Worst of Stephen King - Worst books or stories

[UnsufficentBoobage]

'The Dreamers' but not only was it highly derivative of "Revival" as noted by @catsandsoup yet without any cool backstory as to why the mad scientist became so, it was SUCH badly done Lovecraft Lite that I can't believe King was willing to publish it as it stood. It even took the 'deathbag' imagery from Insomnia and threw it in for some reason

Can you spoil the plot for me?

 

[The Un-Clit]

Can you spoil the plot for me?

Sure.

Spoiler: Plot summary of 'The Dreamers'

Stenographer is hired by mad scientist to manually record everything that happens in his experiments with drugging people and making them concentrate on a specific image to try and pierce 'the reality under dreams'. Why mad scientist is willing to use automated Polaroid cameras but not audio recording (this is set in the 70s during 'nam. Steno is a vet.) is not made clear. Anyway things get progressively wierder, people come back with stranger stories/bad aftereffects happen, someone dies, mad drugs himself and dreams while steno is away dealing with corpse, triggers the elder gods or something, stenographer burns the place down, feels the demons are waiting for him in dreams, the end.

It was really disappointingly trite. I expected more.

 

[UnsufficentBoobage]

It was really disappointingly trite. I expected more.

Thanks. Sounds like all SCPs ever)

 

[Illumithotty]

Of the remaining stories, I found a LOT of them very derivative of things he's done before.

That's the feeling I had throughout. If this book had been 'an anthology of up and coming authors writing in the style of Stephen King' it would've fit perfectly. Everything that wasn't directly derivative just wasn't very interesting, and more and more it's just really noticeable to me that Stephen King is desperately treading water to stay relevant with his deification of niggers and covid/Trump obsessions.

And even the story I actually enjoyed, about the random guy having a dream that gets him suspected of murder, had an ending that knocked the goodwill I was feeling away. Whole point of the story - guy has that one singular psychic vision which he feels a moral imperative to follow up on, but leads him into a 'process is the punishment' hell of suspicion. So ending it with a second vision that's instantly believed felt too much like an R.L. Stine kind of twist.

 

[LateNightMuffin]

I just finished listening to Blood and Smoke, and it was one of the worst things I've heard/read by Stephen King, and one of the worst things I've heard/read. Nothing about the three stories rang true, the dialog was shit, the stories were completely unsurprising in how they played out. Just dreadful.

 

[The Un-Clit]

I just finished listening to Blood and Smoke, and it was one of the worst things I've heard/read by Stephen King, and one of the worst things I've heard/read. Nothing about the three stories rang true, the dialog was shit, the stories were completely unsurprising in how they played out. Just dreadful.

Thanks for the feedback! I hope more King fans and critics speak up on their fave/least fave things.

I've never been a big fan of audiobooks finding my imagination usually sounds alot better then the voices of most of the readover people, plus I read very quickly and audiobooks are fucking SLOW so I've never listened to this collection, or any King audiobooks to be honest.

The 3 stories chosen seem a strange lot to do audiobooks of. 1408 is highly visual and I believe you really need to actually read it to get the spookieness, however I would be interested in what King imagined the voices on the phone (This is six! we've killed all of your friends!) actually sound like. Same with Lunch at the Gotham Cafe in what the insane chef's "EEEEEEEEE!!!!!" really sounded like to King, but otherwise a boring choice for an audiobook I would think. The last story, In the Death Room was kinda weak as a short story and I can't see it any better as an audiobook.

 

[007Eleven]

The one that takes place in Maine.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

The one that takes place in Maine.

Maine is our Florida.

 

[LateNightMuffin]

I've never been a big fan of audiobooks finding my imagination usually sounds alot better then the voices of most of the readover people, plus I read very quickly and audiobooks are fucking SLOW so I've never listened to this collection, or any King audiobooks to be honest.

Thank you for that. I much prefer reading to listening to books, but I've gotten addicted to listening to audiobooks in the car. It's way better, IMHO, than whatever shit happens to be on the radio.

King wasn't a horrible reader, for the most part, but it's funny and interesting that you highlighted those specific voices (the waiter and the voice on the phone). In both of those cases the fiction was broken for me, as I thought how ridiculous King's versions of those voices sounded, and how it would have been better if he had an actor. The Eeeeee of the waiter made me honestly think of an autist Reeeeeing. And the telephone voice was bad, but in a way I can't really describe. And I thought the Death Room was the best of the three stories by far.

Happy reading!

 

[std::string]

I've never been a big fan of audiobooks finding my imagination usually sounds alot better then the voices of most of the readover people, plus I read very quickly and audiobooks are fucking SLOW so I've never listened to this collection, or any King audiobooks to be honest.

I can't stand audiobooks for the same reason.

At the same time, I'd fucking love to hear King reading It. Or at least how far he got before he decided this whole thing was a bad idea. Probably the Tower of Power.

 

[Angry Mug]

I've only ever read The Langoliers and The Mist. Mist was alright, Langoliers was hilarious and both had really bad endings.

