The Tommyknockers

The Tommyknockers is a novel by the American writer Stephen King, published in 1987. It is a horror novel that moves into science fiction, and King has since spoken about it critically, saying that it was written while he was unwell and that there is a better book underneath it.

Bobbi Anderson is a writer who lives alone with her dog and works on westerns, and she is doing nothing more eventful than walking in the woods when she finds the object. What she has stumbled over is the exposed portion of a spacecraft that has been underground for a very long time, and the effect of uncovering it spreads through the town.

The change is gradual and is experienced by different people in different ways. The residents of Haven find that their capacities increase, that their relationships alter, and that they understand things they did not use to understand, and the novel follows the town as a whole as well as the friends and neighbours who notice what is happening. Most of the book takes place in a small community that is being quietly reorganised around a single object.