Ivy has injured herself. She has burns on her hands and a bump on the head. Witnessing the event, Janice is sure Audrey burned her hands on the cold glass of her bedroom window. Bill, whose disbelief in Hoover’s story grows as the evidence mounts, assures Janice that the burns came when Audrey touched the radiator even though Janice is certain Ivy never touched the radiator.

A few nights later, The Templetons are awakened when Ivy again flies into a nightmare rage. Bill and Janice try to restrain her, finally tying her to her bed to keep her from injuring herself. As they are dealing with this horrific scene, there is a knock on the door. Bill goes to answer it and Elliot Hoover is in his doorway. Bill immediately attacks Hoover. Janice, hearing the commotion, runs to the door. Hoover puts Bill in a police sleeper hold to subdue him, pushes Janice out of the way and enters the apartment, locking the door behind him.

Neighbors call the police and the doorman informs the Templetons that Elliot Hoover has sublet an apartment in the building. The police arrive as the doorman opens the Templeton apartment with a passkey. They find Hoover has absconded with Ivy.

They go downstairs to Hoover’s apartment and the police demand that Hoover open the door. After some initial resistance, Hoover opens up and allows the police and the Templetons into his apartment where they find Ivy sleeping peacefully. Hoover is arrested and charged with kidnapping.

Hoover hires a young attorney who is eager to fight for his client, but is also eager to make a name for himself by taking on such a fantastic client and more fantastic defense strategy. The case is assigned to a judge whose entire career has seen him relegated to handling the most mundane cases to come before the New York courts. Both are eager to see the case make headlines. The scene is set for one of the most fantastic trials New York and American jurisprudence have ever witnessed.

To shield Ivy from what’s going on, the Templetons send her to a private Catholic school miles away from their Manhattan home and their apartment. Despite all that has happened to her, Ivy has no idea that her soul and the soul of a girl who died at the time of her birth are the source of the court proceedings that are about to commence.

As the trial proceeds, Janice reads Hoover’s journal. She finds her beliefs in Hoover’s story growing. Bill’s disbelief hardens every day. One weekend, while visiting Ivy at the private school, Janice is awakened by her daughter talking to herself. Janice opens the bathroom door in their hotel room to find Ivy standing naked before a mirror, admiring her early adolescent body, chanting, “Audrey Rose. Audrey Rose.” Janice’s resolve crumbles further.

As the defense is wrapping up its case, the Templetons are summoned to Ivy’s school. During an annual bonfire ritual, Ivy, seemingly in a trance, walked directly into the ring of fire and set herself ablaze. An alert custodian, observing Ivy crawling into the fire is able to save her and keep her injuries minor. However, the school tells the Templetons she is not to return.

The prosecutor pitches the Templetons on an idea he is certain will destroy Hoover’s case. He wants a hypnotist to regress Ivy back through her childhood, to the womb, and then further beyond the womb, to prove that Ivy Templeton’s existence started at her conception – not upon the death of Audrey Rose Hoover. Bill, now desperate to disprove Hoover approves the plan. Janice, having read Hoover’s journal and witnessed Audrey Rose interacting with her daughter, is horrified and frightened at what can happen.

Janice decides to testify for the defense. Her testimony where she divulges her belief in Hoover’s claim that Ivy Rose’s soul is indeed an inhabitant of her daughter’s body devastates the prosecution case. Bill insists on the hypnotism. His need to destroy Hoover now dominates his every motivation. Janice and Bill’s once perfect love, life, and family are now asunder.

Audrey is brought to an operating room and the jury and court personnel, including Hoover, are placed in the observation theater. A hypnotist places Ivy into a deep sleep and begins taking her back through her short life to various birthdays, through her infancy, then into the womb. The audience watches stunned as Ivy strikes a fetal pose in the chair.

He then starts to take her back beyond her conception. Ivy grows restless and agitated. Bill, now realizing he’s made a terrible mistake, starts screaming for them to stop the test. Janice, now resigned to what is about to happen, looks on from a separate room, weeping.

As the hypnotist takes her further back, Ivy then jumps from the chair and starts running about the room, screaming her litany of pleas for daddy and running from the hot. The hypnotist tries desperately to bring Ivy from her trance, but she is unresponsive. From behind the one way viewing glass, Hoover implores the hypnotist to call for Audrey Rose. The scene in the operating room grows more frantic as Ivy runs from place to place trying to escape her nightmare. In an act of final desperation, Hoover jumps up and throws a chair through the glass and struggles into the room. However, Ivy is now unconscious. She is rushed to an emergency room where she dies for no evident reason.

There, the narrative of the book ends. What follows is a newspaper clipping telling of the not guilty verdict in the trial and the autopsy records of Ivy Templeton, a healthy 11 year old girl who died of no apparent reason.

The book closes with a letter Janice writes to Elliot Hoover who, grief stricken, returns to India. She assures him that she is confident that both Audrey Rose and Ivy have moved on to new lives and are at peace. Bill, in his grief, is coming to believe in Hoover’s tale and they are repairing their marriage. She wishes him good luck and a good life.

