Tommyknockers is Stephen King's 3074th novel, published in 1979. I'm kidding, it's more like his 28th. It was also the last novel published before I was born, which probably doesn't mean a great deal to Stephen King but it's interesting to me! I didn't notice this, but the book is actually set in 1988, making it five minutes into the future at the time it was published.
The book's about a small town in Maine; not Derry or Castle Rock but an even smaller place called Haven. A writer, Bobbi Anderson, begins digging up a huge, strange ship and as more of it is exposed to the air more and more people are changed. They become.
Anderon nicknames the former owners of the ship 'Tommyknockers', from an old children's rhyme that both Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha King, were familiar with;
Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers knocking at the door.
I wanna go out, don't know if I can
'cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.
In the introduction, King mentions that 'Tommy' is an old name for a British soldier. It is, but it only goes back to world war I, where "Thomas Anderson" was the example name written on a soldier's paybook. That was discussed in Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb, or possibly Johnny and the Dead. One or the other.
I know the rhyme as well. It's a skipping rhyme, and we'd sing;
Not last night but the night before,
Twenty-four robbers came knocking at my door,
As I ran out to let them in, to let them in, to let them in....
...and you'd run back and forth under the rope while you chanted.
So we know that in both England and the US something happened, perhaps not last night but the night before, but possibly on both nights. In England we let them in. Perhaps the Americans blew up the English robbers to a ridiculous, boogyman extent?
Anyway, in story, it's just a nickname, literally a word pulled out of the air by the characters to label something inexplicable.
I want to talk about something a little spoileriffic now, so please clear the area.
Spoilers
Near the end of the novel, Gard, who is somewhat immune to the 'becoming' enters the spaceship. 'Becoming' involves several physical and mental changes, including telepathy, teeth falling out and growing snouts and claws. Inside the spaceship he finds several snouty, toothless, claw-having creatures who appear to have killed one another in an argument. He reflects that the Tommyknockers are good inventors but have low maturity. They invent better ways of killing each other instead of finding out how not to.
Gard manages to send the spaceship flying off to find another planet, preventing the 'becoming' proceeding on earth. In the process, he dies from wounds received in combat.
Earlier in the novel, Gard reflected on the cuckoo-like nature of the Tommyknockers. They come to new planets and 'improve' them, taking their technology further.
So, my theory is that the creatures who had died in the ship weren't the original Tommyknockers. They were the remains of the last victims.
Perhaps the fact that the 'becoming' involved specific physical changes indicates that the original Tommyknockers did resemble that. However, the 'becoming' seems to be powered by a virus-like substance. Perhaps this was sent out in the ship - which is highly automated - to terraform new planets?
I said that Gard is somewhat immune to the 'becoming'. He's not completely immune; it just takes a lot longer. Perhaps the changes continue to work after he has died, so the next species to locate the ship while find just another snouted, toothless, clawed being on the upper decks?
Gard does think about most of this. However, I'm not sure he considers the idea that not all of the Tommyknockers were fully affected by the virus-thing and that they died not because the virus makes them psychotically unstable but because some of them were in opposition to becoming.
End Spoilers
When it comes to references to other books, Johnny Smith of The Dead Zone and the Shop of Firestarter show up a few times. One of the characters also sees a clown peeking out from the sewers as he drives through Derry - a reference to It - and at one point Gard has a conversation with Jack of The Talisman. Stephen King himself and his novel The Shining are also mentioned as in-universe.
Tommyknockers is one of the novels published as Stephen King was coming to the end of his period of severe substance abuse. King has said previously that the issue was so bad he doesn't remember writing Cujo at all. Cujo was published in 1981, six years prior to Tommyknockers.
This experience of substance abuse is expressed in Gard, an alcoholic who managed to shoot his wife while drunk. James Smythe's post focuses on this. Apparently after the bookwas published Tabitha King staged an intervention. In 1979 their eldest daughter, Naomi, turned nine. Joe Hill was seven and Owen King was only two years old. Both Joe Hill and Owen King became writers and have said in a rather sweet interview that they are Stephen King's fans as well as his sons. To my knowledge, Naomi King has not been interviewed because she is not a public figure, which is fair enough.
There's a film of Tommyknockers, which I only discovered when I was looking up info on Nightmares in the Sky. I'll watch it if I can get ahold of it.
Following Tommyknockers no major novels were published until 1989, and that was The Dark Half. However, there was a work published in 1988 - Nightmares in the Sky. It's a collection of photographs by f-stop Fitzgerald (not a typo) with text by Stephen King. I've ordered a copy from German Amazon which should arrive by the 27th. Abe books cancelled and refunded my order, on the grounds that they have no copies in stock, though their website still claims twenty available.
I do quite like The Dark Half which I've read before, so I might just start on that early and read Nightmares in the Sky later. James Smythe - who is doing the same kind of project two years ahead - didn't read it as part of his challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment