Is 'It' a Tommyknocker?

[bryantburnette]

They are not related, and I can get pretty close to proving it.

In The Tommyknockers, there is a reference to the movie version of The Shining. In the novel It, a younger version of Dick Hallorann makes a cameo appearance in one scene. Therefore, The Tommyknockers takes place on a level of the Tower where Stephen King exists, and wrote both The Shining and It.

Hence, Pennwyise does not actually exist in The Tommyknockers. (That said, let me play devil's advocate to myself and note that there is a section in which one character, while in Derry, imagines that he hears laughter coming from a drain. That's clearly a Pennywise reference, so it leaves the door open. My explanation for that is that this character has read the novel It, and is letting his imagination creep himself out. Kind of a stretch, but not a big one, really.)

[yogiAT08]

I'm just not sure that he had the clear idea in mind that It was a Crimson King minion when he originally wrote it. He references similar source materials but I think, as much as I respect him, that he didn't have as much of the framework set in stone back in the eighties as people give him credit for. I think a lot of his later works attempt to cobble together a lot of disparate materials that maybe originally didn't really fit together into some larger whole. Yes now the stapler is a creature from the beam, but I'm not so sure it was that explicit at the time of writing. We'd know if the internet was as all-encompassing in the 80's to archive every word the author ever spoke publicly. Alas. I guess my skepticism arises from the fact that my most beloved villain in all of reading got eaten by a baby. I just don't think that was in the 30 year plan.

[Shasta]

They are not related, and I can get pretty close to proving it.

In The Tommyknockers, there is a reference to the movie version of The Shining. In the novel It, a younger version of Dick Hallorann makes a cameo appearance in one scene. Therefore, The Tommyknockers takes place on a level of the Tower where Stephen King exists, and wrote both The Shining and It.

Hence, Pennwyise does not actually exist in The Tommyknockers. (That said, let me play devil's advocate to myself and note that there is a section in which one character, while in Derry, imagines that he hears laughter coming from a drain. That's clearly a Pennywise reference, so it leaves the door open. My explanation for that is that this character has read the novel It, and is letting his imagination creep himself out. Kind of a stretch, but not a big one, really.)

This makes my brain hurt. It's also why I am deferring to your blog.....

[bryantburnette]

This makes my brain hurt. It's also why I am deferring to your blog.....

lol

I'm typically terrible at keeping stuff like that straight, but when I reread The Tommyknockers a while back, I wrote a series of posts about it, and one of them focused specifically on the ways that novel connected to others in the SK universe. I had a lot of fun writing that one! And it's had the happy effect of making me be able to remember some of that stuff much more clearly than I would have otherwise.

That said, I think there are definite similarities between the aliens in The Tommyknockers and the ones in It. Both are rather Lovecraftian beings, if nothing else.

[Sepia and Dust]

They are not related, and I can get pretty close to proving it.

In The Tommyknockers, there is a reference to the movie version of The Shining. In the novel It, a younger version of Dick Hallorann makes a cameo appearance in one scene. Therefore, The Tommyknockers takes place on a level of the Tower where Stephen King exists, and wrote both The Shining and It.

Sweet!

[SleepingWarrior]

IT came from "outside" our universe/time in a sense while the Tommyknockers were mortal creatures that died through normal, non-magical/mystical means so I'd say no, IT is not a Tommyknocker.

[yogiAT08]

I hesitate to give King that much credit. Mostly because I noticed one glaring continuity mistake in The Tommyknockers(Ruth talks to her husband about showing her doll collection to Hilly. Her husband dies years before Hilly was born) and suspected a couple more that I didn't bother investigating. Keep in mind that this was still in his drinking phase and consulting pages and pages of notes might not have been his favorite thing. I actually wonder if his references to It were more a kind of winking, "remember how much you liked that novel," than a subtle thread in a greater tapestry. I don't want to go as far as to call the man George Lucas but the similarities are unmistakable.

[GNTLGNT]

...I'd say the aliens in this novel were more like kissin' cousins to those in

Show Spoiler

UTD

...

[AchtungBaby]

I hesitate to give King that much credit. Mostly because I noticed one glaring continuity mistake in The Tommyknockers(Ruth talks to her husband about showing her doll collection to Hilly. Her husband dies years before Hilly was born) and suspected a couple more that I didn't bother investigating. Keep in mind that this was still in his drinking phase and consulting pages and pages of notes might not have been his favorite thing. I actually wonder if his references to It were more a kind of winking, "remember how much you liked that novel," than a subtle thread in a greater tapestry. I don't want to go as far as to call the man George Lucas but the similarities are unmistakable.

I thought I was the only one that noticed the mistake about Ruth's husband! I usually overlook (or don't notice at all) mistakes in novels, but that one was such a glaring error...

[GeorgiesArm]

They are not related, and I can get pretty close to proving it.

In The Tommyknockers, there is a reference to the movie version of The Shining. In the novel It, a younger version of Dick Hallorann makes a cameo appearance in one scene. Therefore, The Tommyknockers takes place on a level of the Tower where Stephen King exists, and wrote both The Shining and It.

Hence, Pennwyise does not actually exist in The Tommyknockers. (That said, let me play devil's advocate to myself and note that there is a section in which one character, while in Derry, imagines that he hears laughter coming from a drain. That's clearly a Pennywise reference, so it leaves the door open. My explanation for that is that this character has read the novel It, and is letting his imagination creep himself out. Kind of a stretch, but not a big one, really.)

In the Tommyknockers, there is a mention of a writer who lives in Bangor who writes scary books, obviously King himself. BUT, the character in Derry doesn't imagine laughter coming from a drain, he sees Pennywise in clownperson coming from the drain. And would Derry exist on the level of the tower where King exists?

Anyway, I don't see It as a Tommyknocker at all. It just seems too different in many ways.