I enjoyed this book a great deal when I first read it as an adolescent having picked it out of my mother’s library. I enjoyed reading it just as much as an adult. However the perspectives were much different. As a child, I enjoyed what was a fascinating tale. I was particularly taken with the creepy autopsy notes at the end. I had never read a tale whose resolution was presented in such an unconventional manner.

My perspective as an adult was more emotional. As a middle-aged man, I am the father of a nine year old daughter. My attachment to the emotional turmoil of the parents, and of Hoover having lost a daughter to such tragic circumstances transfixed me more than the unconventional ending.

What makes this book interesting is that there are no real villains. The Templetons love their daughter. Bill, acting with the male instinct to protect, is trying to shield his family from this unpleasantness, even when the evidence clearly demonstrates the truth of Hoover’s belief. Janice acts with the maternal instinct of doing anything, no matter how desperate to protect her daughter. Hoover has no desire to wreck the Templetons’ lives. He is a grief stricken father who is certain he has found a way to reconnect with his lost daughter and will risk his life to make that connection.

What emerges from the story is the selfishness of all those involved. Although the story revolves around Ivy Templeton, her character is not developed. It is never told from her point of view. DeFelitta uses her and her actions to advance the story. But she is not a central character in the narrative. The story is told from the point of view of the adults, each acting to satisfy their own independent needs.

Bill allows his daughter to die because his resolve to have Hoover put away forever motivates him. Hoover would have been found guilty, jailed for life, and been out of Ivy’s life forever had Janice not testified. Since it was Hoover’s presence that triggered Ivy’s nightmares, had she not acted, her family’s life would have returned to normal.

Then there are the judge and the defense attorney who were the most selfish. The attorney puts forward his fantastic case to defend his client. But more important to him is the headlines and reputation he will garner. The judge, bitter about having a nondescript judicial career, allows the dramatic theater of the case to proceed, not because he thinks it is sound jurisprudence, but because he will finally be able to make a name for himself.

All of this goes on while the life of an 11 year old girl hangs in the balance. Other than Janice, none of the characters in the story pause to think of Ivy and her fate.

My only criticism of the writing is DeFelitta’s need to show us what a snob he apparently was. His description of the apartment’s architecture and artwork read like a marketing brochure and was entirely overlong as was his descriptions of the various meals and liquors consumed by the characters. These were but minor distractions however. DeFelitta otherwise told a riveting tale with seldom a lull in the tension.

As an author, Frank DeFelitta had an obscure career. He published this book and a 1982 sequel entitled For Love of Audrey Rose. This is a shame. For a first book by an author, Audrey Rose is a stellar effort.

DeFelitta was a screenwriter by occupation. The dust jacket says he was the writer on a number of television documentaries. His IMDB entry lists several movie scripts he penned along with numerous television scripts and directorial credits.

The novel was adapted to the big screen in 1977 with DeFelitta penning the screenplay. Anthony Hopkins plays the role of Hoover. I will review the screen treatment later.

The book, movie, and author may be lost to the ages now, but if you can lay your hands on a copy, the book is well worth reading.

Book to Movie: The Mist (2007)

Book to Movie: The Mist (2007)
Screenplay by Frank Darabont based on the novella by Stephen King
Directed by Frank Darabont

I’m surprised it took 22 years to turn this fine King novella into a movie. The story just screams out for a screen treatment In 2007, Frank Darabont, who successfully adapted King’s two prison stories, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile to the big screen took King’s science fiction/horror crossover and made it into a superb movie.

Darabont has done well with King’s work because he doesn’t try too hard to improve upon the story that King told in print. Both The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile are nearly straight retellings of King’s stories. He tinkers at the margins to successfully translate the story to the visual medium, but he knows good work when he reads it and isn’t so arrogant to believe that he can tell a better story than King. The only movie maker to dramatically alter a King work and improve it for the screen was Stanley Kubrick’s retelling of The Shining.

The story unfolds exactly as it did in the novella. The stark differences – and improvements – are in the casting. The obnoxious next door neighbor in the novella, Brent Norton, was obviously a middle-aged white guy. Darbont cast Andre Braugher who carried off the role well. Mrs. Carmody, the story’s antagonist, is an overweight antique dealer who dresses in garishly yellow polyester. On film, (and perhaps in the novella), this would be a caricature and a cliché. Darabont instead drafted the attractive Marcia Gay Holden to play the fanatical preacher of Old Testament doom.

Darabont also recruited a couple veterans of King films in Frances Sternhagen, probably best know as Cliff Clavin’s mother in Cheers, but known to King fans for her work in Misery, and Jeffery DeMunn from The Green Mile and Storm of the Century. As the story moves toward its climax, these two veteran actors deliver stunning performances.

There are a few minor deviations from the King story. The flying creatures that get into the store and fire that starts when the inhabitants try to fight them with fire provide a nice action sequence after building the tension. Mrs. Carmody actually gets her blood sacrifice in the movie when she and her followers sacrifice Pvt. Jessup by gut stabbing him and throwing him out to the monsters in the mist. Again, it was a nifty dramatic sequence that added to the tension of the film.

