Chances are pretty good that when you think about Firestarter, what you see in your mind is a very young Drew Barrymore, hair blown back from her tiny face, setting, well, just about everything in her path on fire. That movie, along with E.T., helped propel her to early stardom and created one of the many iconic images of the 1980s. So iconic, in fact, that the Netflix series "Stranger Things" references it, not literally, but through the character of Eleven and the shadowy government agency with nefarious purposes known as Hawkins National Laboratory. As movies made from Stephen King books go, I don't remember Firestarter being too awful, nor do I remember it straying too far from the events of the book, though I will admit it's probably been 20 years since I've seen it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the basic plot, Firestarter revolves around Andy and Charlie McGee, a father and daughter who are on the run from a secret government agency called The Shop. When he was in college, Andy and his future wife Vicky participated in trials of an experimental hallucinogenic drug that left them with weak psychic and telekinetic powers. Those powers were magnified by a power of a lot in their young daughter, Charlie, who showed signs from a very early age of being able to move things with her mind, and, more frighteningly, set things on fire. This happened most often when she was angry or upset, giving new meaning to the phrase "terrible twos". Andy and Vicky did everything they could to keep her powers, and their own, a secret, but The Shop maintained covert surveillance on all of their past subjects, and when they saw what Charlie could do, they tried to capture her so they could study her with the ultimate goal of creating a super-weapon. Andy, obviously, wasn't really down with this plan, so he took his daughter and ran.

This is not the first time that King has explored the idea of telekinesis, nor the first time he has used a young person as his powerful hero (hello, Carrie!). Charlie is another in a string of children that King uses as protagonists. One of the recurring themes in his work seems to be that the more innocent you are, the more likely you are to have the imagination and bravery to confront evil. In this case, while Charlie is the one that can set things on fire with her mind, the evil is the government, another recurring theme in King's works, first appearing in The Stand. It is not always the main theme, but in many of King's books the least sympathetic characters have something to do with the power structure of the location of the story, whether they be a politician, clergy member, or wealthy citizen.

One of the things I liked about this story, both when I first read it and now, is the relationship between Charlie and her father. He is smart, a teacher (another recurring element in King stories), kind and gentle, and pretty evolved for a man who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite their dire situation, he tries to teach Charlie the difference between right and wrong, even as he sometimes has to tell her to do horrible things to help them evade The Shop. It felt more unusual when I first read it, but even now portraying the father as the primary caregiver of a small child feels is not that common. Unlike Jack Torrance, Andy McGee is able to be truly selfless, doing everything he can to ensure his daughter's safety despite what it means to his own.

The story does feel a bit unbalanced, with long periods of waiting in between action scenes, but oh what action scenes they are! The other characters in the novel; agents from The Shop, mostly; are written with just enough depth for you to understand their motivation, but without any real substance. They could be any shadowy government official from just about any book or movie that contains shadowy government officials. They are fairly shallow, that is, except for John Rainbird, the Native American Viet Nam vet turned assassin, who is tasked with getting Charlie to use her powers. His character is cunning and violent and sociopathic, but with an impressive, if scary, intellect. His main motivation for being an assassin isn't money or revenge or patriotism-his long string of murders are essentially his own twisted research into what you can see of a person's soul if you look in their eyes as they die. He is a truly chilling character, and one of the more subtly written King villains. He definitely adds a quality of menace to an already suspensful story.

My Year of King, #3: The Shining

If you're tracing my Year of King journey (and why wouldn't you be?) you'll know that I was a little disappointed in 'Salem's Lot this time. That experience made me very concerned to read The Shining. I wasn't sure I could stand it if The Shining, which I remember being one of King's best books, and one of the few that actually scared me for real, was not as good 30 years later. But crisis averted! The Shining still stands as a true masterpiece of the genre, and one of the best books of the 20th century, in my humble opinion. <BIG SIGH OF RELIEF>

