The Science of Stephen King: From Carrie to Cell, the Terrifying Truth Behind the Horror Master's Fiction

by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg

(Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2007)
Trade Paperback, 264 Pages, Nonfiction

ISBN: 9780471782476, US$15.95

ABCD Rating: DITCH

From the Cover: Human characters, not science, are the heart of King’s fiction, but Gresh and Weinberg (The Science of James Bond) use these tales as a jumping-off point in their latest pop-sci tie-in. In Carrie, Firestarter and The Dead Zone, mayhem arises from the use of psychic abilities, so the authors explore not only the history of such powers in fiction, but also human consciousness and modern neuroscience. The killer vehicles of King’s story “Trucks” are compared to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, rounded out with a short discussion of artificial intelligence. Dreamcatcher and The Tommyknockers lead to a look at the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere, from flying-saucer paranoia to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Discussion of The Stand includes a look at fictional and real plagues, while the parallel worlds and alternate histories at the heart of The Dark Tower bring up theoretical physics from relativity to wormholes.

My Review: Even after reading Gresh and Weinberg’s Why Did it Have to be Snakes?: From Science to the Supernatural, the Many Mysteries of Indiana Jones, and being generally disappointed by what was on the page there, I had high hopes for this book (after all, I do like to consider myself a budding Stephen King scholar and have written a handful of papers on King and his books). They were not met.

I won’t waste too much of your time with this book, but suffice it to know that it had many of the problems that the Indiana Jones book did (Wikipedia as a source, unfocused information dump, random information, etc.) but even more than that … if you cannot even get the basic details of the plots of King’s novels correct, how in the name of Holy Hell do you expect me to believe that you have gotten the basic details of string theory, or bird flu pandemics, or artificial intelligence correct?

And we’re not talking about the details of an obscure short story or novel like “My Pretty Pony” or Gerald’s Game … I’m talking about the big ones: IT, Dreamcatcher, The Talisman and The Stand, to name just a few of the novels discussed wherein pretty key details of the books are presented by Gresh and Weinberg … AND ARE COMPLETELY WRONG! I have to wonder if they have actually read the books in preparation for writing The Science of Stephen King, or if they just Wiki-ed the books. It is especially bad when the error they make invalidates the entire point they are making. For example, in Gresh and Weinberg’s discussion of obsession and evil, they bring up IT and say “They [The Losers’ Club] wound the monster but must return years later as adults to kill It. During the interim years, from the time they are children fighting bullies to adulthood, they remain afraid of and obsessed with It” (229). What’s wrong with those sentences, you ask? Just the simple fact that the kids from the Losers’ Club do not remain “afraid of and obsessed with It” in the “interim years” between defeating Pennywise in 1958 and coming back in 1985, and since they don’t (with the exception of Mike Hanlon, the Losers’ completely forget Pennywise and the climactic events of their childhood in relation to Pennywise) these eight words completely undermine and undo the point Gresh and Weinberg about obsession and fear and evil. It is sloppy research and writing.

When I first started this book I thought, You know, I think I’m going to put this on my wish list and buy in the future, it’d be a nice book to have on the shelf as a reference. Now, after having slogged through all 264 pages … not so much. This is not to say that some of the information is not interesting, in fact if (and that is a big IF) Gresh and Weinberg have it right, I now get Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and have a general working knowledge of what Unified Field Theory and String Theory are. However, if Gresh and Weinberg can’t be trusted to get the small stuff right (Jonesy does not shoot the infected hunter in the beginning of Dreamcatcher) how can I trust them with the big stuff like Unified Field Theory or String Theory?

It’s best to not, and just skip this book altogether; and probably the rest of the books Gresh and Weinberg have penned together.