Best Horror Author

[erislover]

There are three authors that I think of when I think of "horror." Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Dean Koontz. Yeah, we could count Poe and Lovecraft. I have no objections there, just that neither of them ever wrote anything that actually scared me.

So, of horror authors, who has really got the nack? My offer is King, but that judgement is based on quantity. The Shining's animal bushes really got to me when I read about them. Desperation? The whole frigging book got to me. Pet Semetary? Ugh, I see Gage's shadow every time I read it (which is a total of four times now).

As far as Barker goes, I include him because many consider him to be a horror author, but I honestly can't say much ever scared me from him. There were a few chapters in Imajica which got to me (Dowd and his mites were just evil), and I can say that the Sisters from Weaveworld were pretty creepy, but nothing I've read of his ever left me with anything after the chapter ended.

Koontz? I honestly consider him to be pure pulp, though he also managed to work some creep into me. Darkfall's little rat things seriously work me over. The baddie from Hideaway left me slightly disturbed for some time. But, for that even, Koontz just doesn't leave me with the impression King did, and doesn't have the depth that Barker displays.

So, my vote goes whole-heartedly for King. He's the master in my book.

[Agrippina]

I'd have to go with King, too. The scariest King book, for me, was Misery. (SPOILERS AHEAD) Especially the end, where Paul arrives home to find Annie Wilkes there. Shudder. Or in Cujo when Tad sees the monster in his closet, and when Tad falls asleep the monster is watching him with "glowing amber eyes".

[Lionors]

Poe first, then the darker works of Bradbury (I know he's not classed as a horror author, but he's definitely got some work that I think falls into that genre), then King, then Lovecraft. I'm not rating them in order of quality of writing (it's apples, oranges and kiwifruit) or by quantity of what's been produced, but by how hard their works hit overall. (I will not, will NOT, be buried, thanks to Poe.)

I like some of Dean Koontz's stuff, but what I liked most wasn't really horror, in my book (Lightning and Watchers).

I'm sure someone will nominate Thomas Harris eventually, although he's almost too much for me.

[Ukulele Ike]

Maurice Level. Possibly David M. Keller.

But then I've always ben a sucker for [i]contes cruels.

[elucidator]

Sartre. Hands down.

[Monkeypants]

Yeah, that dwarf rolling his booger in La Nausee was a little creepy.

But has anyone ever read "Book of the Dead", a collection of short stories by various horror authors, all dealing with zombies? It was interesting to see the different takes.

[erislover]

Ike, care to drop a few titles to check out?

elucidator, are we talking about the French existentialist there? i wasn't aware he dabbled in anything that would be considered horror, unless you are just joking about trying to wade through his philosophic writings...

Lion, I haven't read much of Bradbury, except for 451 and "The Illustrated Man" short stories (which were awesome). Interesting.

[Mortish]

>has anyone ever read "Book of the Dead", a collection of short stories by various horror authors, all dealing with zombies? It was interesting to see the different takes.

I just finished reading that book tonight.

I enjoyed most of it, but found that by halfway into the book I was really tired of reading the details of each author's zombie descriptions (like physical appearance and behaviour)just because they were essentially the same from story to story.

[mangeorge]

Robert McCammon. A southern writer. He's not writing horror any longer, but he did a couple of pretty good ones. Mine and Stinger come to mind. He also wrote a good collection of short stories called Blue World. I think that was it, anyway. Good stuff.
Peace,
mangeorge

[Freudian Slit]

Stephen King is one of my favorites, but it's so hard to choose just one, you know? Others include: Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty, Roald Dahl (yes, those were horrifying tales), Daphne DuMaurier (if we're counting suspense as horror too), and Robert Bloch. I'm leaving some off the list, but when it comes down to horror, I can never choose just one.

SK is always the first who comes to mind because he was the first horror writer I ever read. Nostalgia, you know? Pet Sem is the scariest, IMHO, though Apt Pupil was disturbing and Christine was also a good one. Still, Pet Sem has that creepy aspect to it.