The novella ends ambiguously. I like where King left us in the novella, with David Drayton, his son, and Laurie Holden creeping along the misty landscape of post apocalyptic Maine. Darabont throws a major curve ball and delivers a satisfying – albeit tragic – end to the tale. I will not describe it for fear or ruining what I think is one of the better twist endings I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. I will say if you’ve read the novella, you won’t see the end coming because King doesn’t event hint at what Darabont does with the end of his tale.

The movie was well received by critics, horror fans, and general movie goers. The CGI material is minimal and enhances the movie rather than carrying it. Much of the horror is generated by good, old fashioned puppets and rubber monsters. Thank you very much Mr. Darabont for not turning this story of a cross section of ordinary Americans confined in horrific circumstances into a CGI extravaganza of eye candy.

Frank Darabont seems to have developed a taste for horror. His latest project is the AMC television series The Walking Dead which has riveted horror fans to the small screen. Darabont is the first person to accomplish this in decades. I’ve only seen the first two episodes (I just can’t set aside specific times to watch television. It’s not in my nature). But I have the just released first season in my Netflix queue and am eagerly anticipating its arrival.

If you’ve read the novella, seeing the movie is a must. Darabont is true to King’s story that ranks among his best short works. Unspoiled by pretentious retelling, foolish subplots, and garish special effects, Frank Darabont produced a fantastic, horrific movie that is well worth the time invested in watching.

The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

The Age of Jackson
by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Copyright 1946

What is noteworthy about this book is the man whose name and portrait appear on the cover is not a central figure in the narrative. The Age of Jackson is not a biography of the president, but a narrative history of how Jeffersonian Democracy evolved into Jacksonian Democracy in the party realignment that emerged from the "Era of Good Feelings". It then goes on to describe how Jacksonian Democracy petered out during the Civil War and the Gilded Age that followed.

Many historians, including me, see it as a veiled justification for the programs of the New Deal.

Jeffersonian Democracy embraced the concept of an agrarian society with yeoman farmers tilling their own soil and making their own way. This ideal became less relevant as American manufacturers began to develop in New England and Americans increasingly moved from the field to the factory.

More important to the evolution of Jacksonian Democracy was the American banking system, designed and implemented by Alexander Hamilton. The Second Bank of the United States was the holder of federal deposits and lent money to state banks to centrally control the flow of currency in the expanding United States. In the minds of the newly emerging Democrats, this system of tight money favored the wealthy.

Schlesinger's analysis of the national bank and its operations is illuminating. The story is frequently taught in high school history, but its subtleties and nuances are quite complex.

Schlesinger's description of the battle between Jackson and bank president, Nicholas Biddle, really puts Jackson at the margins. Oddly, Martin Van Buren emerges as the hero of the bank battle. In fact, Schlesinger venerates Van Buren as a champion of classic democratic principles more than Jackson.

The depression that followed the shutdown of the Second Bank and the issue of the Specie Circular is given short shrift in the book, which is telling of Schlesinger's true motives in writing the book. That depression was the deepest and most painful in American history. Instead, he lauds Van Buren's efforts to meet the crisis which were small and futile. It's clear that Schlesinger is a huge fan of House Speaker and future president, James Polk.

Schlesinger is derisive of Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, accurately stating that his "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign was largely a contrivance of politics. He describes the unfortunate and ineffective John Tyler as a Whig who tried to be a Democrat. The Tyler presidency and his alienation of both parties were a boon to Democrats who anointed James Polk as the heir to the Jackson legacy.

Polk is, of course, not known for his economic policies nearly as much as his foreign policy. Nonetheless, Polk's policy of "Manifest Destiny" and the vast territory he added to the United States created new rich in the country and expanded the popularity of the party.

The presidencies of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore doomed the Whig Party. The issue was not economic, but slavery. The Democrats were fundamentally states rights and willing to allow the South to determine their own policies on slavery. The Whigs were decidedly undecided and that lack of policy principle doomed them. However, the re-emergence of Democrats in the White House sewed the seeds of the destruction of classical democracy.

Franklin Pierce, who was drunk through his entire presidency, alienated anti-slavery Democrats in the north and drove them to the newly formed Republican Party. Meanwhile, James Buchanan did his best Nero impression as the U.S. stood at the brink of Civil War. The upstart Republican Party seized the presidency in 1860 and didn't look back for several decades.

Civil War ended most infighting over economic policy in the United States. In fact, Abraham Lincoln chose loyal Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson as his 1864 running mate. The ascendancy of Johnson to the presidency would further damage the Democratic brand with the American electorate and Schlesinger is hard on him. There is no doubt that Johnson was intellectually over matched by the job and Republicans destroyed him and his presidency. It would be the last gasp of classic democratic principles until the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt. There were Democrats in between, but neither Grover Cleveland nor Woodrow Wilson were classical Democrats.

