A Review of the Fantasy Element in Stephen King's Short Story "Obits": King's Killer Obit Concept And How I Used It

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).