[mangeorge]

Oh yeah, and Cujo. Great story. The movie really sucked, though. They entirely omitted the dog's POV, which I thought was a highlight of the story.
In fact, the only movie based on a king novel I really liked was Misery. Christine was nothing more than an exercise in special effects. No bones, as it were. The novel was good. IMO anyway.
Peace,
mangeorge

[Lionors]

Eris, the stories of Bradbury's I'm thinking of are "The Small Assassin" and "Skeleton". ("The Veldt" wins an honorable mention.) <cringe> It's not that he's that graphic in his descriptions -- it's just that he brings up concepts that just kind of take up residence in the bottom of my mind and lurk there. I'm sure it's more properly classed as dark fantasy than horror, technically speaking. You can get all three stories, though, in The Vintage Bradbury. I'm sure he's got them in other anthologies, too.

King does the same thing to me on occasion -- I couldn't eat or prepare meat for a good month after I read "The Survivor Type". And I have NEVER been able to eat ladyfingers again.

I just had to remember that story the day before we do a barbecue, too, didn't I? Blerrrrgh...

[Peta Tzunami]

Of those authors I've read, I'd say that Stephen King and Thomas Harris are the upper most on the list.

The Dark Half scared the p'jeebees outta me and at age 22 or so, I slept with the lights on...also, his short story The Mist, most disturbing.

Of course, you all remember Thomas Harris from such books (and subsequent movies as) Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon (which became "Manhunter" on the screen).

I think the most disturbing aspects of horror are not merely allowing you to imagine awful things while you read, but drawing you into the characters (either as victims or in the other scary place, as somehow empathizing with the evil) and playing on the most common or base fears.

Though I haven't read the book and can only judge my opinion based on the mini-series, It is a prime example of that as "It" cues its attacks off of the characters' greatest fears--even as adults when the fears of childhood are either repressed or replaced with completely new and more "practical" fears (i.e. fear of the dark replaced by fear of winding up alone or fear of the boogie man replaced by fear of failure in business or marriage).

Another issue for me, personally, and am not nearly so effected by such authors as Poe, who are certainly masters in their own rights, is the fact that for me a lot of horror has to do with the vividly imagined. While Poe certainly weaves some wonderful words into disturbing tales, his language is such that the imagery--for me at least--is secondary and thus less impactful. I am impressed by his language and that seems to override the fear factor...

Again, that's not to say he wasn't a master at what he did and couldn't be consider "the best" nor to imply that more eloquent or poetic language shouldn't be a part of the genre, but since this is a genuinely subjective matter, I have to say for me, the contemporaries push my fear and horror buttons a bit more.

Just my 2-cents anyway...

[Labdad]

I don't know about the "best," but I can tell you what book scared me the most: Ghost Story by Peter Straub. How scared? I read the final third of the book one sunny day at the beach. The weather was perfect, the waves were gently lapping at the shore, and I was shivering reading about that cold snowy night in the movie theater!

[gobear]

I really liked John Skipp and Craig Spector's string of 80s novels, like The Light at the End, about a vampire hunting victims in the New York Subway system, and The Cleanup, about a man who finds out that getting wishes granted costs a lot more than he thought. I wonder whatever happened to them.

I also gotta speak up for the Master, H.P. Lovecraft. While his writing style tended to overuse the vocabulary set, e.g., "the rugose, slimy skin of the eldritch beast," his creation of the Elder Gods mythos is, IMHO, the single greatest contribution to 20th century horror fiction and a bottomless well of inspiration for other writers.

I also gotta give a shout out to Robert Bloch, an unjustly neglected horror writer. His short stories, like "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," have the swift, steely impact of a stiletto in the heart.

Kim Newman is also a terrific horror writer. His alternate history novels in which historical and literary figures coexist in an England where Dracula killed Van Helsing, like Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron, are absorbing reads. They also give the discerning reader a bit of an ego boost when one spots the literary allusions.

Dan Simmons seems to have left the horror genre behind, but he has written at least two genuinely scary novels: Song of Kali and Carrion Comfort.

I also dig James Herbert's novels, like The Spear, The Rats[/i], and The Fog. He is a British writer whose books have an atmosphere of dark knowledge and Things Better Left Alone. Great, gory fun!

[TV time]

Lovecraft---In my mind his work defines the genre.

[Infovore]

One of my favorite horror authors is Graham Masterton. He's a British author whose work is a bit hard to find in the U.S. (a lot of his books are out of print) but if you like dark, extremely gory, creepy supernatural horror, he's a good one to read. Many of his books concern Native American mythos--probably his most famous in the U.S. is The Manitou, which was made into a B-movie in the '70s, but it's not one of his best or goriest. Its two sequels, Revenge of the Manitou and especially Burial are much better.

