How many of you are reading this article on your phone or have your phone nearby? I know I cannot go a day without my cell. As many times as I have dreamed of going tech-free, I am afraid I might miss an important call from a family member.
First published in 2006, Cell by Stephen King brings our modern reliance on our devices into focus and may cause a huge case of technophobia. The book centers around Clayton Riddell, a graphic novelist. While visiting Boston, a mysterious signal – an odd pulse – emits from each cell phone. Each person in range turns into a zombie-like creature, a killer. Later called ‘the phoners’, these people start attacking each other and any one still normal. The nation crumbles into chaos – a dystopian existence haunted by death and destruction.
(It is truly scary how close we are to this as a real-life scenario. I am not a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday prepper. I just think that we are living in fragile times.)
The few non-affected people try to find each other and band together. Riddell knows he must get to Maine and find his son Johnny. He starts out on his trek, helped and hindered on his journey by survivors he meets along the way. We follow along with him as he struggles to get to his son, find enough food and water, and avoid the phoners and certain death.
As I must often do, I will say this is a Stephen King novel. There is violence, gore, a depressed/repressed tone, social commentary you might not agree with, explosives… True King story telling.
This is not an easy book. Not all stories wrap up in true fairy tale style. I won’t ruin the ending. It just… Well, it just was not what I expected. But doesn’t that make for true novel writing? Do you really want each book an author writes to be so cookie-cutter that you can quote dialog before you read it?
This book kept me guessing. And it made me push my cell phone a little further away!
From Amazon: From international bestseller Stephen King, a high-concept, ingenious and terrifying story about the mayhem unleashed when a pulse from a mysterious source transforms all cell phone users into homicidal maniacs.
There’s a reason cell rhymes with hell.
On October 1, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He’s just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He’s already picked up a small (but expensive!) gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he’ll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay’s feeling good about the future.
That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone’s cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization’s darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature…and then begins to evolve.
There’s really no escaping this nightmare. But for Clay, an arrow points home to Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing journey north they begin to see crude signs confirming their direction. A promise, perhaps. Or a threat…
There are 193 million cell phones in the United States alone. Who doesn’t have one? Stephen King’s utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn’t just ask the question “Can you hear me now?” It answers it with a vengeance.