It is remarkable that Schlesinger never wrote a biography of Martin Van Buren or James Polk because he is clearly an admirer of both men. Schlesinger is best known for this book as well as his 1000 Days which is a laudatory history of the Kennedy administration.

Schlesinger is the most celebrated of the presidential historians and I don't think he really deserves that honor. His poll of historians that rank the presidents is considered the barometer of presidential performance. However, Schlesinger was a partisan defender of Democratic principles. I think there must be a clear delineation between scholar and partisan. Apparently, Schlesinger does not.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1946.

The Dark Tower, Book VI The Song of Susannah

The Dark Tower, Book VI
The Song of Susannah
By Stephen King

The Song of Susannah picks up right where The Wolves of the Calla ends. The battle against the wolves is fought and won. The mourning for the dead and the celebration of victory has commenced.

But for Roland and his ka-tet, no larger by one with the addition of Father Donald Callahan, there is no time for celebration. Susannah, now fully possessed by the mysterious Mia, Daughter of None, has gone Todash through the doorway and has taken its key, the orb known as Black 13 with her, effectively locking the door behind her.

A religious sect in Calla Bryn Sturgis known as The Manni, assure Roland they can employ their powers to open the door and send Roland and his crew to where they need to go. They have two different immediate goals in two different worlds that need to be accomplished in short order. First, they must rescue Susannah. Second, they must secure ownership of the vacant lot in New York City to save it from the Sombra Corporation who wants to acquire it and destroy the rose that grows there – a flower upon which all of the worlds exist.

Roland and his crew pass through the door and enter two different worlds. Roland and Eddie end up in Maine 1977 where Calvin Tower, the hoarder of rare books and his friend Aaron Deepneau are hiding from Enrico Balazar, New York gangster and agent of the Sombra Corporation. Their goal is to secure ownership of that lot.

Father Callahan and Jake Chambers, along with their billy bumbler, Oy, are transported to New York, 1999 to find and save Susannah.

The tale picks up the story of Susannah, kidnapped in her own body by Mia. She appears from no where in the middle of 2nd Ave. in New York where a dark, towering building has been erected on that vacant lot. Still, the magic exists. Susannah can feel it and hear its song.

While in New York, the black Susannah sprouts a pair of white legs. This does not go unobserved by a New York businesswoman who Mia immediately robs of her shoes. They travel to a nearby park to rest and Mia and Susannah (with Detta Walker listening intently) get acquainted.

Mia explains her nature and how she came to be with child. She is the demon with whom Roland engaged in coitus to save young Jake at the Way Station in The Gunslinger. Roland delivered his seed to her. She then became the male demon Susannah (with help from her Detta personality) screwed whilst Roland and Eddie acted as midwife in Jake's rebirth into Roland’s world. While her physical being does not show it, Susannah is the carrier of Roland’s child – a child whose birth may mean the end of existence for all of the worlds of the Dark Tower.

Susannah finds in the bag that contains Black 13, a small charm in the shape of a turtle. As we learned earlier, the Turtle is one of the guardians of the Beams that support the Dark Tower. Using this talisman, Susannah is able to charm a foreign diplomat out of cash and convince him to book them a room in a hotel. There, Mia must wait for a phone call from her benefactor, Richard Sayre, with whom she struck a deal.

Susannah agreed to become mortal in exchange for being allowed to have a child. Sayre, who may be Walter, aka Randall Flagg, is to call her and tell her where to go when the time comes for delivery. Sayre has promised her that she will be allowed to raise her “chap.” More than anything, Mia wants to have her baby.

To converse properly, Mia transports them to an ancient, abandoned castle known as Castle Discordia in a dead city once known as Fedic. It was here that Susannah first lived as a mortal and was on hand to watch as the populations succumbed to the Red Death. It is also the abode of the wolves who stole the children of Calla Bryn Sturgis. As Mia tells her tale, Susannah tries to convince her that she is being duped by Sayre and the Crimson King who only want the child and plan to dispose of Mia when the child is born. Mia, now stuck with the deal, refuses to listen.

As they talk, a phone rings, bringing them back to the hotel room. Susannah is imprisoned in Mia’s mind and listens as Sayre tells her she must report to a banquet hall known as the Dixie Pig on Lexington Ave. where she is to have her baby.

Roland and Eddie arrive in a small, Maine town and are immediately ambushed by Balazar’s goons. While inhabiting Susannah’s body, Mia was privy to all of their conversations and plans which she revealed to the agents of the Crimson King. Despite overwhelming odds, Eddie and Roland are able to shoot their way out of the situation and escape across a lake in boat, guided by a sympathetic local curious about the two men.

When they arrive at the man’s cabin, he immediately inquires if they are “walk-ins.” Walk-Ins are a new phenomena in Maine, dismissed by serious people but, like UFOs, witnessed by many. Strange people and beings arrive unannounced, seemingly out of nowhere in this part of Maine. Their benefactor tells them that many of the more superstitious ascribe this phenomena to the arrival of a young, up and coming writer of horror stories who has taken up residence in nearby Lovelle, Maine. This writer is none other than the author of ‘Salem’s Lot, Stephen King.