A warning for all those young under-the-covers horror readers, though: Masterton isn't an author for the kiddies. Aside from without doubt some of the most extreme gore I've ever seen in a novel, he also has some rather graphic sexual stuff going on, most of it as horrific as the blood-n-guts.

[carnivorousplant]

I was most frightened by THomas Harris' Red Dragon...stuff like that happens!

For art, Ray Bradbury's October Country.

Dean R. Koontz was a great science fiction author before he turned into a hack; Beastchild is outstanding.

[Ukulele Ike]

Originally posted by erislover
Ike, care to drop a few titles to check out?

Maurice Level's best work was collected into Tales of Mystery and Horror (U.S. edition 1919, completely out of print, but you can probably find it with a booksearch engine), and included such jewels as

"Blue Eyes," in which a grisette is forced into prostitution to be able to afford flowers for the grave of her recently-executed young lover, who had been falsely accused of a crime. After she does so, she learns that the man she slept with was the guy who pulled the lever on the guillotine. Imagaine the poor girl's feelings!

and "The Last Kiss," in which a blinded, disfigured man who has had acid thrown into his face by his jealous lover invites her to his home to forgive her. As she weepingly begs his pardon, struck by his humility, he (yeah, you guessed it) throws acid in HER face.

...she fell writhing to the floor. Already her face was nothing but a red rag.
Then he straightened himself, stumbled over her, felt about the wall to find the switch, and put out the light. and round them, as in them, was a great Darkness...

[Ukulele Ike]

David H. Keller is best known as the author of "The Thing in the Cellar," about a small boy who is terrified of the cellar door in his rural home, not without reason. It's in dozens of different horror anthologies.

He's done several other fine tales, such as "The Dead Woman," "The Doorbell," "Tiger Cat," and "The Revolt of the Pedestrians."

His work was collected in Tales from Underwood (1953) and The Folsom Flint (1967), both from Arkham House publishers.

[Ukulele Ike]

Folks interested in pursuing horror fiction beyond the bestselling likes of King and Koonz should check out both Arkham House and the Ash-Tree Press...the former was founded by August Derleth in 1939 to publish the works of Lovecraft in book form (and went on to publish many other excellent pulp-mag horror writers); the latter is a Canadian house that specializes in bringing back out-of-print horror writers...they specialize in literary ghost stories, as you can tell from the name, which was lifted from the M.R. James story.

http://www.arkhamhouse.com/

http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ashtreecurrent.html

[LateComer]

Repeat after me: Peter Straub, Peter Straub, Peter Straub.

and who can forget Ramsay Campbell and Richard Matheson.

Dean Koontz shouldn't be in this discussion.


I don't consider Thomas Harris horror, more like suspense. Though, I suppose for the sake of argument, one could call him a horror author.

Perhaps we should also define our terms. Are we talking about the "Greatest" or the "Best?" (We're certainly not speaking abou our "favorite) The best implies, to me, only quality of writing while the greatest means something more. To determine the greatest one has to weigh many factors such as popularity, longevity, influence, importance to the genre, etc. . .

When talking about the Greatest, I would have to say in no particular order Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft and E.A. Poe.

I don't think I have read enough to determine the best, though Straub tops my list at this moment. ("Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff" was sublime).

[elfkin477]

Favorites are hard for me to decide. It's a toss up between Stephen King and Peter Struab. I also really like Robert McCammon, John Saul, Dean Koontz(but am I the only one who hates his titles? I can never remember which is which!) and Clive Barker.

However, I would love to be pointed in the direction of more female horror authors. I sort of like Anne Rice, but I have trouble getting into a lot of her books (Clive Barker's too, actually) since she, like Frank Herbert, write what I mentally catolog as "really boring interesting stories" meaning once I've finished them- and waded through the semantics- I better appricate them. She's the only one that comes to mind though, and I'd like to see what other women write, too. I write horror,(abet not novels. yet)too, there has to be a lot of women who do.

[erislover]

Hmm, I never got into Ghost Story. I have only read "Shadowland" by him, which was actually superb. I will give him another try... I still own Ghost Story (actually, somehow I own two copies of it )

mangeorge, I also forgot about McCammon. I have three of his I haven't gotten around to readin yet (been on a non-fiction kick lately).

[Ukulele Ike]

Originally posted by elfkin477
I would love to be pointed in the direction of more female horror authors.

