Stephen King’s Newest Story is Exclusive to My Favorite Video Game Store (But it Kind of Sucks?)

“The Un-Humblest Bundle”

So, I know I said it would be about my trip to Seattle this week.  Well, I lied.  Somehow, despite my best judgement, I have completely run out of time again.  How does this keep happening?  Why do I keep letting myself get away with this?  Why have I lost any sense of self-control and motivation since this pandemic started?  Perhaps the answer lies within the question, hmm?  Either way, regardless of whether or not I’m too hard on myself or not hard enough, I do not have the mental capacity to put together a blog on my vacation to the Pacific Northwest this week, in part because there have been some, ahem, hiccups in my life this past weekend.  Not because the trip wasn’t fun, or because it was stressful or something (though all travel is inherently a little stressful), but because I really want to make it a good piece, and get all the parts right, and that’s kind of hard to do, you know?  My standards for some posts are higher than others, and I have high standards for that one.  But today, my standards are very, very low.  So let’s rip on a charity fundraiser.

To make a long story short, acclaimed horror novelist Stephen King released a brand-new short story exclusively through charity sales site, Humble Bundle.  I don’t need to explain that first of the sentence to you, hopefully; everyone and their resurrected grandma knows who Stephen King is.  It’s that second part that gets interesting; effectively, Humble Bundle is a media storefront, or a “digital content retailer” per King’s words, and everything they sell gives a percentage to a charity of your choosing (with some exceptions; occasionally, as in this case, the charity is picked by Humble Bundle).  Typically, they sell bundles of items; usually ten or fifteen eBooks, video games, movies, software, comic books, etc. that they stick together in a themed digital package with a pay-what-you-want tiered purchase model.  If you buy a bundle, you can choose how much of the money you spend goes to charity, how much to Humble Bundle (as a tip), and how much to the original creators of the content you’re purchasing.  They also have a straight-up storefront for buying video games (usually Steam keys), and they’re now also publish video games under their own banner.  If it sounds like it would never work, well, it seems to have been quite successful; by their own estimates, Humble Bundle has donated almost $200 million to charities around the world.

Here’s the thing; as much as Humble Bundle has been branching out into the literary scene and as much as they’ve been trying to move to more than just video games, games are still primarily what they’re known for. Hell, I’ve been buying games through them (and I guess donating to charity, too) for almost 8 years now. I’ve gotten probably most of my massive PC games library from Humble Bundle, and it isn’t like these are random-ass trash games, either; they’re selling really high-quality stuff. Now, I’ve been with Humble Bundle long enough to kind of know their model and a lot of their past bundles, and I do have to say that the overall quality of bundles has gone down since the beginning, in my opinion; maybe this is because, as they’ve grown, developers are less likely to bundle their games, as it means potentially selling thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, of games (and potential purchases at full-price) at mostly a loss. Or maybe it’s because they’re already sold so many big-name games, they don’t want to tread old territory too much. I mean, it’s for charity, so some pretty big games still crop up, but they’ve also moved to a monthly subscription service, and that’s where most of the big deals end up, now. The weekly or bi-weekly bundles they used to have are definitely much more hit-or-miss than I feel they used to be. But that’s still ok; they seem to have a pretty huge audience, now more than ever, and it’s still going to charity. So why should I complain? I shouldn’t. Really, I shouldn’t be complaining. But, of course, I’m going to anyway. Not about Humble Bundle, mind you; mostly about Stephen King.

So, I was really surprised when I got the weekly Humble Bundle newsletter and it read “EXCLUSIVE STEPHEN KING STORY.” Not in those exact words, but you get the gist of it. I had to do a double take, honestly. A new Stephen King story? Exclusive to Humble Bundle? The Stephen King? Of Shining fame? Surely not some other random dude named Stephen King? Where did he even hear about Humble Bundle? How did they ever land a contract like this? Because, let’s face it, King’s doing this for charity; for Humble Bundle, while they won’t make any money off the sale (it is 100% for charity, after all), this is a huge publicity move. I mean, video games aren’t nearly as niche as they used to be, and the demographics that play games are the most diverse they’ve ever been (though the playerbase demographics always been more diverse than the media lets on; don’t let any random angry internet white boy tell you otherwise). But Stephen fucking King? In this part of the country, at this time of day, localized entirely within my video game store? That’s next fucking level. People who haven’t touched a controller in twenty years might be tempted to check out Humble Bundle, just to get a new Stephen King story. And that’s a really great thing! Truly, it is. Except the story stinks!

