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Old 01-06-2010, 07:56 PM   #28
mrsquash
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Posts: 78
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: USA
Device: K4-NT, Sony T1
Quote:
Originally Posted by Squirsier View Post
...I couldn't help being reminded of an old movie/tv show I saw a long time ago in the 1980s.
Reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode from the 60s: "Stopover in a Quiet Town":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stopover_in_a_Quiet_Town

Also reminded of an old Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos": just when the seemingly-omnipotent Trelane is about to dispatch the hapless Kirk off to eat roast beef with Jesus, Trelane's glowing parental-units pop-up from some other galaxy/universe/dimension. They apologize to Kirk, and make the unruly Trelane stop playing.

Endings seem to be very difficult to pull off well in horror fiction. You've got the comparatively weak human(s) against the powerful, often already-dead, entities. This helps create tension but makes it easy for the author to write himself into a corner. Authorial trickery ensues, and the reader feels cheated or disappointed. I thought King did a brilliant end-run around this problem with the way he wrapped up "The Stand".

But King's endings started really dropping off for me with The Tommyknockers, which, I read somewhere, roughly coincided with the onset of his heavy substance-abuse problems; don't know if there's a connection. I thought the endings to his "Needful Things" and "The Dark Half" were nothing short of ridiculous. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the books. A good trip is all I ask.

I liked "Under the Dome", best King in years for me, and the ending, though not all that original, was a big step up from some of his others.
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