Try Joyce Carol Oates,
Cynthia Asquith,
C.L. Moore,
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman,
Marjorie Bowen,
Tanith Lee,
and James Tiptree, Jr.

(That last one is the nom de plume of Alice B. Sheldon)

[Weird_AL_Einstein]

F. Paul Wilson. Hands down. Read The Tomb. Or The Keep.

[xanakis]

Stephen King, of course, and also James Herbert.

Other King novels (apart from Misery) that were made into decent movies:

Stand By Me
Shawshank Redemption
Salems Lot

[elfkin477]

Originally posted by Ukulele Ike

Try Joyce Carol Oates,

Really? Besides that short story "Where are you going, where have you been" (? I think that's the title) I've never read anything by her that is remotely like horror. Maybe I've read the wrong novels... Thanks for the suggestions, though

[gobear]

[b]Ukelele Ike[/i], for shame, how can you enumerate a list of female horror writers and leave out Shirley Jackson, the author of "The Lottery" and "An Ordinary Day, With Peanuts" [/i] and the novels, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle?

[Gyrate]

Lovecraft is the only one whose books gave me nightmares after reading them, but one has to recognize the genius in E.A. Poe's writing despite the fact that the impact has faded somewhat with time and with the subsequent generations of writers who have built on his foundations.

I like Stephen King's writing (some of the time), but I can't say that I find it overly creepy. OTOH, while it's not really a horror book, William Burroughs' Naked Lunch really disturbed me.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

As one who DESPISES King, Barker, and other present day horror writers, I have to fly in the face of the OP, and name Poe and Lovecraft.

Since no movie or book has ever scared me, the "scary" potential matters very little to me. But I do know that if anyone ever manages to scare me, it won't be Stephen King, whom I find very unimaginative, and extremely boring.

[Lionors]

Out of curiosity, Zaphod, what of King's books have you read?

I haven't liked everything he's done, but neither 'unimaginative' nor 'boring' come to mind for me.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by Lionors
what of King's books have you read?

Christine was plaguarized from a Twilight Zone episode.

Salem's Lot violated the 'vampire rules' wantonly.

The Stand had that crummy line in it "And they never saw them again!"

I didn't make it through the Tommyknockers...something's going to happen soon, right?

He got so good (or bad) that he overwrote his editors and published the stuff they cut out.

But hey, what can I say? I read Robert E. Howard and H. Rider Haggard.

Enjoy.

[Lionors]

That's the reason I asked him, carnivorousplant. Not intending it as a flame, but because there are books of SK's that I don't like either, and if I were to judge off of trying to read that one or two of them, I probably wouldn't have thought terribly well of his works overall. Christine, Cujo and the Tommyknockers all fall into that category.

The Stand, however, remains my favorite of King's books for any number of reasons, which I won't bore everyone with. I think it preys on my mind because a germ-warfare doomsday scenario seems a whole heck of a lot more possible -- and frightening -- to me than a nuclear doomsday one.

Gore and grue does not equate to horror for me. (I've been told I'm weird because of that; so be it.) To me, horror lies in that concept that creeps into the back of my mind and will NOT go away, not even years later.

While I didn't like 'Salem's Lot' at all, I don't think there are any hard and fast vampire rules. Compare Stoker's Dracula to Yarbro's Saint-Germain, or Tanya Huff's Henry Fitzroy to Rice's Lestat or ones described in Matheson's I Am Legend.

And don't worry. I'm a gourmand, not a gourmet, when it comes to reading and always have been. If it fits my mood at the time, I'll read it. I have no shame.

[carnivorousplant]

Vampire rules: They are repeled by crosses and holy water, no matter the beliefs of the Good Guys.

Vampires cannot cross running water. (Dracula did sail, but he was in his native earth for the most part, he wasn't moving under his own power.

They must sleep in their native earth.

No reflection in a mirror, etc.

If you don't follow the rules, why write a vampire story? If the trains in your story can fly, they ain't trains.

THe ending of the stand annoyed me. I read all these damn pages for THIS?

[Ukulele Ike]

gobear: Hey, I didn't say it was a COMPREHENSIVE list.

