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The Killer (short story)

Short story by Stephen King From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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"The Killer" is a short story by Stephen King. Written in the early 1960s, it was first published in issue #202 of Famous Monsters of Filmland in spring 1994.[1]

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Plot summary

The protagonist of the story awakens in a munitions factory; he is unable to remember his name or anything else. Seizing a gun, he demands that another worker tell him who he is; after the worker ignores him, he clubs him with the gun. After a man on an overhead catwalk flees from the protagonist, he shoots him; the wounded man sounds an alarm. As the protagonist attempts to flee, he is intercepted by men wielding "energy guns"; he shoots one of them before being hit with "energy beams". The story ends with the protagonist being loaded into a truck. A watching man notes that "one of them turns killer every now and then", with another man musing that "they're making these robots too good", revealing that the protagonist was a malfunctioning robot.

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Publication

King wrote "The Killer" as a young teenager; it is a rewrite of his story "I've Got to Get Away!", which was self-published as part of the collection People, Places and Things in 1960.[2] King submitted "The Killer" (as Steve King) to Forrest J Ackerman for the magazine Spacemen; it was the first story he submitted for publication.[3][4] While not accepted at the time, the story was later published in issue #202 of Famous Monsters of Filmland in spring 1994 with an introduction by Ackerman.[5][6] It has never been collected.[1] The reprint came about after Ackerman paid a visit to King's house and read him the story; after King failed to guess the author, Ackerman revealed that King himself had written the story.[7]

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Reception

Rocky Wood describes "The Killer" as "derivative of pulp fiction" but "fairly well written for a probably 13 or 14 year old".[1] Stephen Spignesi describes the story as "an early example of King's frequent motif of out-of-control technology", comparing it to works such as "Trucks", "The Mangler", and "Obits".[7] Spignesi also states that, "in tone and technique it comes across as something that was probably written a short time after that eclectic potpourri of juvenilia".[8] Reflecting on the story, King wrote "I was still in the Ro-Man phase of my development, and this particular tale undoubtedly owed a great deal to the killer ape with the goldfish bowl on his head."[3]

See also

References

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