"Cell" is As Great As It is Strange

March 17, 2007

***WARNING*** THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS 

I used to be a diehard Stephen King fan.  Back in the days of Thinner, The Dead Zone, and Misery.  The last book of his that I read and enjoyed was Dolores Claiborne.  King’s writing got, in my opinion, a little strange after that one.  Not that it wasn’t strange before.  It was just different.

So I got really excited when I heard that Cell, one of his newer novels, was written in the “old school” Stephen King style.  Of course, I’d already bought it by the time I read that.  But I still get excited.

I didn’t really know what to expect from this book based on the cover.  I could tell it had something to do with a cell phone.  When you turn the FIRST cover, there’s a second cover with the same cell phone… only it looks burnt and broken (the red window on the front cover is cut out to show through to the broken phone on the second cover).  There’s a shadow of a person standing over the phone on the second cover.  So far… it was creepy.  But still a little strange.  How could a cell phone be the basis for a scary book?

I didn’t have to wait long to find out.  The very first paragraph of this book hooked me:

“The event that came to be known as The Pulse began at 3:03 p.m., eastern standard time, on the afternoon of October 1.  The term was a misnomer, of course, but within ten hours of the event, most of the scientists capable of pointing this out were either dead or insane.  The name hardly mattered, in any case.  What mattered was the effect.”

As it turns out, The Pulse is a signal being transmitted through cellular airwaves.  Once it starts, anyone on their cell phone gets a dose… and anyone who turns their phone on after that.  So what does it do?  In a nutshell, it makes people completely crazy.  And I don’t mean “mental hospital crazy”.  As the book continues we find out that The Pulse basically erases everything from the human brain.  Everything.

Phoners (as the people who’ve been hit with The Pulse come to be called) begin wildly attacking one another… normal people… animals… anything.  If you’ve ever seen a zombie movie, imagine that.  They act a lot like zombies… except that they move at normal speeds and aren’t dead.  They attack, tear apart, and eat anything they can get their hands on.  And the speak (scream) in a non-English gibberish that even they don’t understand.

But they don’t stay that way.  As the book progresses, they evolve into something completely different than humans as we know them now.  Eventually, they become the dominant species and decide that those who weren’t “pulsed” should join them.

Does it sound strange?  Good.  Because it is.  But in the typical “old school” Stephen King fashion, it’s the best kind of strange.  And it’s scary.  Very scary.  But in a modern, psychological kind of way.  Not in the cheap blood and gore way (although there is that part, too).

King presents an interesting idea with Cell, though.  Is this what people would be like if their brains were completely erased?  If we were wiped clean like a hard drive (which is an analogy used in the book), would it result in the utter chaos that is Cell?

I think it would.

I’m not sure about a few of the abilities that the Phoners develop, like telepathy and levitation.  You heard me.  Telepathy and levitation… which apparently develop as a result of the Phoners having complete and total access to the full potential of the human mind.  That part insinuates that we have those abilities now… but some part of our “programming” prevents us from accessing them.  Regardless of our programming, I think that part is more than a little unrealistic.

And on another level, it makes you think about what would happen if something catastrophic like this did happen… and the world as we know it came to an end.  We never find out where The Pulse came from.  Was it something accidental?  An experiment gone wrong?  Terrorism?  Alien?

Some people, like the book’s main characters, struggle to survive and keep moving.  They get used to living at night (while the Phoners sleep).  They make friends (and enemies) and the world starts making new rules.  For example, it becomes common practice to leave shoes outside of any building that you’re staying in… to let other “normal” people know that the space is occupied.

Other people, however, decide to give up.  If you’ve ever watched 28 Days Later… you know what I’m talking about (think about the movie’s main character’s parents).  By the end of the book, masses of people are being driven by the Phoners to a fair grounds… so they can also be pulsed.  Not entirely by choice… but some don’t struggle against the driving force.

I loved the book.  It’s part end of the world, part zombie, part psychological, and part science fiction.  And it’s all scary.  Page one… everything is normal.  By page eight all hell has broken loose… and it never stops.

Wikipedia has a great entry on the book that, among other things, contains a very detailed synopsis of the story.  It also says that rights to a movie have been sold to Eli Roth (who also did Hostel and Cabin Fever).

That should be interesting… to say the least.

Posted in Book Reviews

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