In my defense, I wandered over to my "horror" shelf and picked our chick names at random...Shirl is over on my "literature" shelves. (See, I may talk a big game about genre fiction being the equal of literary fiction, but I gotta categorize my bookshelves just like everyone else, or I'll never find anything.)

elfkin477: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is Oates's most widely reprinted story in the horror arena. The novel Bellefleur (1980) is definitely dark fantasy, and the following short stories are some of those cited in the Joyce Carol Oates article in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror:

"Demons"
"The Assailant"
"The Children"
"Puzzle"
"By the River"
"Stalking"
"The Sacrifice"
"The Snowstorm"

[Lionors]

Er, not to further an unintended hijack here, but like I said, the "rules" do not apply to all authors' vampires. Since not all authors have their vampires come to be vampires in the same way, I can't see that any hard and fast set of rules would be able to apply to them. I figure it's fiction; if they manage to come up with something that sufficiently suspends my disbelief and makes sense, I'm satisfied. Why write a non-traditional vampire? Heck, why write a non-traditional anything else?

We'll have to agree to disagree on The Stand. I honestly rarely notice the number of pages of whatever I'm reading. If I like it, I'll read it; if not, even if it's only 30 pages long, it's not worth my time. What about the ending of The Stand annoyed you, though? Not wanting to shoot your opinions down, honest, just curious as to why.

To try to help keep a really good thread on track, though, I'll add "The Bingo Master" to Ike's list of Oates works that I've liked along that line (if he'll let me ), and add Ambrose Bierce to the general list. (BTW, someone please slap me for being senile enough for not immediately thinking of Shirley Jackson, too.)

[carnivorousplant]

Re The Stand: I was annoyed that I remember, evrybody died at the end. The junkyard guy and his bomb. THe efforts of the protagonists were for naught.
Anyway.

One of my favorite authors Fred Saberhagen played fast with the 'vampire rules' if not accually violating them as did Yarbrough. I expect vampires to behave according to rules described in folklore. Otherwise I don't enjoy the work. On the other hand, I enjoy James Bond's submarines that fly, so what the heck.

I guess my best comparison is from another genre; Whats-his-name, the guy who writes the Spenser mysteries in BGoston has the unmitigated gaul to think he can finish Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs. This baseball playing, ale bonding designer jean wearing Spenser is nothing like Phillip Marlowe and could never hope to be.
My point being that King shouldn't mess with Vampire legends any more than Robert B. Parker should mess with Marlowe.

[carnivorousplant]

Put a big ol' "In My Opinion" in front of and behind that last post.

Zaphod? Want to help me out here?

[Annie-Xmas]

Two great writers of horror short stories are George R.R. Martin (no, not the Beatles' producer) and the British Conrad Hill. The later wrote a great story called "The Grief Connection" which I could see as a Simpson's Halloween segment, except it would never get past the censors.

King does write good stories. My favorite horror book is his wife Tabitha's "Small World."

[gobear]

Re: the vampire rules. In Dracula, there is a scene where Jonathan Harker is back in London and recognizes a blood-rejuvenated Dracula on a street in broad daylight! I have no problem playing with the vampire legend. After all, invention and imagination are the hallmarks of fiction, are they not?

Re: The Stand. The ending was a literalDeus ex machina ending in which God's hand arises and blows up Las Vegas! King might as well have written (... and then they were all run over by a truck. The End)

I might also mention Ramsey Campbell, another British writer who has created some very unsettling stories.

[MsWhatsit]

I read one of Richard Matheson's stories. "Red". I will never read another. I will post the plot summary if anyone is curious, but rest assured that it was the most grotesque, horrifying, and off-putting story I have ever read, or ever care to.

I like many of Stephen King's books, although certainly not all. Ray Bradbury does absolutely nothing for me. I read "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and didn't find it to be particularly scary or horrifying. Or interesting, for that matter. I like Poe, but again, his stories haven't really managed to terrify me. Well, with the possible exception of "The Cask of Amontillado", because the notion of being walled into a dungeon forever really freaks me out.

Apart from that, I guess I'm just not really into horror stories. Blame Richard Matheson, if you must.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by gobear
Jonathan Harker...recognizes a blood-rejuvenated Dracula on a street in broad daylight!

Then the Master made a rule with which I was unfamiliar.

He has a problem with travel time to and from Castle Dracula, too. It takes a lot longer to go back.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by MsWhatsit
Blame Richard Matheson, if you must.

Hmmm...Matheson violated the Vampire Rules in "I Am Legend" from which they made the movie-which-has-almost-nothing-to-do-with-the-book "The Omega Man". It was a very good book. I'll have to change my mind...