I'm really not willing to read any more of the guys stuff.

 

[Elderly beef taco]

I've read pretty much all of King's work, there are some pretty good books in there but it's best to take breaks between his work since it tends to blend together.

Tommyknockers is just It, but with a lousy drunkard writer as a main character. By far my least favorite of his works.

 

[MajinGoku]

The man who wrote an orgy scene with children should not be in a place to act morally superior to anyone

 

[The Un-Clit]

The man who wrote an orgy scene with children should not be in a place to act morally superior to anyone

Bro, while it was a cocaine-and-liquor soaked piece of garbage that didn't at all need to be in the book, it was also 40 years ago. Can't people ever grow beyond their mistakes?

 

[Ewan McGregor]

Bro, while it was a cocaine-and-liquor soaked piece of garbage that didn't at all need to be in the book, it was also 40 years ago. Can't people ever grow beyond their mistakes?

Yeah, but he, to this day, does defend that scene, doesn't he?

I don't know. Sexual attitudes 40 years old regarding the underage were different, especially if you were a hippy. I can understand defending it as "It made sense at the time", but in an "I'd do it again" way, I dunno.

 

[MajinGoku]

Bro, while it was a cocaine-and-liquor soaked piece of garbage that didn't at all need to be in the book, it was also 40 years ago. Can't people ever grow beyond their mistakes?

The left are the same type of people to hold you by your mistakes for the rest of your life

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Bro, while it was a cocaine-and-liquor soaked piece of garbage that didn't at all need to be in the book, it was also 40 years ago. Can't people ever grow beyond their mistakes?

The only people who pretend to care about that part of IT today are people making up a controversy because they don't like Stephen King's political beliefs. That's it and anybody who says otherwise is lying. If he was ideologically acceptable to them this would never be mentioned at all.

Nobody remotely cared about this scene back when the novel came out or when it was made into a TV series or film. Is it bizarre? Sure. Is it pornographic or obscene? No, I can't say it is. King isn't a pedophile or a child molester.

Fake moral crusaders are people I particularly dislike.

 

[Mola Ram]

Is it bizarre? Sure. Is it pornographic or obscene? No, I can't say it is.

It is, in fact, both of those things.

Look: I have defended the scene from a mechanical point of view, and suggested that it's so critical to the plot that the "It" of the title is not referring to the monster at all, but to sex and the transition from childhood to adulthood via sexual awareness. None of this excuses the gross excesses of the scene or the totally unnecessary details (did we need to know Ben has the biggest dick?) or King, as is so typical of his writing, falling into hammer-on-the head literalism because he's usually incapable of a more deft touch. Add to this the fact he was snorting the GDP of a South American country and we can assume he was, optimistically, not entirely in his right mind when he wrote this. By the 1980s King was already fairly immune to editors; otherwise, there is no way this doesn't get cut. King was and is not Samuel Delany writing Hogg specifically to mess with the normies; he was a potboiler, airport bookstore stalwart who appealed to one of the biggest swaths of average readers in all of American literature. Killing a kid in Cujo was shocking; child sex scenes are something altogether different. Some of the most open-minded, apolitical horror fans I know were appalled by that scene. Not disturbed, not unsettled, not sent to a dark place to reflect on the vagaries of human nature ... just fucking grossed out. Because it is a gross, utterly wrongheaded scene.

Nobody remotely cared about this scene back when the novel came out or when it was made into a TV series or film.

No one has been insane enough to adapt this scene into tv or film, and when news broke of a new adaptation there were plenty of articles talking about "that unfilmable scene" near the climax.

Do people who hate King's politics and his Twitter bloviating opportunistically attack him with this scene? Sure. Is King a pedophile? Probably not, though given the multiple occasions he's used child molestation as a plot point I would be unsurprised to find out he suffers from some trauma of his own. (And I only say "probably not" because you just never know with celebrities; I don't think anyone expected the dad from 7th Heaven aka Commander Decker from Star Trek to be a kiddy diddler.) Is the scene defensible? I think that's a much more difficult question to answer than you suggest.

 

[Ewan McGregor]

No one has been insane enough to adapt this scene into tv or film

I wish they did. It would create a lot of court drama like a 70s italian film.

And perhaps, raise a question or two about the filmmaking industry.

 

[KingFrampt]

Bro, while it was a cocaine-and-liquor soaked piece of garbage that didn't at all need to be in the book, it was also 40 years ago. Can't people ever grow beyond their mistakes?

Yeah, but he, to this day, does defend that scene, doesn't he?

I don't know. Sexual attitudes 40 years old regarding the underage were different, especially if you were a hippy. I can understand defending it as "It made sense at the time", but in an "I'd do it again" way, I dunno.

There is also a pretty graphic sex-dream that an 11 year old boy has in Needful Things in which I believe he gets a handjob from his teacher, like with IT it also includes descriptions of his penis

It was completely irrelevant to the story, never bought up again or meant anything deeper, I'd post the quote but I'm not sure Null would appreciate it too much

Needful Things was 30 years ago also though