In case you have somehow not read it, or have only watched the Kubrick movie, here's the breakdown. Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their five-year-old son Danny move into the Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado as winter caretakers. Jack, a recovering alcoholic, is fresh off of being fired for physically assaulting a student at the exclusive prep school where he was an English teacher. An old drinking buddy arranges for him to get the job at the Overlook, and the plan is for him to spend the winter doing minor upkeep while finishing a play that he's been writing. No sooner do they arrive to take the tour at the end of the season that the scary begins. Danny, unbeknownst to his parents, has what he comes to call "the shine". He can read people's thoughts, can speak telepathically with other people who "shine", and can sometimes see the future. He can also, unfortunately, see visions of the bad things that have happened in the past, and the Overlook has seen its share of tragic events over the years. Once the snows come and strand them in the hotel, without any communication with the outside world, the malevolent forces in the hotel start to work on Jack and Danny in terrifying ways, culminating in an explosive ending.

If you have only ever seen the Jack Nicholson movie, don't think you know The Shining. Kubrick took the source material and adapted it for the time, including the limitations of the special effects industry of the 1980s. While there are many elements in common-the hotel itself, REDRUM, and Jack's eventual insanity-the book and the movie are different enough that reading it will be worth it. Also, the book is WAY scarier than the movie. Both highlight this idea that the most terrifying monsters are the ones that live within all of us, there are truly terrifying scenes in the book that just aren't done sufficient justice in the film, if they are present at all.

This is the second of King's books where he explores the idea that buildings become repositories for the evil done in them, and that as that evil grows it brings more madness and mayhem to the characters who live/work/visit said building, until the building itself becomes a malevolent force in its own right. In 'Salem's Lot is was the Marsten House, which soaked up the psychic energy of the people who had inhabited it, and reflected that back to anyone who ventured in. King develops this idea further in The Shining, where the hotel itself becomes a character, with an evil spirit that acts of its own will to entrap and destroy Jack and his family.

Like many of King's characters, you can't help but feel sympathetic towards Jack, despite the fact that he ends up being the villain of his family's story. I suspect I found him slightly less sympathetic this time than I did when I read this 30 years ago, because the casual sexism that probably seemed super authentic back then was just irritating now. I hope and pray that there aren't too many people who still hold the same views of marriage and gender roles that Jack does in the novel. But that was a minor annoyance and didn't take anything away from how creepy and scary the plot becomes. King also further develops his "children as heroes" theme, with Danny being the most well-developed child character so far, more so than either Carrie or Mark Petrie from 'Salem's Lot.

Because I'm reading in publication order, I have to jump to the first of the Bachman books next, Rage, which is really only a novella at a slim 149 pages. But after that, it's on to The Stand, my favorite of King's book, the one I consider his magnum opus, the one that I think is highly underrated because book snobs consider it "just" a genre novel. It is almost 1100 pages of tiny print goodness, and I can't wait to read it again! But it's gonna take me a minute!

Patternmaster, by Octavia E. Butler

Patternmaster is the last book in story-time in the Patternist series by Octavia E. Butler, but the first of her novels to actually be published.  I find that fact astonishing on a couple of levels-first, because the book clearly mentions "past" events in the world of the characters that Butler had not in fact written yet, and because without the other books as backstory I'm not sure how an editor understood it enough to publish it.

Patternmaster tells the story of Teray, son of the current Patternmaster, the one person who hold the Pattern of thought connecting every Patternist on Earth.  The Patternmaster is the strongest of the Patternists, and his or her strength is what controls their society.  Without a Patternmaster the Patternists would not be able to live together without eventually killing each other.  Occupying the planet along with the Patternists are the Clayarks, human mutants who carry the only disease that can kill a Patternist, who can heal themselves.  Teray, just out of school, is tricked into becoming the slave of a brother he never knew he had-as Teray is the son of the current Patternmaster, he is a threat to his big brother's quest to take control of the Pattern.  When Teray tries to escape, his brother hunts for him, causing a showdown that leads to major changes for the Pattern.

The fact that Butler saw her story so clearly that she could mention past events in the arc of the story that were actually still in her future is remarkable.  I'm not talking about rather general statements that could be expanded on later, but specifics, like where the Clayark disease came from and who killed the being who bred the first Patternist.  Considering that it took Butler eight years to finish the books in this series, that is a long time to keep specific details in mind. 

