NEW SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEWS
Reviews Of Recently Published Science Fiction And Fantasy Books
Reviewer: Forrest Schultz schultz_forrest@yahoo.com 770-583-3258
Blog Address: http://newsciencefictionandfantasyreviews.blogspot.com
November 18, 2015
Stephen King's "Killer Obit" Concept (And How I Used It)
A Review of the Fantasy Element in Stephen King's Short Story "Obits" in His
Stephen King The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (Scribner, 2015)
512 pp $18.00 ISBN: 978-1501111679
Reviewer: Forrest W. Schultz
As noted above, I will only be considering one of the short stories in the abovementioned collection, and in that story I will only be looking at the killer obit concept itself, not the story as a whole. The focus of the story is a journalist, whose job includes writing obituaries, who, just as a prank, decides to write an obit of a (very disgusting) person who is living, pretending he has died, noting in the obit how nasty the guy was; and this obit is really funny, far different from the typical obit! But, weird as it sounds, this causes the man to die!! This led me to write a short story using this killer obit concept in a quite different way -- namely one in which the obit purposely kills, one by one, the various groups of bad guys. My story is titled "Killer Obits", and is published on my short stories blog http://schultzstories.blogspot.com It is also included in the collection of stories honoring Stephen King now being assembled by Inkitt (see their website www.inkitt.com/harrowing).