Eddie and Roland determine that they must visit sai King, for they have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Father Callahan isn’t the only person who might be a contrivance of writer King’s fictional prose. But first, they must locate Mr. Tower and secure ownership of the Manhattan vacant lot.

Finding Tower proves to be easy since, despite Eddie’s strong admonition to him to remain secluded, he has not done so. He has spent his days going from antique store to flea market to acquire rare books. After much haranguing and arguing with Tower, they are finally able to convince him to hand over ownership of the lot. Deepneau, a retired lawyer, draws up the agreement and it is inked. The deal is done. Eddie and Roland set off for Lovell to find Stephen King and get some answers and to warn him that he himself might be in danger because his storytelling represents a threat to the Crimson King.

They arrive at the King residence and startle the young writer who, despite an imagination that has conjured many supernatural occurrences, can not wrap his brain around one actually happening to him. He does not know Eddie, but he knows Roland. King tells Roland that he is a character in a book he wrote in college, but gave up on because he thought the story was too big and grand for him to tell successfully.

Roland hypnotizes King, and tells him he will not remember their visit and to resume writing his tale of the Dark Tower. He also plants a few plot suggestions in the author’s head he hopes will help him in his quest. He tells King that, from now on, every tale he writes will somehow be linked to the Dark Tower.

Callahan, Jake, and Oy arrive in New York, 1977 at the same destination as Susannah. They are able to find her hotel room and secure the Black 13 so that its evil might not be used against the rose that now dwells in an indoor garden of newly erected obsidian edifice that was a vacant lot in 1977. They set out for the Dixie Pig to rescue Susannah.

Mia arrives at the Dixie Pig and finds many low level vampires and Low Men (and women) feasting there, celebrating the imminent birth of their deity’s agent and possible heir. Mia now knows that she is never to possess her child. Sayre is there to greet her and takes her back to a birthing room to prepare her for delivery. She releases Susannah’s mind and body and they separate. Mia is put into birthing stirrups and Susannah is secured to a bed nearby. The labor starts. Outside, Father Callahan and young Jake prepare to enter. This is where the sixth leg of King’s long saga ends.

However, King is not quite done with his book. He includes pages from his own (fictional) journal that describes events from his life (based on reality) as he prepared to write each new chapter of the Dark Tower series. We learn of his struggles with alcohol and drugs and we learn how Roland’s unfinished tale bedeviled him. At times, he fears and loathes it, unsure of his ability to finish it. When he finally starts to write, he finds that picking up the tale is like finding old friends. As King is pondering how to get the tale going again, years after the publication of Wizard and Glass, he meets with an unfortunate accident. The famous and most prolific horror writer of all time is hit and killed as he walked along a rural Maine highway.

King kicks his story into overdrive in The Song of Susannah. The two previous books, Wizard and Glass and The Wolves of the Calla, were independent tales that advanced the plot some, but also stood as stand alone stories. This book starts the headlong rush to the end. There are no subplots. Every action taken by the characters drives them closer to their final goal of entering the Dark Tower and Roland’s goal of reaching its top. Of all the books to date, this one is the fastest paced.

As I noted earlier, it might seem hackneyed and stilted to make the later part of his magnum opus autobiographical. It would certainly be easy to do it badly and exceptionally difficult to do well. King pulls it off grandly! When I read this book for the first time upon its publication in 2004, I was riveted by this part of the story. It became abundantly clear that the Dark Tower meant more to King than just another (albeit his longest) tale. The Dark Tower was his life’s work and as it was such a large part of his life, he felt he must become part of its life.

That King was dramatically affected by his near fatal accident there can be no doubt. It brought about a marked change in his writing. The taste of his own mortality made characters in forthcoming novels such as Lisey’s Story and Duma Key much frailer than his earlier heroes. The accident and its painful recovery were most evident in his screenplay for the television miniseries Kingdom Hospital.

One can not help but believe, after reading King’s writings on himself in the end of this book, that it was this brush with death that compelled him to finish the tale. As he notes, he was constantly bothered throughout his career of cranking out a bestselling novel once a year, by the unfinished business and unresolved plot of his overarching Dark Tower story. Starting with The Wolves of the Calla, King picked up Roland’s tale and did not stop writing until it was done.

It really isn’t possible to evaluate or rate this book standing alone because, more than any other segment of the story, this one is but a chapter in a longer tale. The Gunslinger was a mere introduction to Roland and his quest. The Drawing of the Three was a vehicle to introduce new characters and tell their stories. The Waste Lands set the stage for the quest. Wizard and Glass and The Wolves of the Calla advanced the quest little, but told their own stories. The Song of Susannah is but the first half of the final push. The final chapter of the tale is yet to be told in the final book in the series entitled, The Dark Tower. There, King will wrap up almost 40 years of storytelling.

