tommyknockers
After the vampirish Tommyknockers in the spaceship have wrought their evil magic upon the inhabitants of Haven (Tommyknockers live on the blood of comatose humans circulated through mind-reading PCs connected to VCRs), the unfortunate townspeople have, it seems, “become” (the word, over-used and never explained, is King’s) “something else” (the vague words are also the author’s). [1]
The Tommyknockers is a 1987 horror novel by Stephen King. [2]
To some of the miners, the knockers were malevolent spirits and the knocking was the sound of them hammering at walls and supports to cause the cave-in. [...] The Knocker, Knacker, Bwca (Welsh), Bucca (Cornish) or Tommyknocker (US) is the Welsh and Cornish equivalent of Irish leprechauns and English and Scottish brownies. [3]
Taking a whole town as his canvas, King uses too-broad strokes, adding cartoonlike characters and unlikely catastrophes like so many logs on a fire; ultimately he loses all semblance of style, carefully structured plot or resonant meaning, the hallmarks of his best writing. [1]
According to some Cornish folklore however, the Knockers were the helpful spirits of people who had died in previous accidents in the many tin mines in the county, warning the miners of impending danger. [3]
Start reading The Tommyknockers on your Kindle in under a minute. [4]
When asked if they had relatives back in Cornwall who would come to work the mines, the Cornish miners always said something along the lines of “Well, me cousin Jack over in Cornwall wouldst come, could ye pay’is boat ride”, and so came to be called Cousin Jacks. [3]
While walking in the woods near the small town of Haven, Maine, Roberta (Bobbi) Anderson, a writer of Wild West -based fiction, stumbles upon a metal object which turns out to be the slightest portion of a long-buried alien spacecraft. [...] The term Tommyknockers is not the true name of the aliens who originally crash landed on earth eons ago, but rather a title bestowed on them subconsciously by Jim Gardener which was adopted by the people of Haven (Bobbi herself admitted that the alien race had no name to call their own and simply accepted whatever title was given to them on the planets they landed on). [2]
To others, who saw them as essentially well-meaning practical jokers, the knocking was their way of warning the miners that a life-threatening collapse was imminent. [3]
Once exposed, the spacecraft begins releasing an invisible, odorless gas into the atmosphere which gradually transforms people into beings similar to the aliens who populated the spacecraft. [2]
However that is the gift Stephen brings us with his style of writing; The ability to make something ordinary extraordinary. [1]
Seeing the transformation of the townspeople worsen, the torture and manipulation of Bobbi’s dog Peter, and people being killed or worse when they pry too deeply into the strange events, Gardener eventually manipulates Bobbi into allowing him into the ship. [2]
Despite all of the evil the characters in his novels have faced (indeed, Pennywise the clown makes a brief appearance in a city sewer, which is odd as this tale is to have taken place 3 years after the events in IT… one thinks King’s editors add the dates of the events of his novels to coincide with the publication dates and not to correspond with when the novels were actually written. [4]
Sources:
[1] Amazon.com: The Tommyknockers eBook: Stephen King: Kindle Store
[2] The Tommyknockers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[3] Knocker (folklore) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[4] Amazon.com: The Tommyknockers (9780606041133): Stephen King …