The Dead Zone

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The Dead Zone is more of a drama than a horror, with some science fiction elements thrown in, but what is truly terrifying are the parallels that can be drawn between Greg Stillson, the politician that Johnny forsees causing a nuclear war, and Donald Trump. The similarities are so eerie! King MUST have some some Johnny Smith powers of this own! I ended up loving Johnny Smith by the end and all the characters were fantastic, even the ones that you hated. The character of George Bannerman also appears in the novel Cujo, and the short story The Body. He is briefly mentioned in a newspaper article in the novella Gwendy's Button Box.

King even made a playful reference to his book Carrie in this novel which made me laugh-out-loud. It was a bit of tongue in cheek referring to his own celebrity. I did enjoy the story of Jonny Smith, he is a character that is easy to invest everything in but my problem lay with the bad guys. They simply weren’t in the story enough to get any feel for, There was a chapter about the killer early on and then nothing more until he was identified, which was a little too easy, there should have been more airtime devoted to the killer to ramp up the tension, no reveal but more focus around his acts themselves.

Wikipedia citation

a b c d e f g Lucas, Tim (December 1983 – January 1984). "The Dead Zone". Cinefantastique. 14 (2): 24–35.

Published 32 years apart, 11/22/63—which does have a really simple hook: time travel to save JFK!—and The Dead Zone are like fraternal twins. Both involve political assassinations. One has a psychic who can see the future; the other has a time-traveller from the future. John needs to prevent a fictional disaster; Jake needs to change a real historical event. John aims to preserve our reality; Jake attempts to change it. It’s killing Hitler versus… saving JFK. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. Vera, presuming that God doesn’t desire her to take medication for her elevated blood pressure, suffers a huge stroke after viewing Johnny on the information. Dr. Weizak pushes Johnny to a different hospital to see his mommy. Sarah visits Johnny at the hospital, and they have a debate about how Sarah’s been the previous five decades. Soon afterwards, Johnny leaves the hospital and goes to live with his dad. Having multiple plots building on each other was a little awkward at times. I finished one storyline and moved on to the next section, and this time Johnny has landed a new job of living somewhere else, time jumps forward a bit, and those precious events are only mentioned a few times, replaced by something even bigger this time. Johnny’s gotta take his powers to the next level. Time to ditch the minor leagues and show the majors what you can do for once.Next up on my Stephen King quest is The Dead Zone, again it’s not a review as such but a collection of my thoughts on the book. So there may well be spoilers but I think pretty much everyone has read it a long time ago anyway, all except me.