Open letter to Stephen King
I have no way directly to reach King, the renowned novelist, so this is sort of like the letter I would write if I could. I shall send a not to the webmaster of his website thus:
http://stephenking.com/contact.php
Dear webmaster:
I understand that there is no direct way this will come to Mr. King’s attention. That’s a good thing. One could make a fairly good case that there is a curse on me, and anybody who tries to help gets zapped. I’d take the chance and write Mr. King, were it possible, but I like his work so much I would hesitate. This makes it easy. I was unable to navigate through the chat room system, so I’ll write my letter and post it on my own site and put the link here: http://www.nobabies.net/Open%20letter%20to%20Stephen%20King.html
All the best,
Linton
And the letter is thus:
February 18, 2015
nobabies.net
Stephen King c/o his webmaster.
Dear Mr. King:
I was thrilled to read Revival. (This is an open letter I plan to post on my own web site. Since a few of my stalwart readers may take a look at this and you, Mr. King, almost surely will never even hear it exists, I’ll take occasion to say that King’s work strikes me as far more entertaining than my own. I persist only because I think what I do is important. If you find time ample, take a look at his book; I shall assume that you are familiar with it, as of course he is, but I’m only pretending he might read this.)
Your character Charles Jacobs takes an interest in something he calls secret electricity. It is able to do some things like heal people. Many years ago I took an interest in what you might plausibly call space warping. It employs nothing arcane, just things like garden variety electricity. But it promised such things as healing, levitation, revival, faster than light travel, time travel of a sort – pretty much ordinary fantasy stuff. The thing I could not calculate was how much energy it would draw to accomplish some purpose.
I built a prototype. Its maximum draw was about 2 kilowatts. I unleashed it on an old Timex watch in at attempt to get it to run backwards. The little watch ticked sturdily away among showers of sparks, the smell of heated stuff and the hiss and crackle of marginally controlled power. It didn’t even slow down.
It never occurred to me that the device might so warp space that we could see the reality beyond. Nor did it occur to me that there might be a curse accompanying its use. But depending on what’s out there, it does make a sort of sense.
I have an improvement on the original design, but not having the energy (I can only admire your character’s defiance of age) nor the resources any longer, I have not tried to build it right.
Still, it might be good enough for fiction.
The curse I spoke of is nonsense (as of course is the space warping mechanism, really), but the direction my research led me later is anything but nonsense. And it’s a whale of a lot more important than the things space warping (without benefit of dilithium crystals of course) could ever accomplish. And it’s full of love and light; you’d think that would be a curse free zone, but nay. So if you’d like to know how my space warper works, you need but ask … and the other matter, too, but be ye careful.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert MD
Feel free, if you know Mr. King and think he'd like the letter, to point it out.
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