Okay here we go Mr. John Smith. I know you have this strange ability to see into the future but did you see this review coming? Well, did ya? You feeling lucky John? Cause I sure as hell am after reading this. I'm not as sad to finish it as I was the dark tower series (because i poured so much emotion into finishing those damn books) but this was quite an enjoyable read; one I could really sink my teeth into when given a full day to do so. The development of John, his relationship with his family (and Sarah) and the progression of his ability/the perception of his ability by others, was the driving force of this novel. In fact, it was more entertaining than the ultimate climax of the text, which dealt with the question of "if you could stop Hitler before he rose to power would ya?" John felt an inordinate amount of pressure from his gift, which I thought serviced this book well. Rather than making him a superhero, his gift became more a question of mankind and morality. Just another lovely King book that makes him the legendary author he is.

We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do. Who else but Christopher Walken could play Johnny Smith in the highly praised David Cronenberg film?Johnny Smith is a rookie teacher with $8 in his pocket, just enough money to take his best girl Sarah, also a new teacher, to the local county fair. Sarah is coming off a couple of recent relationships that were exciting with aggressive, unpredictable men. Johnny is a step in a new direction, maybe a more responsible direction not driven as much by physical attraction as by mental stimulation. She has no idea who Johnny is, but that cant be helped because Johnny doesnt really know who he is either. We get our first inkling that something is different about Johnny as they are leaving the fair. The Wheel of Fortune guy running a crude version of the roulette wheel tempts Johnny over to try his luck with his last few remaining dollars. Johnny starts by betting on black or red and wins. As his confidence grows, he starts picking exact numbers and keeps winning. A crowd is drawn to this run of luck. But is it luck?He turns his meager money into three months pay. Sarah becomes sick from a bad hot dog. Johnny quits the game to take her home. Since they came in her car, he takes a taxi back to his apartment. There is an accident, and Johnny goes through the windshield.He doesnt wake up for four and half years. His mother, never a stable person before, becomes more frantically religious. She throws herself at every new religious concept, even going so far at one point to joining a commune who are waiting for alien space ships to come pick them up to take them to God. With each new religious venture she brings the Smiths closer to bankruptcy. Religious zealotry is always so scary to me. They believe it, whatever it is, so fervently that any rational thought is wrestled to the ground and pinned by unquestioning faith. When Johnny comes out of his coma, he has the ability/curse of being able to touch someone or something owned by that person (psychometry) and see pieces of their future. Some key elements always seem to be missing, and those murky parts Johnny calls The Dead Zone. An ability like this? Well...it scares people.The nurses were lined up against the glass of the nurses station, staring at him. Suddenly they reminded him of crows on a telephone line, crows staring down at something bright and shiny, something to be pecked at and pulled apart.That does seem to be our nature to fear what we dont understand, quickly followed by the need to destroy what we fear. Anyone different, whether they have a unconventional sexual orientation or a disfigurement or just see the world differently, will feel the constant pressure to conform or...disappear. It is only logical of course that if Johnny knows about a fire before it happens that he must have been involved in setting that fire. The possibility of clairvoyance is too unique, too extraordinary for others to comprehend. Johnny is ridiculed, exposed as a charlatan. He is fine with that. It might mean he has a chance to find a normal life. He is doing well until a small town Sheriff cant catch the Raincoat Serial Killer. A handshake can be so revealing. And yes that is Martin Sheen playing Greg Stillson.As Johnny is finding himself back in the spotlight, there is another man, a Bible salesman by the name of Greg Stillson, who is starting to have big thoughts, dreams of more power than any lunatic should ever have. Stephen King is setting up a collision course between the two men, both unusual, both psychotic, but on opposite sides of the same scale. When Johnny shakes Stillsons hand, he sees a future that can not be allowed to happen. If you could build a time machine and go back to 1932 and kill Adolf Hitler, would you do it? It seems logical that you would save millions of lives, which I cant even calculate the number of descendants of those saved lives. The implications of lives that never existed in our timeline suddenly being thrust into our era are staggering. The reshuffling of the DNA deck is mind boggling. On a micro level it could change your own personal history significantly. Your grandfather might marry someone different or your mother might meet someone before your father that didnt exist before. You could wink out of existence before you can even fire up the time machine to return to 2015. Knowing the historical results of Hitler being alive, even though there is always the risk that someway, somehow by altering history you might make our present worse, I would still have to vote that I would gladly assassinate Hitler. On top of being a monster, Adolf was also monstrously annoying. I might even take a short detour and take out Joseph Stalin as well. Im already rolling the dice, so why not cast them out there one more time? Id chalk up another couple of million lives saved. Alter another gazillion time lines of history. Good lord, the enormity of it and the logic and the illogicalness of it all start to circle back around until it becomes very easy to talk oneself out of such a risky decision. Nobody wants to destroy the world while trying to save it. Johnny goes through the same thought processes. Logically, he should find a way to stop Stillson, but there is the nagging worry that he could just make things worse. This is not a horror book. It is a psychological thriller written by a writer near the top of his game. While working in the book business, I have always puzzled over why Stephen King was read by so many people. Of course, then I didnt read him. I didnt need to read him because there were already plenty of people queuing up to buy and read his next book. My job, of course, was to read people like Cormac McCarthy or Alan Furst, or writers like John Williams and try to bring them to a wider audience. I have tried a couple of newer King offerings, but have found them to be bloated, overwritten, and ponderous. I read The Shining, fairly recently, and realized that the Kings gold is in the dusty trunks of his early writings. The book spawned a movie, which spawned a popular TV show starring Anthony Michael Hall.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. This book also fits very nicely into my 1970s nostalgic tour of horror books even though technically I cant call this horror. Here are the other books that I've read on this quest. The Exorcist ReviewThe Shining ReviewJaws ReviewThe Omen ReviewHarvest Home ReviewIf you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