So, disregarding the story for just a minute more, the bundle is donating 100% of its funds to the ACLU. Neither King nor Humble Bundle will get a cent of it. Which is great! Charity is wonderful! We should all donate to charity more. I paid money to the ACLU to get this bundle. And the choice of charity tracks for King, too; he’s decently left-leaning and all about free speech and what not (you know, being a writer an all), and the ACLU is something worth supporting. But here’s the thing; this isn’t a bundle. Really, it’s just one item; a new short story, “Red Screen,” written exclusively to be sold through Humble Bundle. I don’t know if it’ll show up in an anthology years down the road or whatever, but for now, it’s only available through Humble Bundle (which, if you’re reading this as its posted, the bundle ends in like a day and a half, so get on it if you want to read some spooky King nonsense). Both King and Humble Bundle have placed their bets on this thing raising substantial money on name brand alone. They have faith it’ll sell not because it’s a good deal or anything (though, frankly, paying for short stories the same you would anything else is a great practice for writers), since there are no other King novels or movies or anything else in the bundle, but rather they have faith it’ll sell only because it’s Stephen King. And you know what? They’re right! As of this writing, the bundle’s raised over $125,000 in under a week. That’s pretty modest, compared to the $1 million to charity they used to pull in for some huge game bundles, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the majority of their eBook bundles that only raise five or six thousand each. But to make over $100,000 for charity on a single short story? That’s pretty damn impressive, and a testament to King’s lasting cultural influence. I suspect no other singular author, save maybe George R.R. Martin and a new Fire and Ice book, or J.K. Rowling and a new Harry Potter, could have made as much (though I don’t want J.K. Rowling anyway). I’m glad it’s done so well! I just wish the story was any good!

Stephen King’s got a history of doing weird stuff with eBooks. Apparently he was one of the first (or maybe the first?) to sell a mass-market eBook. And I guess he tried some sort of subscription service for a series of books, for The Plant, but it didn’t go over too well. But maybe they haven’t done too well because his writing isn’t as good as it used to be? Or is that just what everybody says because he isn’t on drugs anymore? I mean, I haven’t read a ton of his stuff, not nearly as much as he’s written, anyway, but I can tell you that I way preferred Carrie and The Shining over The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. People seemed to love Doctor Sleep, but is that just because it’s a sequel to The Shining? I have such mixed feelings about King’s writing, because, on the one hand, he’s a fantastic storyteller. His dialogue and action flow so quickly, so naturally, that it’s no wonder he’s so popular; his prose, especially in those dialogue-heavy and particularly engaging scenes, read like smooth butter. Plus he’s off-the-wall creative about his stories. I mean, From a Buick 8 is about an interdimensional portal shaped like a car, and Insomnia is an insane mixture of pro-choice allegory and interdimensional fantasy adventure. Who comes up with this shit? Stephen King, that’s who. It’s just a shame, then, that the Humble Bundle story, “Red Screen,” represents him at his worst.

Alright, alright, I’ll finally get to the story, instead of just teasing about it! All of King’s media about the story give the byline “in this unsettling short story, a cop interrogates a deranged plumber who just murdered his wife, only to discover something far more insidious.” That’s the general premise, and that’s all I knew going in. My first thought was, hey, he’s a plumber! Maybe this is actually a Mario thing, since it’s being hosted by a video game website. But no, the only other connection to Mario is the color red. Beyond that, the fact that one of the character’s is a plumber plays no role at all. He could have been literally anyone. The main character, Wilson, is a cop, and that at least plays a role, since he’s interrogating the plumber who murdered his wife. And as for that insidious thing he discovers? It’s lame. It’s a super boring twist. Honestly, I saw the whole thing coming from a mile away. For being a Stephen King story, an author who revels in absurdity and books that are way longer than they have any right to be, “Red Screen” is both predictable and way too short.

To be fair, it kept me reading. I didn’t quit halfway through and say “wow, that sucked.” I at least read the whole thing before saying “wow, that sucked.” Like I said before, King is a natural storyteller. The dialogue is interesting, and the story happens quickly enough that I didn’t mind being along for the ride. But the downside to that is this; Stephen King is not the best writer I’ve ever read. He is not a literary author. I love King and his stories, but his style of writing is absolutely not on the same level as, say, Shirley Jackson, or Joseph Heller, or even someone like Louise Erdrich. He doesn’t have the same depth of character, depth of language, as other “literary” authors. He is, at heart, a “genre” author, or a pulp author, as much as I hate the literary/genre divide. That’s not to say he’s a bad author; his writing is fun! It’s engaging! But it isn’t high society, so to speak. He’s no Will Shakespeare. To be fair, most writers people aren’t. I’m certainly not. But King also has the subtlety of a brick shithouse; in the same way that King constructs characterization through quantity instead of quality, and in the same way that the novel of The Shining is one of the least abstract, obscure horror stories I’ve ever read, “Red Screen” has modern politics hamfisted into it without any sense of shame. Kamala Harris is name-dropped for no apparent reason. The story is clearly playing with QAnon and Deep State conspiracy tropes, but the whole thing reads like a soapbox speech when it comes to that stuff. Not that having politics in a story is a bad thing; speech is inherently political, if you ask me, but it shouldn’t be so in-your-face as this is. What I’m saying is, in the hands of a different author (or maybe even if King had written a longer story), the premise could have been more realized and the nuances of the political implications better addressed. Instead, it’s a confusing, self-contradicting mess of meaning.

