Stephen king what is it

Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything. Read an Excerpt at EW. Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called "Lot Six" while at college. Now the government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful firestarting skills as a weapon.

King uses these locations to increase the verisimilitude of his stories, painting them as all part of the same fictional universe. In stories like It , he borrows liberally from real places and landmarks, highways and scenery, even real street corners. One popular villain, a recurring supernatural figure who may or may not be the devil, appears throughout the Stephen King universe in various guises.

Frequently throughout his books, King will signal that his worlds are all connected by having characters meet characters from other books in passing. He spells out his essentially hopeful, fundamentally romantic worldview in a interview :. There must be a huge store of good will in the human race. I believe all those sappy, romantic things: Children are good, good wins out over evil, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Even in his bleakest works, he retains his ability to empathize deeply with his characters, and to see even his monsters as fundamentally human. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.

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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Stephen King has spent half a century scaring us, but his legacy is so much more than horror. Share this story Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share All sharing options Share All sharing options for: Stephen King has spent half a century scaring us, but his legacy is so much more than horror. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. While in school, King published his first short story, which appeared in Startling Mystery Stories.

After graduating with a degree in English in , he tried to find a position as a teacher but had no luck at first. King took a job in a laundry and continued to write stories in his spare time until late , when he began working as an English educator at Hampden Academy. It was that year that he also married fellow writer Tabitha Spruce. In , King sold his first novel, Carrie , the tale of a tormented teen who gets revenge on her peers. The book became a huge success after it was published the following year, allowing him to devote himself to writing full time.

It was later adapted for the big screen with Sissy Spacek as the title character. While making novels about vicious, rabid dogs and sewer-dwelling monsters — as seen in Cujo and IT , respectively — King published several books as Richard Bachman.

Four early novels — Rage , The Long Walk , Roadwork and The Running Man — were published under the moniker because of King's concern that the public wouldn't accept more than one book from an author within a year. He came up with the alias after seeing a novel by Richard Stark on his desk actually a pseudonym used by Donald Westlake coupled with what he heard playing on his record player at the time — "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," by Bachman Turner Overdrive.

Although many of King's works were made into film or TV adaptations — Cujo and Firestarter were released for the big screen in and '84 respectively, while It debuted as a miniseries in — the film The Shining , released in and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall , became a renowned horror thriller that has stood the test of time.

For a good portion of his career, King wrote novels and stories at a breakneck speed. He published several books per year for much of the s and '90s. His compelling, thrilling tales have continued to be used as the basis of numerous films for the big and small screens. In the guise of Pennywise, it can be disarming, charming and seemingly nice to the kids it hunts, usually to lure them into secluded spots before attacking.

It has psychic influence enough to keep the entire town of Derry in a subtle, apathetic ignorance to its activities. Adults are less inclined to care about the missing persons of the town and do not react in any intense manner when violence occurs even in front of them.

It is able to make its prey experience hallucinations that are very hard to discern from reality. It has some ability to control the actions of others, most blatantly when It provokes Henry Bowers psychotic tendencies to kill his father and friends, and later acts as its agent in hunting the Losers.

Even 27 years later Bowers remains submissive to It. In this iteration, It is more directly impacted by the mental state of those it attacks and, conversely, is vulnerable to it's own mental state. It is less able to harm or kill someone who isnt afraid of it and is vulnerable to the Losers Club when they become angry and assault it, nearly killing it in the process.

Ultimately, its form is a reflection of its mentality. When the Losers confront it with its weakness, childishness and their lack of fear, it progressively becomes smaller and smaller. It is able to take any shape it desires, but is in turn bound to the nature of that shape.

This proves to be its undoing: Eddie nearly chokes it when it takes the form of a leper and is small enough for him to do that. When sufficiently weakened, the Losers kill It by crushing the heart it must have in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. No one knows the true form of IT since it first existed in an inter-dimensional realm referred to as "deadlights".

Bill Denbrough comes close to see the "deadlights", but defeats IT before this happens. The true form of the "deadlights" exists outside the physical realm. Any living being that sees the "deadlights" goes insane almost instantly.

Bill comes dangerously close to seeing the deadlights and the shape behind the shape for a brief moment. He described IT as an endless, crawling hairy creature made of orange light. Throughout the novel, IT is generally referred to as male; however, late in the novel, the characters come to realize that IT is most likely female, due to its true form in the physical realm being that of a giant pregnant female spider.

It underestimates and scorns all of mankind. In many cases, it leaves an open escape route for victims and lets them run away. Because of this narcissism, It makes mistakes and does illogical things. The presence of courage and heart are Its main weaknesses. This appears to have a psychological effect that instills fear and enables it the inability to function properly in its physical form.

Given that it feeds on fear, it makes sense that courage and heart can overcome it. Once the Losers are united, their strong shared will and love for each other successfully overpowers It.

This allows them to form a psychic connection and "send power" to each other, even across distances. It can be taken by surprise and can be physically assaulted if the attacker demonstrates no fear of it. Additionally, "belief" can affect It, such as the use of silver which is a fictional weakness of supernatural entities and an inhaler believed to contain battery acid.

The novel states that It must obey the laws of its form. This means that It possesses the vulnerabilities of whatever form it take, such as a vampire's vulnerability to sunlight or winged leeches obeying physics of flight. During times of hibernation or healing, It may be vulnerable to surprise attacks. However, other books in the Stephen King universe such as Dreamcatcher and Hearts in Atlantis imply that IT may still be alive at the end of the story.

In the miniseries, the outfit is more colorful with orange pompoms, blue sleeves, and a yellow body. In the movie, Pennywise returns to having a silver suit, similar to Italian opera clowns, and orange hair. His face has two red lines starting above his eyes, streaming down the cheeks, and ending at the corners of his mouth.

His nose is not genuine but painted red. Most often, his eyes are orange, but IT can change them to appear more familiar. They also are often looking in different directions. The form of a friendly and funny clown is the easiest to invoke a sense of safety and comfort without needing to know anything personal about the victim, thus why IT uses it so often.

Stephen King Wiki Explore. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? It Creature. View source. History Talk 0. Do you like this video? Play Sound. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing.

It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV.