I vaguely remember not thinking this story was so good when I originally read it, but that was so long ago I doubt I could say anything specific as to why. I
started reading it again to see what I'd think of it now.
It's the story of a group of people on airplane flight that goes through a rift in time. Only those asleep at the time survive, and they wake to find everyone else missing. It turns out they've arrived in a world of the past that is dead and abandoned, and about to be consumed by creatures called Langoliers (which I pictured as being like the things from the Critters movies). They eventually figure this out and return to the present through the time rift.
That in itself is a fairly fantastic situation. It also has a character who so happens to be an off-duty airline pilot, who so happened to be sleeping during the time warp. I can grant that, for the sake of the plot.
It also has a businessman who is pissed off and confused by the whole situation. That is believable. But this is where the story starts going off the rails, because it turns out the character's backstory is a little implausible, and Stephen King also wants to ratchet up the suspense by having him go completely crazy and try to kill people.
Then there's the little blind girl who, oh, yeah, is also psychic and has supernatural hearing.
And there's an authorial insert character!! Stephen King frequently has authors as characters. Sometimes (Desperation) it has no effect on the story at all. Other times (It, The Shining), it can give a character depth, but you could give the character a different job / interest without changing the story much. And there are the times (The Ballot of the Flexible Bullet, Umney's Last Case, Misery) where the character's profession is completely integral to the story.
Then there's the Langoliers.
Now, when you have a horror story, the characters have to figure out they're in a horror story. If you have a vampire, and it kills people, but never gets caught, that's not much of a story. Fortunately, people know about vampires, so it's pretty easy for characters to know they're up against a vampire in a horror story. Same goes for werewolves. Or the devil. Another technique to let characters know they're in a horror story is to let them get information from an authority. That even happened with vampires; consider Van Helsing. Or they can research in a library. or from oral tradition (like when Judge talks about the Pet Sematary).
But these people have no idea what's going on to them. Langoliers do not exist in any myths. It's hard to say whether they could really tell they were stuck in the past, or if some other weird, inexplicable thing had happened to them. They don't have a library to do research in. So, how can they tell?
They have an author to tell them! First, it's pretty annoying to know things because he's an author and Stephen King is an author, so, hey, authors are pretty great, huh? Second, how would being an author help? There's some stuff about how he's read or written science fiction, but isn't the point of those genres (and particularly this story) to have unexpected things happen? Figuring out that you're in the past and about to be eaten, along with the entire rest of an abandoned past, by little rolling monsters isn't something you're gonna intuit no matter how many times you've read The Martian Chronicles. It's not like knowing that you shouldn't split up or hide upstairs if you're in a horror movie.
As a side note, even King's writing tricks are grating on me. Like, if someone will be eaten by a monster, they'll think "The Langoliers will eat us up." It has to have that "up" there. And that sentence will be its own paragraph like -
He sensed something off in the distance. They were coming. And he knew what would happen when they got there.
The Langoliers would eat them all up.
It's the story of a group of people on airplane flight that goes through a rift in time. Only those asleep at the time survive, and they wake to find everyone else missing. It turns out they've arrived in a world of the past that is dead and abandoned, and about to be consumed by creatures called Langoliers (which I pictured as being like the things from the Critters movies). They eventually figure this out and return to the present through the time rift.
That in itself is a fairly fantastic situation. It also has a character who so happens to be an off-duty airline pilot, who so happened to be sleeping during the time warp. I can grant that, for the sake of the plot.
It also has a businessman who is pissed off and confused by the whole situation. That is believable. But this is where the story starts going off the rails, because it turns out the character's backstory is a little implausible, and Stephen King also wants to ratchet up the suspense by having him go completely crazy and try to kill people.
Then there's the little blind girl who, oh, yeah, is also psychic and has supernatural hearing.
And there's an authorial insert character!! Stephen King frequently has authors as characters. Sometimes (Desperation) it has no effect on the story at all. Other times (It, The Shining), it can give a character depth, but you could give the character a different job / interest without changing the story much. And there are the times (The Ballot of the Flexible Bullet, Umney's Last Case, Misery) where the character's profession is completely integral to the story.
Then there's the Langoliers.
Now, when you have a horror story, the characters have to figure out they're in a horror story. If you have a vampire, and it kills people, but never gets caught, that's not much of a story. Fortunately, people know about vampires, so it's pretty easy for characters to know they're up against a vampire in a horror story. Same goes for werewolves. Or the devil. Another technique to let characters know they're in a horror story is to let them get information from an authority. That even happened with vampires; consider Van Helsing. Or they can research in a library. or from oral tradition (like when Judge talks about the Pet Sematary).
But these people have no idea what's going on to them. Langoliers do not exist in any myths. It's hard to say whether they could really tell they were stuck in the past, or if some other weird, inexplicable thing had happened to them. They don't have a library to do research in. So, how can they tell?
They have an author to tell them! First, it's pretty annoying to know things because he's an author and Stephen King is an author, so, hey, authors are pretty great, huh? Second, how would being an author help? There's some stuff about how he's read or written science fiction, but isn't the point of those genres (and particularly this story) to have unexpected things happen? Figuring out that you're in the past and about to be eaten, along with the entire rest of an abandoned past, by little rolling monsters isn't something you're gonna intuit no matter how many times you've read The Martian Chronicles. It's not like knowing that you shouldn't split up or hide upstairs if you're in a horror movie.
As a side note, even King's writing tricks are grating on me. Like, if someone will be eaten by a monster, they'll think "The Langoliers will eat us up." It has to have that "up" there. And that sentence will be its own paragraph like -
He sensed something off in the distance. They were coming. And he knew what would happen when they got there.
The Langoliers would eat them all up.
