The Science of Stephen King

In The Tommyknockers, Bobbi is not so lucky when she finds the crashed ship. Its alien power overcomes her, taking away her true self, leaving her a husk who only works to serve the aliens. She is joined by many others, transfixed, even hypnotized by the sentient power. The fascination with aliens is not so different. The notion of sharing our universe with others, different yet similar, captivates us. Though they may bring death and destruction, like in The Tommyknockers, that doesn’t stop us from pursuing aliens. Whether they are speaking to us through radio transmissions, visiting us at night, or crash landing in our backyards, we want to believe.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Dark Half

After the release of The Tommyknockers in 1987, a profound change altered both Stephen King’s career and personal life. Faced with the destructive nature of his addictions, King was met with an intervention orchestrated by his wife, Tabitha. For two years, King focused on letting go of his dependence on cocaine and uniting his family. What came next was a personal project, about a man not unlike King, who was driven to madness by his two selves. He must destroy his own evil tendencies, characterized by his pseudonym come to life, in order to save all who he loves. Published in 1989, The Dark Half was described by James Smythe for his series “Re-Reading Stephen King” for the Guardian as “a novel that manages to encapsulate all King’s demons—his addictions, his worries about his family life, the ups and downs of his own publishing career—while being unlike anything he’d written before.”1

One cause of auditory hallucination is Musical Ear Syndrome (MES) in which people with hearing loss purport to hear music, though there is no external source.

Centering on author Thad Beaumont, a father and former alcoholic, The Dark Half is an exploration of our disparate selves. As Smythe points out, it would be difficult not to draw comparisons between Stephen King and his character. Thad writes esoteric literature, worthy of critical praise, yet his novels receive little interest and disappointing sales. Therefore, Thad begins to write about the tales of Alexis Machine, a rough-and-tumble gangster who is the macho male ideal, right down to the bumper sticker on his slick, black Toronado which reads HIGH-TONED SON-OF-A-BITCH.

These highly successful novels about Alexis Machine’s violent exploits are written under a pseudonym, George Stark, which allows Thad to separate his two distinct writing styles. Despite the money that George Stark’s pulp novels provide, Thad has come to loathe this aspect of himself. Alexis Machine’s casual cruelty has taken a toll, and he believes it is time to give up Stark and focus on his literary novels. Thad’s wife, Elizabeth, could not agree more, as she is disturbed by Thad’s behavior when he works on the Machine novels. Sometimes, it feels to her as though he is inhabited by another soul, someone with a quick temper and a sullen attitude.

There is another impetus to the metaphorical death of George Stark, and that is the inclusion of character Fredrick Clawson. Frederick has read novels by both Thad and George, and has discovered an undeniable connection in tone and style. He has uncovered that George Stark and Thad Beaumont are one and the same, and wants to cash in on this new-found information with a spot of blackmail. Rather than allow Clawson to expose him, Thad takes the matter into his own hands, inviting People magazine to reveal the truth with a splashy photo shoot of Thad and Elizabeth “burying” George Stark in a mock funeral.

While Clawson, later killed in a brutal and bloody manner by the physical manifestation of George Stark, is fictional, he is based on a real person in King’s life. Several years before the release of The Dark Half, a book clerk named Steve Brown made the exact same sort of connection as Clawson. After reading the Richard Bachman novel Thinner in 1984, Brown came to draw comparisons between Bachman and King that led him on a trail of research all the way to the Library of Congress to search through copyright documents. With proof in hand that Stephen King was indeed Richard Bachman, Brown sent a letter to the novelist, asking if he could write an article on his literary discovery. Steve Brown described what happened next in his article “Bachman Exposed”: