I remember it from Firestarter, of course, and I noticed a passing reference to it in the expanded edition of The Stand (don’t think it was in the original edition). I had no idea it cropped up in other stories, though, until I saw this Wiki entry. Anyone remember - or can give me a page number for - the reference to it in The Mist? And are there any other references to it in King’s works that aren’t mentioned by Wiki?
I don’t remember The Shop being mentioned at all in The Stand. The CDC was behind the plan to stop Captain Trips and the last doctor alive was killed by Stu Redman after the entire rest of the facility died “offscreen.”
It was mentioned only once that I noticed, around the point when the government was resorting to killing reporters who were investigating the story of the superflu. As I said, I don’t think it was mentioned in the original edition.
IIRC, the top-secret gov’t puppet master (as played by Ed Harris in the miniseries) was in fact in charge of The Shop, though it wasn’t explicitly mentioned by name.
Billy wasn’t in charge of the Shop, he was in charge of Project Blue, which was a Fed program. There wasn’t any mention of the Shop that I can remember, but I’d have to double check my expanded edition.
Project Arrowhead, from the Mist, was another government program, but the Shop had scientists working up there.
The Shop isn’t mentioned directly in Dreamcatcher but the top-secret superagency that employs the insane Colonel Abraham Kurtz would seem to be that or something similar.
SS
King’s short story “Everything’s Eventual” from the eponymous collection of short stories from 2002, seems to be the most “paleologically” linked to Firesarter in subject, plot, and character. However, The Shop is never explicitly mentioned, instead there is a rather nebulous and mysterious “Trans Corporation” , that in my best and reasoned opinion, is really a corporate front for The Shop or somehow affiliated. However that is just my opinion, it is a King “Shop” story in every way except for actual mention of the shop.
Ok, apparently Trans Corp is actually a subsidiary of the Sombra Corporation which figures into the Dark Tower Storyline moreso than the Shop. Although, I’m sure in King’s Universe there could be a connection between Sombra and the Shop either retconned or logically made… eventually evrything comes together.
In the film version of “Low Men in Yellow Coats” called “Hearts in Atlantis”… the LMYC are not the phantasmagorical ratheded can-toi on this plane… They are instead faceless, conspiratorial, fascist, Government Agents of Brautigan’s and America’s timeline riding late 50’s McCarthyism Red Scare headlong into Vietnam. They are perhaps another and chronologically earlier embodiement of The Shop.
Dean Koontz also has a version he uses, but can’t remember exactly what he calls it. And I seem to remember it being in “The Mist” first also. And no, the Shop wasn’t mentioned in “The Stand” in the original or in the expanded version. Project Blue was military and not affiliated, at least not in the book.