travel across not only America, but also its twin parallel world, the Territories. Most people have a ‘twinner’ in the other world; a few, like Jack, are ‘single-natured’ and can flip between the two. Jack’s mother’s twinner is the Queen of the Territories, and is also terminally ill. Helped by Lester ‘Speedy’ Parker and his twinner, the gunslinger Parkus, Jack starts his quest, meeting up with a sixteen-year-old werewolf known simply as Wolf, and his old friend Richard Sloat.
Jack’s progress is hindered by Richard’s father, Morgan Sloat and his twinner, Morgan of Orris, both of whom want to seize power in their respective worlds. Jack travels through the Territories’ Blasted Lands (the equivalent of the mid-west area where nuclear bombs were tested by the US Army in our world) until, back in our world, he finally reaches the west coast. There he locates the Black Hotel, which is where the Talisman awaits him – and its multidimensional powers enable him to save his mother’s life.
For those of King’s Constant Readers who had not been able to locate
The Gunslinger, The Talisman
must have come as something of a shock. Rather than the horror (whether supernatural or closer to home) that they had grown to expect from King, this was a full-blown fantasy, with homages, and parallels to Mark Twain’s
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
– Jack even goes to watch the Ralph Bakshi-animated version of the classic fantasy quest to hammer the point home.
The Talisman
was written by King and his friend, horror writer Peter Straub, whom he had first met during his short stay in England in 1977. The two had discussed collaboratingfor some time, and they came up with a story that both were happy with. One would write a section, and send it across by what was then state of the art electronics – ‘telephone modem communication between their respective word processors’, according to the interview they gave
The Twilight Zone
magazine in 1985. Although they had divided it up, they tended to write until they reached a natural break in the story before passing it over. Rather than cross-editing as they wrote, they completed the manuscript before giving it a rigorous overhaul. ‘I don’t think it’s possible, really, for anybody to tell who wrote what,’ Straub noted. ‘There were times when I deliberately imitated Steve’s style and there were times when he deliberately, playfully, imitated mine.’ King admitted that the only way he could be sure who wrote what ‘was the typing style. He will double space after periods and between dashes, and I don’t do that’.
While the fantasy element allowed both authors to demonstrate the strengths of their imaginations, the scenes set in ‘our’ world had a sharper focus. Jack encounters many unfortunates, and King said that he wanted to show ‘the ebb and flow of an underclass, the dregs of society, the roadies who are put upon by other people, the unhomed and homeless drifting just below everyone’s sight’.
The Talisman
is also a parable about what Straub described as ‘the terrible poisoning of the land’ – whenever characters flip between the worlds, contemporary America is shown to have lost an element of beauty.
The links to the ‘Dark Tower’ series are much clearer with hindsight than they were at the time of writing; the sequel novel,
Black House
(see page 124 ) made them explicit, but even before that arrived, it dawned on readers that many of the ideas in the ‘Dark Tower’ books were present in
The Talisman
. The idea that people can travel between worlds – as members of Roland’s ka-tet do – is first expressed here; that there are ‘thin’ places where the fabric of reality bends.
Steven Spielberg was immediately interested in
The Talisman
, and purchased the movie rights. For twenty years, there were multiple stories of screenplays written but never reaching fruition; in 2006,
Jack’s progress is hindered by Richard’s father, Morgan Sloat and his twinner, Morgan of Orris, both of whom want to seize power in their respective worlds. Jack travels through the Territories’ Blasted Lands (the equivalent of the mid-west area where nuclear bombs were tested by the US Army in our world) until, back in our world, he finally reaches the west coast. There he locates the Black Hotel, which is where the Talisman awaits him – and its multidimensional powers enable him to save his mother’s life.
For those of King’s Constant Readers who had not been able to locate
The Gunslinger, The Talisman
must have come as something of a shock. Rather than the horror (whether supernatural or closer to home) that they had grown to expect from King, this was a full-blown fantasy, with homages, and parallels to Mark Twain’s
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
– Jack even goes to watch the Ralph Bakshi-animated version of the classic fantasy quest to hammer the point home.
The Talisman
was written by King and his friend, horror writer Peter Straub, whom he had first met during his short stay in England in 1977. The two had discussed collaboratingfor some time, and they came up with a story that both were happy with. One would write a section, and send it across by what was then state of the art electronics – ‘telephone modem communication between their respective word processors’, according to the interview they gave
The Twilight Zone
magazine in 1985. Although they had divided it up, they tended to write until they reached a natural break in the story before passing it over. Rather than cross-editing as they wrote, they completed the manuscript before giving it a rigorous overhaul. ‘I don’t think it’s possible, really, for anybody to tell who wrote what,’ Straub noted. ‘There were times when I deliberately imitated Steve’s style and there were times when he deliberately, playfully, imitated mine.’ King admitted that the only way he could be sure who wrote what ‘was the typing style. He will double space after periods and between dashes, and I don’t do that’.
While the fantasy element allowed both authors to demonstrate the strengths of their imaginations, the scenes set in ‘our’ world had a sharper focus. Jack encounters many unfortunates, and King said that he wanted to show ‘the ebb and flow of an underclass, the dregs of society, the roadies who are put upon by other people, the unhomed and homeless drifting just below everyone’s sight’.
The Talisman
is also a parable about what Straub described as ‘the terrible poisoning of the land’ – whenever characters flip between the worlds, contemporary America is shown to have lost an element of beauty.
The links to the ‘Dark Tower’ series are much clearer with hindsight than they were at the time of writing; the sequel novel,
Black House
(see page 124 ) made them explicit, but even before that arrived, it dawned on readers that many of the ideas in the ‘Dark Tower’ books were present in
The Talisman
. The idea that people can travel between worlds – as members of Roland’s ka-tet do – is first expressed here; that there are ‘thin’ places where the fabric of reality bends.
Steven Spielberg was immediately interested in
The Talisman
, and purchased the movie rights. For twenty years, there were multiple stories of screenplays written but never reaching fruition; in 2006,
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