Movies - The Tommyknockers

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The Tommyknockers is an 1987 novel by horror novelist Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is more of an excursion into the realm of science fiction for King, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.

In his autobiography, On Writing, King attributes the basic premise to the short story "The Colour out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft. It also draws fairly obvious parallels with the classic 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. King wrote the book during a period of acknowledged substance abuse, and has written that he realized later on that the novel was a metaphor for that addiction.

A TV miniseries based on the novel was shown in 1993.

The mysterious object turns out to be a long-buried alien spacecraft stumbled upon by Bobbi Anderson, a writer of Wild West-based fiction. Once exposed, the spacecraft begins releasing an invisible, odorless gas into the atmosphere which gradually transforms people into beings similar to the aliens who rode in the spacecraft. It also provides them with a short-sighted form of genius which makes them very inventive, but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight, instead provoking psychotic violence (on the part of people like 'Becka Paulsen, who kills her adulterous husband by fatally rewiring the TV, killing herself in the process) and the disappearance of a young boy (Davy Brown, whose older brother Hilly accidentally makes him disappear with a customised magic act).

The book's central protagonist, a poet and friend of Bobbi Anderson's named Jim Gardener with left-leaning, liberal sensibilities, is apparently immune because of a steel plate in his head which blocks the influence of the spacecraft, but he has to battle his own relapsed addiction to alcohol. His relationship with Bobbi deteriorates as the novel progresses. She is almost totally overcome by the euphoria of "becoming" one with the spacecraft, but Gardener increasingly sees her health worsen and her sanity disappear. The whole novel is filled with metaphors for the stranglehold of substance abuse, which King himself was experiencing at the time.

Seeing the transformation of the rest of the town worsen, as the local police constable, a "snoop" journalist and an eccentric old man are killed or worse when they pry too deeply into the strange events, Gardener confirms his suspicions that, far from being a miracle, the transformation of the town is in fact an attempt to regenerate the long-dead aliens in the buried spacecraft (explaining the gradual ageing and decaying of the human hosts, as their teeth fall out, skin peels off etc...) He gets into the ship, activates and launches it into space, resulting in the deaths of most of the changed townspeople (and himself) but preventing the possibly disastrous consequences of the completion of the transformation.

The book takes its title from an old children's rhyme:

:"Late last night and the night before, :Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers knocking at my door, :I want to go out, don't know if I can, :'Cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man!"

ISBN numbers

ISBN 0606041133 (prebound, 1987)
ISBN 0451156609 (mass market paperback, 1988)
ISBN 8401499984 (hardcover, 1992)
ISBN 8401474655 (hardcover, 1999)
ISBN 0399136991 (hardcover)

Tommyknockers, The Tommyknockers, The Tommyknockers, The Tommyknockers, The

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