The Tommyknockers
Stephen King, 1987
★ 3.61 from 170.2k ratings on Goodreads
A buried alien ship wakes something in a small Maine town, and the people who touch it start to change—and to know things they shouldn't. A slow, uneasy small-town horror story that keeps you curious about what the buried thing is doing to everyone.
Feels like dread, unease and curiosity. About power, society and madness.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy Stephen King's small-town horror, weird townsfolk, and the creeping sense that ordinary people are becoming something else. Be warned that many readers find it overlong, with slow padded stretches and a sharply divisive ending.
Why read it
It offers a grim, curious look at how a town changes when something alien wakes up, with vivid set pieces and King's knack for ordinary people under pressure.
A page from the book
Every name we give a thing is a small act of surrender.
“There really isn’t an Altair-4, just as there aren’t really any Tommyknockers. There aren’t any nouns for some things - they just are. Somebody pastes one name on those things in one place, somebody pastes on another someplace else. It’s never a very good name, but it doesn’t matter. You came back from New Hampshire talking about Tommyknockers, so here that’s what we are. We’ve been called other things in other places. Altair-4 has, too. It’s just a place where things get stored. Usually not live things. Attics can be cold, dark places.” What readers say
Many readers found the book overlong and slow, with frustration over padding and a divisive ending. Others were captivated by its wild small-town horror, imaginative set pieces, and character relationships, though some disliked the characters or confusing shifts.
Stephen King.King has said he was so deep in addiction while writing The Tommyknockers that he barely remembers writing it.
Books that feel like this
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It
Stephen King, 1986
A Maine town, a childhood summer, and the shape-shifting thing that hunts its children — a horror novel about memory as much as monsters.
The Stand
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A flu escapes a lab and empties America; survivors choose between a saintly old woman and a smiling dark man. King's big, bleak, compulsive plague epic.
Pet Sematary
Stephen King, 1983
A doctor moves his family to a Maine town where the local pet cemetery sits beside something older, and grief becomes a door that should stay shut.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Tommyknockers for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy Stephen King's small-town horror, weird townsfolk, and the creeping sense that ordinary people are becoming something else. Be warned that many readers find it overlong, with slow padded stretches and a sharply divisive ending.
- What is The Tommyknockers like?
- A slow, uneasy small-town horror story that keeps you curious about what the buried thing is doing to everyone. Feels like dread, unease and curiosity. About power, society and madness.
- What should I read after The Tommyknockers?
- If you liked The Tommyknockers, try Seven Days in May (Fletcher Knebel), Red Dragon (Thomas Harris) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Stieg Larsson).
A taste of the feed
A handful of men can stop the government from falling off a monument.
All you’ve got to know is this: right now the government of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, right on the very point, tilting right and left and ready to fall off and break up on the pavement. There are just a handful of men that can prevent it. And you’re one of them.
Seven Days in May · Fletcher Knebel
What makes a place a home is who you come back to.
Graham returned to the table. He was afraid that this was how he would remember the end of Sugarloaf Key-ice melting in two tea glasses and paper napkins fluttering off the redwood table in the breeze and Molly and Willy far down the beach.
Red Dragon · Thomas Harris
When a friend's idea is so strange you start diagnosing him.
I think it was at that moment that I first began to entertain doubts as to Robin’s sanity. Not that people dining near would have noticed anything amiss with him: his voice was low-pitched and quiet. But the whole idea was so utterly far-fetched and fantastic that I couldn’t help wondering if his brilliant brain hadn’t crossed that tiny bridge which separates genius from insanity. I knew the hideous loathing he had always felt for war: was it possible that continual brooding on the idea had unhinged him?
The Final Count · H. C. McNeile
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