But more remarkable is that this novel got published at all, especially since it is her first.  While the story is fast paced, and the characters are interesting, if I hadn't read about Doro and Anyanwu, or the Clay's Ark mission, or the creation of the Pattern, I don't know if I would have understood half of it.  This novel also doesn't carry the usual social commentary that I've found in Butler's books.  It does explore the idea of morality, in that the Patternists had a definite sense of morality that was completely different than ours.  Does that mean morality is relative?  It also explores the idea of power being a corrupting influence, and yet every character in the novel is seeking it in some way, whether it is the power to make their own choices or power over others.

I'm glad that I decided to read the books in the order of the story, rather than the order of their publication.  I don't mind non-linear narrative, but I think reading Patternmaster first would have left me without the strong sense of attachment to the story that I got from starting with Wild Seed.

Mind of My Mind, by Octavia Butler

I think that the reason that I like fantasy and science fiction so much is because I am so intrigued by the way the author's mind works.  I mean, when I read Neil Gaiman or Sheri S. Tepper, I marvel at the places their imagination takes them.  To take our ordinary world and change it into something marvelous/wondrous/horrible/terrifying/magical takes skill.  Since so much fantasy and science fiction these days seems targeted at a younger audience, I'm always glad to find mature, thoughtful stories.

And this week it is Octavia Butler that I am thanking the sci fi gods for.  I read Wild Seed, the first book chronologically in her Patternist series earlier this week, and last night finished Mind of My Mind.  Mind of My Mind takes the story of Doro and Anyanwu and fast fowards it 150 years.  Anyanwu and her family are now living in California, and Doro continues to pay visits to the only other immortal he's ever found.  On this trip, he is planning to take Mary, one of his many experiments in creating telepaths, and marry her off to Karl, another of his creations.  She is about to go through her transition, the time when those with latent telepathic abilities either learn to control their talent, or go crazy or die in the attempt.  When Mary transitions, Doro finds that her power is new, different-and potentially dangerous to him.  Since this is a fairly rare occurrence in his almost 4000 years of life, he does not kill her, but watches to see what she will do.  She is at the center of the Pattern-a psychic link to other strong telepaths.  While she does not control the Pattern itself, she can control the people in it.  She soon builds an enclave of other powerful telepaths, all of whom answer to her.  Soon enough, Doro realizes his mistake in not killing her when her new power first asserted itself.

As I was reading I was alternately drawn to the mission that Mary took on, and terrified of what it would mean if it was real.  Her telepaths can control anyone not a telepath, forcing them to do things while making them so content with their servitude they think they are doing them out of their own free will.  This is slavery of a different sort-one with fairly benign masters, assuredly, but slavery nonetheless.  While Mary has a symbiotic relationship with her telepaths, they all use the "mutes", as they call non-telepaths, to support them in creating a small empire, while helping them stay hidden from the rest of the world.  This reminds me of the relationship between the Ina and their symbionts in Fledgling, the first of Butler's books I discovered.

Mary and her "First Family" of telepaths (those she drew to her first), are at times sympathetic characters, and at times ruthless killers.  Mary's mission to save latents from themselves seems admirable, but when they do not abide by the rules of her little community they will kill them without much remorse.  It seems that ordinarily, telepaths cannot abide each other's company, since they cannot abide mind to mind contact with each other.  They also cannot abide children, because no one, not even Mary, can completely block the psychic noise that constantly streams from young minds.  This is another reason that they need the mutes-if their "race" is to continue, they must have someone who can take care of the children without abusing or killing them.  Butler blurs the line between good and evil, highlighting the relative nature of so many of the rules of human society.  She also examines the very idea of race as a construct, since Doro has been trying for millenia to create a new "race" of people like himself of which he can be a part.  Color has nothing to do with it in Doro's worldview-talent is the great dividing line, the one thing that determines a person's worth.  There are two more books in this series, and I almost don't want to read them, because then I will have read them-I like thinking about the pleasure I will have in the future from this always surprising, though provoking author.