Book Sandwich

Ur by Stephen King

Posted by Nathan on Wednesday November 25th 2009, on 12:19 pm | Filed under text | Tags: alternate reality, fiction, Kindle, short story, Stephen King

I remember hearing about this short story when Amazon first released the Kindle. Stephen King basically wrote a story for Amazon showcasing the Kindle. The story is about Wesley who is a literature professor at Moore College in Tennessee. Moore is a mediocre college and Wes is a mediocre professor. Wes just had a major fight and broke up with the girl’s basketball coach Ellen. Ellen had had a bad day with a student and Wes was buried in a novel not paying any attention to her when she wanted to vent. Ellen told him that he should just learn to read off the computer like everyone else.

One day while teaching a class, Wes notices a student come in with a new device. He’s about to tell the student to put it away when the student, Robbie, tells him that he has the assigned book on it and it is an e-book reader, the Kindle. Wes is intrigued and based on what Robbie tells him and what Ellen told him when they broke up, he goes on Amazon and buys a Kindle. In the next couple of days he receives it in the mail and it is pink. That’s not the only strange thing because he soon finds out in the experimental section of the device these things called Urs. He soon finds out that an Ur is an alternate reality and there are millions of them. He searches Hemingway in Ur Books and finds out the death date of Hemingway is not right, he lived a couple years longer. He also wrote some books that Wes or his colleague Don Allman had never heard of and they are literature scholars. They go crazy searching for more authors and finding more books that have never been written.

Next he discovers Ur Local which is local news in the future and discovers something horrible is going to happen to Ellen. This encourages him to try to change the future, Paradox laws be damned. I won’t reveal any more other than to say it was a fun story, typical Stephen King writing and just a joy to read. As far as I know it is only available on the Kindle, Kindle iPhone app, or now the Kindle PC application.

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I had no idea Stephen King wrote a book exclusively for the Kindle! I’m not sure if I should consider this a brilliant marketing tool, or a desperate attempt for Kindle to grab a bunch of users from the multitude of fans of Stephen King. The story does sound interesting, though. I like when King writes about new technology that you can’t entirely trust. This story reminds me a bit of his book “Cell”, where suddenly, the cell phones everyone uses start doing terrible things to people.

Interesting review. I might have to find a way to check this book out sometime.

Comment by Jen 11.26.09 @ 12:04 am

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