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

Skeleton Crew
By Stephen King
Copyright 1985

Introduction
King once again defends his craft. This time, it is against those who begrudge him a living from his writing, or criticizing him for having enriched himself with his writing. He recounts how an acquaintance laid it out for him all he really made was approximately the same amount of money per hour writing as a New York plumber.

He says a writer who writes well never writes for the money; he writes for the love of writing. He goes on to say that the money is nice, however. Many of these stories are from early in his career and he recalls how those small checks for stories sold to gentlemen’s publications usually arrived in time to pay the phone bill or buy the kids’ medicine. No matter if you’re a wealthy best seller like Stephen King or a writer scraping by, the money is always welcome.

King goes on to give us some insight into the writing of a couple of the stories and to thank is family, editor, publisher, and readers.

The Mist
A fierce storm strikes a summer tourist lake community and brings with it from across the lake (where there’s a secret military base) a strange mist. After the storm, a man takes his son and neighbor into the town grocery to purchase supplies. While there, they learn that the mist, which has descended on the town contains alien creatures that kill without mercy. They stay trapped in the grocery store, fighting each other and fighting to stay alive against the inhabitants that have taken over the town. Finally, they decide to make a break for it and find that the entire world has changed dramatically.

This was a novella rather than a short story and one of King’s finest works. I enjoyed The Mist as much as I’ve enjoyed any of King’s novella length tales. It tells a straightforward tale that’s a great blend of horror, sci-fi, and post apocalyptic fiction.

In 2007, Frank Darabont wrote and directed a movie based on The Mist. Darabond made a great movie by adding some more action scenes and creating an ending much different than King’s ambiguous conclusion which served him well in his novella, but would have left movie viewers unsatisfied.

This story was originally published in an anthology of horror stories called Dark Forces

Here There Be Tygers
A young man at school desperately needs to take a leak. After embarrassing him over the matter, his teacher dismisses him to the basement lavatory to pee. When he gets there, he finds a tiger has taken up residence in the boy’s room.

This is a short, simple, mildly entertaining tale. King tells us in his notes that it was inspired by his first grade teacher.

Here There Be Tygers was originally published in the Spring 1968 edition of Ubris

The Monkey
Hal Shelburn, his wife, and two sons travel to Hal’s aunt’s country home to start cleaning it out after her death. While exploring the attic, his son’s stumble across a toy, wind up monkey who bangs cymbals together. Hal is shocked and scared, for he was certain he’d put that evil toy where it would never be found. He recalled from his childhood the evil that came when that monkey banged its cymbals. Hal is resolved to see the killer toy primate to a final, watery grave. He ends up making newspaper headlines.

This was a fun take on the age old concept of evil toys. Perhaps it was a bit overlong, but a pleasure to read.

The Monkey was originally published in the November 1980 edition of Gallery

Cain Rose Up
A college student wraps up his final exams and bids adieu to his dorm mates. He then produces a sniper rifle and starts picking off people on the campus.

This is my favorite Stephen King short stories. King lets us know that evil thoughts are squirming around in this guy’s head. Then comes the cold dispassion with which he starts killing people. The story is but a few pages, so the narrative is lean and fast paced. An absolute gem of a short story!

Cain Rose Up was originally published in the Spring 1968 edition of Ubris

Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut
The late Ophelia Todd was a sucker for a shortcut. Her favorite hobby was trying to find the shortest route between her home in Bangor, Maine and her vacation home. It was 116 miles as the crow flies, but Ophelia found a way to shorten that distance – before she disappears along one of those remote Maine country roads. Her former caretaker tells the tale.

The story was ok, but it’s written in Yankee patois that I find distracting.

Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut was originally published in Redbook, May 1984.

The Jaunt
A family waits in a Jaunt station to be instantaneously transported to Mars where the father has a new job waiting for him. As they wait for the gas that will knock them out and make the Jaunt safe for them, the father recounts how the Jaunt was invented many years before, during a horrible energy and pollution crisis in the 1990s. It should have served as a cautionary tale, but for young boy, it does not.

King actually identifies in his story, the inspiration for this tale which is the Alfred Bester’s novella, The Stars, My Destination. It is a well paced story with a great and horrifying twist at the end.

The Jaunt was originally published in Twilight Zone Magazine, June 1981.

The Wedding Gig
Set in the 1920s during Prohibition, a jazz band is recruited to play at the wedding of a notorious gang boss’s sister. Things go bad, but the band survives to tell the tale.

To me, this story really had no point. It had no twist. The characters were not developed enough for us to care about them. There was really no point in reading it when the author himself seemed to lack a compelling reason to make us want to read it.

The Wedding Gig was originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1980.

Paranoid: A Chant

This poem tells the tale of a man taking precautions against the CIA, the FBI, and aliens that are all plotting and planning against him and stalking him.

To my knowledge, King has published little in the way of poetry. It’s not really his medium. I have read very little poetry, not caring for it at all. I know nothing of its rudiments or rules. I am not qualified to critique it. Therefore, I won’t.

This poem was first published in Skeleton Crew

The Raft
Four college students, two boys and two girls, decide to take a swim at a remote lake in October. They swim to a raft near the center of a small lake and notice an oil slick that seems to move of its own accord. But it’s no oil slick; it is a predator intent on taking them one by one.

