: Cell
Author: Stephen King (book)
It’s a bit of an absurd premise — a pulse or some signal hits all the cell phones on the planet, erasing the minds of anyone who hears it. This causes instant insanity, as people resort to mindless beings of extreme violence. Since cell phones are everywhere, this is basically the end of civilization as we know it. People driving crash, kill their children, children attack their parents, planes fall out of the sky, and pretty much all authority — fire, police, rescue, etc. — use cell phones and are destroyed. Some withiin a couple days civilization is back to the stone age. Partly this is King’s playful attack on cellular phones, partly it’s just an excuse for a good zombie flick (since the “phoners” are essentially zombies, except the aren’t dead). King takes pains to vividly describe all the gory details of society’s derailment, and the result, while interesting, is too grim and not particularly enlightening. It’s a one-joke premise stretched out too long. Cell phone users are bad, we get it. They’re rude, wealthy, privileged, we get it. Using them to destroy the earth is ironic, we get it. But come, enough already! Move on. But King doesn’t. Fortunately the book is saved by King’s unique prose and an actual plot, though the latter isn’t evident until late in the novel. The book does remind me a lot of King’s
Topic: [/book] |
