Books by Stephen King Of course. It's hard to choose the best one, since the best of his works do different things.
1. The Dead Zone is also about pure evil, and our responsibility to fight it. The hero, Johnny, has an accident that should have killed him. Instead, it puts him into a prolonged coma. When he wakes up from it, he has psi abilities--he can see the future, and he can read a people's past by touching them or their belongings. Confronted with a politician whose future capability for evil he can see clearly, Johnny has no choice but to prevent this future.
2. The Stand is especially interesting in that, after having a military virus escape and wipe out most of the population, he shows society rebuilding itself. One community rebuilds along democratic lines (though King makes it clear that without determined and somewhat autocratic leadership, democratic institutions would not survive); the other society is driven by Randall Flagg--either the devil or his close kin. Inevitably, the society of evil feels compelled wipe out the democracy, and the democracy has to protect itself. The Stand contains some of King's most interesting characters, including the Trashcan Man, Randall Flagg, and Glenn, the sociologist/philosopher (who clearly is spouting Stephen King's own ideas). Critics scoff at the idea that King has anything serious to say, but this book presents a convincing argument that there are a few genuinely good people, a few genuinely evil people (or hideously damaged people), but the great majority of the human race is morally neutral, ready to go either direction depending on their surroundings.
3. It: Children are the chosen victims of a timeless monster, but they are also the only people capable of seeing and understanding the threat. King is one of those rare people who has never forgotten what it feels like to be a child. He understands more than most that children experience present reality in a way that adults, protected by their ideas of how the world is supposed to be, cannot; confronted by the same evil the children see, the adults deny the evidence of their senses. This means that the children must deal with an evil far too great for them, alone. And even then, they only thwart the evil--it's still there, lurking, so that many years later, they must go back and kill the monster forever. The children are well-drawn characters, each of them outcast and bullied (another of King's standard themes is how adults choose to ignore the bullying that makes children's lives miserable).
1. The Dead Zone is also about pure evil, and our responsibility to fight it. The hero, Johnny, has an accident that should have killed him. Instead, it puts him into a prolonged coma. When he wakes up from it, he has psi abilities--he can see the future, and he can read a people's past by touching them or their belongings. Confronted with a politician whose future capability for evil he can see clearly, Johnny has no choice but to prevent this future.
2. The Stand is especially interesting in that, after having a military virus escape and wipe out most of the population, he shows society rebuilding itself. One community rebuilds along democratic lines (though King makes it clear that without determined and somewhat autocratic leadership, democratic institutions would not survive); the other society is driven by Randall Flagg--either the devil or his close kin. Inevitably, the society of evil feels compelled wipe out the democracy, and the democracy has to protect itself. The Stand contains some of King's most interesting characters, including the Trashcan Man, Randall Flagg, and Glenn, the sociologist/philosopher (who clearly is spouting Stephen King's own ideas). Critics scoff at the idea that King has anything serious to say, but this book presents a convincing argument that there are a few genuinely good people, a few genuinely evil people (or hideously damaged people), but the great majority of the human race is morally neutral, ready to go either direction depending on their surroundings.
3. It: Children are the chosen victims of a timeless monster, but they are also the only people capable of seeing and understanding the threat. King is one of those rare people who has never forgotten what it feels like to be a child. He understands more than most that children experience present reality in a way that adults, protected by their ideas of how the world is supposed to be, cannot; confronted by the same evil the children see, the adults deny the evidence of their senses. This means that the children must deal with an evil far too great for them, alone. And even then, they only thwart the evil--it's still there, lurking, so that many years later, they must go back and kill the monster forever. The children are well-drawn characters, each of them outcast and bullied (another of King's standard themes is how adults choose to ignore the bullying that makes children's lives miserable).
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