It’s
pretty much likely I’ve stumbled on the origin of Stephen King’s Under The Dome (UTD)… and it’s
absolutely not The Simpsons Movie. The
book with a goodish length, which only recently got adapted to a miniseries on
CBS has been quite the source of controversial stint since its release into the
fiction market in 2009. Stephen king has defended the originality of his idea
for the book on his website by posting a 61-page facsimile excerpt
from his original novel The Cannibals, an unpublished unfinished 450-page
handwritten novel written in 1982, while King
was filming Creepshow.
All
comparisons from The Tommyknockers novel were
retrieved from only the last three chapters of the book.
The
Year 1982
With
what I have, I’m probably a little more apt to hit the bull’s eye than earlier
speculations. Did you see the figures in red above? What’s so special about
them? Draft for The Cannibals, which
eventually, became Under The Dome (UTD)
was written that year. The same holds for The
Tommyknockers (TK) draft if the date at the bottom of the page (August
19th, 1982) after the Epilogue is anything to go by. It’s a possibility that
one complex story idea spilled over into another story, eh? Most Stephen King fans
(and we run into millions) would agree it’s one of his quirks.
Date
of Publication Puzzle
Another
puzzling detail is the publication dates for the two novels. Apparently, they
coincide. Although, published in different years, I’d say about twenty two
years apart, both books were published on the same date, November 10. The
Tommyknockers came out in 1987 while Under
The Dome was released into the market in 2009. Am I saying King did that on
purpose? Maybe. Do you have a better explanation?
The
Dome vs. The Force Field
In
both stories, there is a shield of
some sort checking movement beyond the borderlines of both towns. The Havenites (in TK) set up a kind of extraterrestrial
force field around their town. Composed of odorless toxic gas, the field stops intrusion
from the outside world. The dome in
UTD performs a similar function and people who got too close to its source risked
exposure to radiation.
The
Pacemaker Explosions
We
find pacemakers detonating when
individuals who had one of these gadgets on them made contact with the Dome/Force
field. In both cases, the result is
instant death. Is it a wonder that both victims are law enforcement officers? In
TK, when Henry Amberson a forest ranger from Newport, one of the men sent in to
inspect a possible forest came within spitting distance of the field around Haven his pacemaker
exploded in Amberson’s chest. And Police Chief Howard "Duke" Perkins
is soon killed when his pacemaker explodes after getting too close to the Dome in UTD.
Twin
Plane Crashes
There
are two recorded plane crashes influenced by the barrier around the town of
Haven in The Tommyknockers novel. In UTD,
the coming of the dome was duly publicized when a Seneca V plane crashed into
it killing the wife of the town’s first selectman. Later on, a 767-jetliner
conveying passengers over the town of Chester’s Mill disintegrates on impact
with the invisible barricade. Two plane crashes in two stories both upshots of barriers
of alien origin. Coincidence? I think not.
The
Alien Gadgets in the Towns’ Back Fields
Bobbi
Anderson discovered the flying saucer buried
under the ground in her back field in The
Tommyknockers and in Under The Dome, a
group of curious teens discover the alien generator, the source of the dome, in
the town's back fields.
Okay,
I’m out of ideas but if what I got here don’t qualify for weird coincidence, I don’t know if anything else does.
Akpan
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