I just finished "Cell" by Stephen King. It's the first book of his I've read. And in this case, I use the term "read" loosely -- I got the audiobook version. Which I downloaded and listened to on my Zen Micro.
Does King hate MP3 players the way he hates cell phones? I don' t know. But the guy certainly hates cell phones. Maybe he's less inclined to hate something that causes people to go quiet and sprout white wires from their ears, as opposed to something that makes them chatter loudly in a crowd. Both things are annoying and perhaps herald something less than a high point for civilization. But do both offend in the same way?
"Pod people" are virtually a cliche, but perhaps King could find a way to create a new threat. In the current book, it's "phone crazies," or "phoners." These are people driven mad (to put it somewhat generously) by something called "the pulse," which courses through cell phones and fucks with the personal hard drive we call the brain. King writes brilliantly about the end of civilization (if not the world), with a sense of detail that is at times almost too graphic for me. Which is why I never connected with his early work: "The Shining," "Cujo," "Carrie" ... I know them all as
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