#tommyknockers

[horror-castle]

Tommyknockers – Das Monstrum: Grandioser Kult – Film (1993)

Tommyknockers - Das Monstrum: Grandioser Kult - Film (1993)

In "Tommyknockers" findet die Schriftstellerin Bobbi im Wald ein grünlich schimmerndes Metallobjekt. Ihr Fund ist jedoch außerirdischen Ursp

[cosmonautistic]

Okay, I finished The Tommyknockers by Stephen King and I just want to say that the green light and the alien counterparts remind me of maple syrup. It's everywhere in New England and you can't escape it and it changes places. Spicy things? They never heard of them. Only maple syrup exists. Savory? How dare you? You need light? Tap a maple tree and peer through the sunlight. They've started adding maple syrup to cheese and putting it on apple pie.

Maple Syrup + New England = The Tommyknockers 100%

[slop4uscarlethollowanimations]

Day 14 of making #ScarletHollow poor animatics until Chapter 5 comes out Are you ok Annie, Ditchling and Tommyknockers

[cazmatonicevent]

I'm finally re-reading the Tommyknockers. I thought it was a bonkers but fun time when I first read it in highschool. Can't wait to see how this lands now. Only within the first two chapters already so much is coming back to me.

[sanktpolypenbourg]

Spoilers for a book older than most of us, but I love what Stephen King does in 'Tommyknockers' when the horrors of the story are both human and monster. The monsters are your neighbours, and yet they are still your neighbours.

It's very easy to read it as a metaphor for fascism combined with runaway technological progress. The book predicts facebook, har har. And creation without intelligence à la ChatGPT.

King is even right on the money with gradual fusion into a hivemind actually making people more aggressive towards one another (and against "outsiders" more than anything), rather than strictly more harmonious.

But I think what I like most is how the transformation, as horrible it is, is embraced, because it makes the people of the town stronger, more skilled, they become more as they are becoming less. They mourn losing their humanity but no more than you mourn your childhood as you grow up.

[scumtrout]

There's a scene in Tommyknockers where Character B asks why Character A is powering alien tech with a frankly stupid amount of batteries instead of leeching off the power grid.

And Character A points out that the power grid uses AC and they need DC.

To which they are asked, 'WHY DIDN'T YOU USE A FUCKING CONVERTER THEN?'

And it's suggested that Character A was just doing things in ways that worked, not ways that were efficient, because 1) they didn't understand the theory behind anything, and 2) they suffered from the sort of stubborn bloody-mindedness that's typically associated with addiction and mental illness, where all they cared about was getting from Point X to Point Y. If you have something in your brain that's screaming, 'YOU NEED TO DO Y!' then you're not very inclined to stop and think, 'Why do I need to do Y?' (Because after you've established the reasons for doing Y, you can then figure out the optimal ways to do Y, or decide to do Z instead if Z is a better fit, but these things take time, and it doesn't feel like you have time when your brain is screaming at you to do Y.)

I've seen the 'YOU COULD'VE JUST USED A CONVERTER' scene mentioned above criticized because it seems an afterthought (Tommyknockers is honestly like a NaNoWriMo project that got published), but I still love it because it's a rare instance in fiction where you see the characters do Cargo Cult programming.

The book is a complete mess that has a really good novel buried deep inside it, yet it does make me think about how frequently I use things without understanding how they work beyond a certain level. I'm pretty dependent on electricity, and I could tell you in general terms how a motor works, but I have nowhere near enough knowledge to do something like wire a house, for example.

[mitchipedia]

I started reading “The Tommyknockers” and got 200 pages in and it was barely getting started and then I read that author Stephen King himself thinks it’s a terrible book. It was one of the last books he wrote before he got sober and, like “The Shining,” it has all sorts of “the author is an alcoholic” messages in the book, which King was apparently oblivious to.

He says he thinks there’s a good 350-page book in there. The book is more than 900 pages. So I gave up reading it.

It would have been a re-read. I read it in the late 80s. I got through the whole thing then but I don’t remember anything beyond the setup. I remember bristling at a powerful anti-technology theme in the book. King seems conflicted about technology—you can see the same thing in “The Stand.” But I think King is really against elevating technology and profit above people. I can live with that.

King seems to dislike the TV miniseries even worse than the book. From the preview, I can see why.

The miniseries features pre-“CSI”/post-“China Beach” Marg Helgenberger, acting porny; pre-“NYPD Blue” post-“LA Law” Jimmy Smits, looking studly; John “Beverly Hills Cop” Ashton; Allyce Beasley, who has a distinctive face, hair, and chirpy voice, and was then famous for playing Agnes DiPesto on “Moonlighting” and is now probably sadly forgotten. The movie also features Joanna Cassidy, most famous for “Blade Runner,” and Traci Lords, who had been a porn star in the 80s until it was discovered that she was actually like 16 years old—whoops!—and so all her videocassettes had to be withdrawn from the market and then she made one or two more pornos when she was legal age and then she made a go of it as a legit actress, and she seems to be steadily working through today. So, great cast, but apparently badly served by the miniseries, which looks dumb.

The special effects budget on “Tommyknockers” looks to be about six dollars and the whole thing looks bad. Not even the prospect of Marg Helgenberger acting porny could make me want to see it.

[theslowmaxx]

Late last night, and the night before… Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at my door…