I also thing it is interesting that Poe, who defined poetry as "the rhytmic creation of beauty" wrote "Annabel Lee".

[mangeorge]

Poe not scary? I guess. His stories are just dated, IMO.
The Telltale Heart scared the bejesus out of this 11 year old boy. And The Raven, read by a good reader (a nun ), was pretty unsettling.
I haven't read any of his works since I was a teenager, so maybe my tender youth influenced their effect on me.
I'm pretty much of the 'pop' category of reader, I guess. "I don't know art, but I know what I like" describes my tastes.
The Omen scared me. I had to take a couple of breaks while reading that one, and go for a walk in the real world. And I read it after seeing the movie. Too close to my catholic upbringing.
Peace,
mangeorge

[TV time]

Originally posted by Ukulele Ike

Try Joyce Carol Oates,
Cynthia Asquith,
C.L. Moore,
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman,
Marjorie Bowen,
Tanith Lee,
and James Tiptree, Jr.

(That last one is the nom de plume of Alice B. Sheldon)

Ike, Ike, Ike--you didn't even mention the mother of the horror story, Mary Shelley.

You know whose monster will come looking for you now, don't you?

[erislover]

carnivorous, to which "folklore" are you actually referring to? Cecil's research into vampire folklore led to a world where no two vampires are killed the same, why would you conclude that they live the same? As well, you accuse King of simultaneously creating his own brand of vampire then of being a hack? I would think using the tried-and-true is the bigger hack, but I'm being defensive too so there you have it

And I, too, had a problem with Tommyknockers. First attempt I think I got into about 250 pages of it, put my bookmark in, and promptly lost interest. About 6 months later I picked it back up right from the bookmark and found, much to my chagrin, that the book got terribly interesting. It still remains as a favorite of mine.

"It", however... I tried that sucker three times and never found it interesting.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by erislover
carnivorous, to which "folklore" are you actually referring to? Cecil's research into vampire folklore

As to Cecil's research, I can only refer to what a person said about Mr. Spock quoting Sherlock Holmes as an ancestor; Sherlock Holmes isn't real! Cecil's cool, but if he and Bram Stoker were drowning...

you accuse King of simultaneously creating his own brand of vampire then of being a hack?

I admit that after the mention of Richard Matheson the rules can be changed and still have a good story. I though I accused just Robert B. Parker of being a hack, but I'm easy, I'll include King too, if I didn't.
Hack I think is more like "they never saw them again", using a Twilight Zone plot and books longer than Charles Dickens that I think should have been novellas.

[Lionors]

I will again, have to respectfully agree to disagree about King and about The Stand in particular. I liked it. I will continue to like it. And I'll continue to re-read it. But then again, diversity is what makes the world interesting. I just won't buy a copy for you for Christmas.

However, in the interests of accuracy, there are actually two different endings to The Stand: the original version ends differently than the uncut version put out years later. (In fact, there were a number of other things which King changed before the release of the uncut version in an attempt to update it.) If I have a beef with the book at all, it's that I would have preferred to have the uncut version without the updated cultural references. However, the uncut version did contain several scenes that made some of the references I had thought were unclear in the original publication make more sense.

As far as the endings...SPOILERS BELOW....








First, The Stand did not end with the destruction of Las Vegas. There was a considerable amount that went on after that; granted, it was definitely the denouement, but there was wrap-up there. Secondly, the uncut version ended with Flagg reappearing elsewhere in the world, without memory (and by the way, if you read Eyes of the Dragon, you'll see Flagg pops up there, too, as the evil magician of the kingdom of Delain. Also, if you read Eyes, King goes into more detail about what Flagg really is.) The original version ended with Stu thinking about what had transpired, hoping their children and their children's children would learn from their mistakes but also wondering if human nature was such that it would ever be so. He asks Fran about it, and her response is, "I don't know," which clearly doesn't please her. Not a great answer...but then again, it's a worthwhile question. Also the one that disturbs me the most about humanity in general, but I won't go there.

Carnivorousplant, the reason I go through all this is that you seemed to take exception to the line 'they never saw them again', and was wondering if by chance you were thinking of a different King book. Hope it helps.

[carnivorousplant]

It is said of a group going off into the desert for some reason; but it is a trick, for they survive and the people staying there perish! Oh, how clever!

Sorry.

Tha's the kind of stuff I find irritating.

I'd like something by Robert E. Howard for Hanukkah, thank ou very much.