I saw Creepshow II years ago before I read this story for the first time in 1990. So I already had an idea of what was going to happen. As I read it this time, having viewed several of the just awful films Roger Corman made in the 1950s and 60s, I thought to myself that perhaps some of Corman’s bad movies might have made for entertaining reading like this story. About 15 seconds after having that thought, I read one of the characters telling the oil slick, “go back and audition for a Roger Corman film!”

According to King, he wrote this story in the late 1960s for Adam magazine ( a gentlemen’s publication). They paid on publication and a check arrived in time for King to pay some criminal fines and keep himself out of jail. But King never saw the publication. He asked readers to find it for him. If it was published, I’m sure he has a copy by now. He rewrote it while working on Creepshow in the early 1980s and it was eventually published in Gallery Magazine in 1982. George Romero drafted the screen short that appeared in Creepshow 2

Word Processor of the Gods
Shortly after the death of a beloved nephew, a semi-professional writer finds that his nephew has constructed a word processor for him (back when word processors were expensive luxuries only very successful writers could afford). This word processor, with its odd assortment of parts, has very special powers to alter reality. The temptation for the writer to alter his mediocre life is strong.

King seems to think highly of this story as he describes it in his introduction to Skeleton Crew. It’s a good story, but not great. It’s simplistic, but well written.

Word Processor of the Gods was published in Playboy in January 1983. It was made into an episode of Tales from the Darkside that aired on November 25, 1984.

The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
The member of a private club recounts for his fellow club mates of a strange man that entered their club one evening for a game of cards. The man would not shake hands and shunned all human contact. The game progresses and the mysterious stranger does well through the evening. The last hand is played – with all bet and raise limits removed – and the man wins. Being a gentleman, the man who loses instinctively shakes the stranger’s hand. That hand shake sends him fleeing from the club in terror. The storyteller eventually tracks the well to do stranger to a seedy part of town where he died alone. There, he learns the man’s curse and how his curse is to visit his curse upon all who come in contact with him.

This story is an extension of The Breathing Method from Different Seasons. The Breathing Method is told with the same narrative device of a story teller sitting among friends, recounting events. The story picks up with the telling of the next story which is of the mysterious stranger who would not shake hands. I’ve been privileged to spend time in some ritzy private clubs such as the Capitol Hill Club and the Army Navy Club in Washington, D.C. as well as Toledo’s famed Toledo Club. This story and the aforementioned novella from Different Seasons have made me long to visit King’s fictional Manhattan club.

The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands was originally published in an anthology called Shadows, edited by Charles Grant.

Beachworld
A space ship carrying three astronauts crashes on a world that is made completely of sand. One astronaut is killed upon impact. Another immediately seems drawn to watch the constantly shifting sand. The remaining astronaut fights for survival by placing rescue beacons. When help arrives, the captain of that ship seems willing to risk everything to save his crazy friend so he can collect from the military. That decision proves costly.

This is a rare example of hard science fiction from the master of horror. I don’t know why he didn’t write more. For someone who did not regularly write in the genre, King made Beachworld is a pretty good story. The first part of the story is best. King sets the desolate scene well and makes you believe that the sand itself is a living, sentient being. However, the quality drops dramatically as the action of the escape unfolds. One might say it’s not half bad. He should have written more hard sci-fi and he could have been respected in two genres like the great Ray Bradbury.

Beachworld was originally published in Weird Tales, Fall 1985.

The Reaper’s Image
A collector of rare antiques visits a tourist home in New England to view a rare mirror with a bad reputation. Many who have gazed into its reflective face have disappeared. The collector is taken to the attic where the dangerous relic is stored and sees something other than his reflection in the silver surface.

This is one of the few stories in this collection drawn from King’s early writing career. It can best be described as a filler. It’s not interesting or compelling.

The Reaper’s Image was originally published in Startling Mystery Stories, Spring 1969.

Nona
A man convicted of multiple murders recounts his transition from orphaned college drop out to spree killer. While hitchhiking in the cold of early spring in Maine, he meets a young woman in a truck stop. She convinces him that they should head for the Maine town of Castle Rock. He immediately falls in love with her and they set out on the journey, killing those who get in their way, those who help them, and those who are convenient targets. Finally, they arrive in Castle Rock and she guides them to a cemetery where he learns the true, dark nature of Nona.

This story is perhaps a bit over written and could have been edited down. It’s another example of King providing too much backstory for his characters. But Stephen King is Stephen King and despite the excess verbiage, he tells a great tale.

This story builds upon the novella, The Body, from Different Seasons. While it is a stand alone story, it incorporates into the main character’s backstory Rich Tessier from The Body and Ace Merrill who will become one of the chief antagonists in King’s series of books that tell the story of the people who dwell in the fictional Maine town of Castle Rock.

