Stephen King has written a lot of books. Some are stone-cold classics that people will be reading a hundred years from now. Others? Well, let’s just say even the "King of Horror" has a few skeletons in his literary closet.
One of the weirdest, most polarizing entries in his massive bibliography is The Tommyknockers.
Published in 1987, it’s a massive, sprawling sci-fi horror epic about a town in Maine that slowly loses its mind—and its teeth—after a writer uncovers a buried alien spaceship. It’s got everything: telepathic dogs, killer vending machines, and a protagonist who is a perpetually drunk poet. It was a massive bestseller. People bought it by the millions.
But if you ask Stephen King about it today? He’ll tell you it’s "awful."
The Cocaine of It All
To understand why The Tommyknockers feels the way it does, you have to look at what was happening in King’s house in Bangor during the late 80s. Honestly, he was in a bad way. In his memoir On Writing, King is pretty candid about the fact that he was heavily addicted to cocaine and alcohol during this period.
He barely remembers writing Cujo. But The Tommyknockers was the last book he finished before his wife, Tabitha, staged a massive intervention.
She famously dumped a trash can full of evidence in front of him: beer cans, cigarette butts, gram bottles of coke, and snot-caked spoons. That’s the "spurious energy" King talks about when he looks back at this book. You can feel it in the prose. The sentences are frantic. The ideas are everywhere.
It’s a 700-page metaphor for the stranglehold of addiction.
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The people of Haven aren't just becoming aliens; they’re "becoming" something else entirely, gaining a frantic, mindless sort of genius. They build amazing things—like a water heater that runs on flashlight batteries—but they don't actually understand how they work. As one character puts it, they are "builders, not understanders." If that isn't a description of a drug-fueled creative bender, I don't know what is.
What Actually Happens in Haven?
The story kicks off when Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson, a writer of Westerns, stumbles over a piece of metal sticking out of the ground on her property. She starts digging.
She can't stop.
Soon, the air in the town of Haven starts to change. People get smarter. They start having "late-night ideas." But there’s a price. Their teeth fall out. Their skin becomes translucent. They start communicating telepathically, which is great until you realize your neighbor knows exactly what you’re thinking about his wife.
The Protagonist Nobody Wanted
Enter Jim Gardener. He’s a poet, an alcoholic, and a guy who spends most of the book ranting about the dangers of nuclear power. He’s also the only person who isn't being "changed" by the ship, thanks to a steel plate in his head from a skiing accident.
Gardener is a tough character to like. He’s messy. He’s violent. He spends a lot of time blacking out and waking up on beaches. But in the weird logic of The Tommyknockers, he’s the hero. He’s the only one who can see that the "gifts" the ship is giving the town are actually a slow-motion execution.
The Weirdness Factor
This book is famously bizarre. Most people remember the "greatest hits" of the weirdness:
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- A Coca-Cola vending machine that flies and attacks people.
- A picture of Jesus on a TV that starts talking to a jealous housewife.
- A kid who performs a magic trick and accidentally sends his little brother to another planet (Altair-4).
- The "shed" where Bobbi keeps her dog, Peter, and eventually some local residents, wired up like living batteries.
It’s a lot.
The 1993 Miniseries: A Cheap Disaster?
Because it was the 90s and Stephen King was the biggest name in entertainment, ABC turned the book into a two-part miniseries. It starred Jimmy Smits as Gard and Marg Helgenberger as Bobbi.
King wasn't a fan of this, either. He felt it was "cheap and thrown together."
The special effects haven't aged well. The "green glow" that signifies alien tech looks like a budget laser pointer effect. And because it was network TV, they had to tone down the body horror. In the book, the physical "becoming" is grotesque. In the miniseries, people just look a little tired and maybe a bit sweaty.
They also changed the ending. In the book, things get much darker. In the TV version, they went for a more traditional "hero saves the day" vibe, which loses the point of the original story’s bleakness.
Is it Actually a Good Book?
It depends on who you ask. If you want a tight, disciplined narrative, The Tommyknockers is a nightmare. It’s bloated. It wanders off into long tangents about minor characters who get killed off three pages later.
But there’s a certain charm to it.
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It’s King at his most uninhibited. There is a raw, terrifying energy to the writing that he hasn't really replicated since he got sober (which is a good thing for his health, obviously). Some fans, especially those who like his more "out there" sci-fi like Dreamcatcher, swear by it.
King himself said in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone that there is "really a good book in here... probably a good 350-page novel." He just didn't have the clarity at the time to find it.
How to Approach The Tommyknockers Today
If you’re a King completionist or just curious about his "coke years," here is the best way to tackle it:
- Read it as a Period Piece: It’s a snapshot of the late 80s, full of Cold War anxiety and fears about nuclear "fallout."
- Don't Expect Logic: The "science" in this science fiction is basically magic. Don't overthink how a vacuum cleaner becomes a weapon.
- Look for the "King-verse" Connections: Keep an eye out for references to Pennywise from It (a character sees a clown in the sewers of Derry during a brief cameo) and other King staples.
- Focus on the Addiction Metaphor: If you read it as a story about how a "substance" (the alien influence) makes you feel brilliant while actually destroying your soul, the book makes way more sense.
It’s a messy, loud, toothless monster of a novel. It’s definitely not his best work, but it might be his most honest look at the darkness he was fighting in his own life at the time.
If you're planning to dive in, grab the original hardcover if you can find it. The cover art with the glowing green light coming from the cellar is iconic for a reason. Just don't expect a neat and tidy ending. That's not how things worked in Haven.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Check out On Writing by Stephen King to hear his personal account of the intervention that happened right after this book.
- If the "small town under siege" vibe is what you liked, skip the Tommyknockers miniseries and watch the first season of Under the Dome or read that novel instead—it’s a much more polished version of similar themes.
- Track down the 1993 miniseries only if you have a high tolerance for 90s "event television" cheese and want to see Jimmy Smits give it his absolute all against a flying soda machine.