The Tommyknockers

"The Tommyknockers" is Stephen King's 1987 science-fiction horror novel set in the small Maine town of Haven, where writer Bobbi Anderson stumbles across a buried metal object in the woods behind her house. As she digs, the townspeople begin to change — gaining strange technological abilities while losing pieces of themselves — and her ex-lover, alcoholic poet Jim Gardener, becomes the last person who might be able to stop what is rising out of the ground.

The book is one of King's most ambitious genre crossovers, blending classic mid-century alien-invasion science fiction with his trademark small-town horror. King has spoken openly about the period of heavy substance use during which it was written, and the novel's recurring themes — addiction as possession, the seductive lure of power that costs you everything else — read as both autobiography and warning. The title comes from an old American folk rhyme about mining-camp spirits.

Readers tend to either love its sprawling ambition or wish it were tighter; few finish unmoved. It pairs well with "It" and "Under the Dome" as one of King's expansive small-town epics, and with "Carrie" and "Firestarter" as a meditation on power that arrives without consent. A 1993 television miniseries exists but is widely considered weaker than the novel.

Search-friendly notes: "the tommyknockers stephen king review," "is the tommyknockers worth reading," "tommyknockers novel summary," "stephen king 1980s books ranked," "tommyknockers book vs miniseries." Long, strange, and unmistakably King.