For Goodreads: 2.5 stars.I think I dislike this book a little more every time I read it. The Dead Zone is, for the most part, boring setups that lead to lackluster climaxes, if they can be called climaxes at all. Maybe "payoffs" would be a better word... But I think what I dislike the most about this book is all the political mumbo jumbo. I simply don't give a shit about politics, and this book is full of it. If Johnny Smith isn't thinking about how shitty he has it, he's ruminating on the political climate. This is purely subjective, of course, because if you dig your stories dredged in government, battered in legislature, and fried in policy then this book is definitely for you. Honestly, The Dead Zone never had a chance. Not this time around at least. Especially coming off my reread of King's exceptional third outing, The Shining. (In case you're wondering, I skipped The Stand because I just reread it last year.) I suppose The Dead Zone is a perfect example of that old saying: They can't all be winners. King came out the gate with five fantastic novels. He was bound to lay a stinker on the world eventually.I do enjoy the first 140 or so pages of this book, but everything's downhill from there. King had some terrific characters, but it seems as if he didn't really know what do with them once they were established. It's funny, because the book feels more like a collection of interconnected short stories than it does a novel.Notes on the film and television adaptations: I love Christopher Walken. He's one of my favorite actors. But I've never been able to finish the film adaptation of this book. It bores me to sleep every time. Shit's better than L-tryptophan, son! And the TV series with that dude from Weird Science? All I saw of that were the commercials. I suppose this story just doesn't pique my interest. I do believe this is the final time I'm reading this one. Maybe...Notable names:Jerusalem's Lot (Obvious)Gendron (used throughout the King-verse)Richard Dees (the despicable main character of King's short story "The Night Flier")Inside View (a gossip rag like The Enquirer that shows up quite bit inside the King-verse. The aforementioned Richard Dees is a headhunter for said magazine.)Carrie (mentioned as a book instead of a person)And, of course, Castle Rock (No-brainer)In summation: One of my bottom five when it comes to King's books, right down there with Wizard and Glass and the absolutely terrible From a Buick 8. I'm definitely not looking forward to my reread of the latter.On to Firestarter, which I don't remember at all. I read this one in my teens and haven't read it since. I'm looking forward to it because I don't remember hating it and I dig the movie adaptation very much.

Este es justamente el Stephen King que no me gusta...Quienes me conocen saben que soy fan de este autor, muchos de sus libros son increíbles, lamentablemente este no es el caso. Sólo déjenme explicarles un poco de mi problema con este en particular.Para empezar leemos bien claro en la sinopsis que se trata de un tipo que comienza a tener unas especies de visiones acerca del futuro luego de salir de un coma y que pronto descubre que debe asesinar a alguien que provocará una especie de fin de mundo.Stephen king quiso hacer de esta historia una especie de crónica, profundizando en los detalles para mi superfluos de la historia, quiero decir, cae en el coma en un tercio del libro, su primera vision fue mas adelante de la mitad y cuando comienza la acción para matar al señor que va a destruir el mundo es en las ultimas 100 páginas... Es decir tío ¿¡en serio!?Sí caí en leer este libro es precisamente por lo emocionante que sonaba esa sinopsis, siendo SK uno espera que vaya a por ello y nos brinde una de sus historias crudas y desgarradoras. Pero no es este el caso. Además los bajones y subidones de esta historia son francamente aburridos, justo cuando comienza a ponerse bueno hay una interrupción que te corta toda la diversión. Lo siento, no disfrute mucho leyendo esto. Creo que esta faceta de un king que explora las consecuencias sociales de algún evento no es de mis preferidos. Algo similar me ocurrió con 22/11/63.2/5 por ser una historia con un potencial increíble que no llegó a ser mucho.

Fantastic book. Sixth sense. Teacher in an accident. Visions of the future. Great film too starring Christopher Walken.Loved the scene in the film when Christopher Walken is talking to Herbert Lom, his doctor.He asks him, being that he is a Jew, if he could go back in time and get close to Adolf Hitler...Would he kill him?Herbert Lom replies that he is a doctor and his job is to save lives...And finished by saying he would kill the son of a bitch! Classic Stephen King! Imagine if you could go back in time like, 11:22:63 his other book, and take out a despot, or foil an assassination. The repercussions today would be...Anyhow, the world would be a different place today. Even just one simple thing, changed in the past would have such an impact today. Ripples in the pond of time.