It also has a tenuous connection to the Dark Tower series as well. Ace Merrill’s girlfriend’s name is Betsy Malenphant. The most obnoxious inhabitant of the dormitory in Hearts in Atlantis is named Ronnie Malenphant who is from Castle Rock and has a sister.

For Owen
This is another short poem that tells of King walking his son Owen to school while Owen describes his classmates as various varieties of fruit.

As I noted earlier, I know nothing of poetry and don’t particularly enjoy reading good poetry or bad. I don’t feel qualified to critique it other than to say I didn’t like it any more or any less than I like any other poem.

The poem was previously unpublished.

Survivor Type
A corrupt surgeon is marooned on a reef island after a shipwreck. He has nothing with him other than a small ration of water and two kilos of heroin he was smuggling to the United States from Vietnam. With no food other than a few seagulls, he starts to dine on the only meat available to him – his own body.

I have never read any story remotely resembling this. I’ve often said that King ranks among the greatest writers of our time. The ability to generate completely original ideas such as this is testimony to that greatness. It uses a traditional means of telling a story through diary entries, but is exceptionally written to induce horror. More than one person has told me this is their favorite King short.

Survivor Type was originally published in an anthology called Terrors in 1982.

Uncle Otto’s Truck
A successful business man is driven insane by a derelict truck that sits in field across the rural road from his house. He and his former business partner used to drive that truck to inspect their vast lumber company holdings. Later, his partner would die under that truck after it was put out to pasture and up on blocks. The narrator (the businessman’s nephew) suspects that his Uncle Otto used the truck to murder his partner. In the end, the murdering eccentric gets his just deserts when the truck pays him a late night visit.

This tale is well written and well paced. Not a spectacularly thrilling or frightening story, but better than some of King’s short works.

Uncle Otto’s Truck was originally published in Yankee Magazine, October 1983.

Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)
A milkman makes his morning rounds. Instead of delivering dairy products, he delivers death in various forms.

This is one of those stories where the villain is seemingly without motivation and that’s good. What’s bad is it's not particularly interesting. He drops off poisonous spiders and poison gas to his customers, but we have no idea what the consequences of his actions are.

This story was previously unpublished.

Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman #2)
Two drunken twenty-somethings travel to a nearby town where the owner of the car knows an old buddy who will put an inspection sticker on his jalopy so he can drive it for one more year. On their way home, they are killed by a homicidal milkman from the previous story.

This story is just incredibly dull. As a former drunk, one would think King could write drunk characters beyond the standard cliché. He chooses not to here.

Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game was published in anthology called New Terrors, edited by Ramsey Campbell

Gramma
A young boy is left to look after his bedridden grandmother while his mother goes to the hospital to tend to his brother who has broken her leg. While his mother is gone, his grandmother dies. He then learns the terrible secret that made his grandmother an outcast in her community.

This is King’s homage to H.P. Lovecraft. As she dies, Gramma cries out for Lovecraft’s mythical “old ones.” King also engages in the narrative style Lovecraft used to build tension, using neither dialogue nor action, relying on pure emotion. Unlike those who often imitate Lovecraft, King successfully accomplished what Lovecraft accomplished while not copying Lovecraft’s style of writing, instead, relying on his own narrative style. The tale was overlong, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Gramma was published in Spring 1984 edition of Weirdbook. It was made into an episode of The New Twilight Zone. The screenplay was authored by Harlan Ellison

The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet
An old and retired publisher tells a writer, his wife, and agent a story about a writer who submitted a short story to a magazine that told a humorous tale about going insane. The editor, an alcoholic at the time, accidentally feeds into the writer’s growing paranoia about the nature of his muse which he calls a Fornit. That indulgence in the writer’s paranoid delusions leads to disaster.

This story is interesting because it is about something that very few writers discuss: their muse. Do I have a muse? Yes, but he’s a rather blue collar type. More utilitarian than creative, the little bastard. I don’t think my muse went to college. If he did, he didn’t take creative writing. I don't feed him anything but the cigar ashes that land on my keyboard.

This story was originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1984.

The Reach
As she nears death, an old woman begins to hear voices beckoning her to leave the Maine Island on which she lives and cross the frozen ocean to the mainland – something she has never done in all her years on the planet. She sets off in a snowstorm to visit the continental United States just once before she dies.

Like too many tales in this book, this story had too much of that Maine, Yankee style that I just don’t care for. King’s entertaining enough one can put up with the Maine phonetics. But stories ABOUT Maine (as opposed to those that merely take place in Maine) become tiresome.

The Reach was originally published in Yankee Magazine, November 1981.

Notes

This section includes short essays on the inspiration for many of King’s stories.

Critics liked Skeleton Crew much more than they liked King’s first collection of short stories, Night Shift. They thought this collection much more mature. While the stories spanned King’s career, most of these stories were penned after King was a published author.

I prefer the young and raw talent evident in Night Shift. I like the young writer trying new things to get noticed and get published. Skeleton Crew is not without its charm. The Mist, Cain Rose Up, and Survivor Type are brilliant. But the “mature” King (he was in his early 30s), was trying too hard to earn mainstream acceptance