If you read it just as a story, and ignore the politics and meanings of it, though, it isn’t even that good of a story in terms of originality. I don’t want to give away the whole thing, but I will. Basically, the cop’s wife nags him, he goes to work, interrogates the plumber, the plumber tells him his wife was actually possessed by an alien spirit as part of an invading force to take over the planet, and the only way you can be sure if someone’s possessed is if your computer screen turns red around them, because someone on the internet told him it works that way. The other ways you know is if the possessed person gets kind of mean and hyper-critical of you. After that, Wilson goes home, and has a talk with his nagging wife, who reveals to him that she’s been mean and hyper-critical because she’s going through menopause. They make love, and everything is better. Then his phone screen flashes red, and the story ends.

Even from my description I think you can see the tired tropes. The nagging wife dynamic is so overplayed. It’s been done to death, and is frankly just kind of a misogynist stereotype. The alien invasion thing is old hat, too; the story flat-out says “oh, this is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The “twist” that his wife is an alien ghost is predictable, too; I mean, come on, we all knew as soon as the plumber started talking about his wife being an alien that the last line would be some sort of “oops, she’s an alien too!” catch. Literally, I’ve read stories like this in my writing workshop class, and I feel confident that if I took this in to class and portrayed it as my own, it would get ripped to shreds. Plus, there’s the whole conspiracy thing; Wilson, the cop, makes fun of the plumber for being some sort of conspiracy nut, but then, oh, the conspiracy nut is right. If you apply that line of thinking to real life, it’s almost like condoning baseless conspiracies. And then at the end, with the nagging and the menopause thing, it’s all well and good that Wilson and his wife come to a new understanding, but it all gets thrown out the window with that last line. Oh well, your wife’s a grating asshole because she’s an alien, not because she’s experiencing confusing and socially-taboo biological and hormonal changes. What’s the message here? It’s like there’s trying to be some sort of statement about coming to understanding, or about the ridiculous absurdity of conspiracies, but the world of the story throws it all out the window. If there is a meaning here, it’s looking a lot more sexist and conspiracy-nutty than anything else.

Of course, as this review points out, I could be taking it totally the wrong way. The story actually becomes a lot more interesting if you assume not that the plumber is correct, but rather that Wilson’s wife really is just going through menopause, and this conspiracy online is actually completely wrong and is targeting random people/women with baseless accusations. It makes the story way more coherent and consistent with King’s known politics (not that that’s a necessity, of course), and instead becomes something of a tragedy, really. This man killed his wife because of a crazy conspiracy he read online. Something that really happens way more often than it should. But. And there’s always a but. How are we supposed to take that last line? The story ends, “She reaches past him, her breast pressing his cheek, and turns out the light. For a moment, no more than a second, the screen of his cell phone flashes red. In the dark, Sandi Wilson smiles.” How the hell is that meant to be taken? Yeah, you could argue she’s smiling because her talk with her husband about menopause when better than she expected, but in the context of the writing (proximity to the red screen flashing), and in the context of what readers are expecting (a twist ending), it absolutely sounds like the conspiracy is right! So which is it? Is the question that we don’t know? Then that just makes the whole thing even worse, because it’s really just a shrug and a “eh, doesn’t matter” kind of way to read it! Because if there’s no aliens, then the story is absolutely missing out on exploring the possibility of someone out there purposely spreading misinformation to get people to kill innocent civilians, which would be a really timely twist ending. But if there are aliens, then anything with a political message is all shot to shit. It is, to me, incoherent, on top of being largely uninteresting to boot.

So. That’s the single story you get for buying the Humble Bundle and donating to charity. I mean, it’s better than nothing; if you don’t think about it too hard, it’s a fun fifteen minutes of reading (probably ten if you read faster than I do, and I read really slow, believe it or not). Normally when people donate to charity, they get nothing in return except a thank-you email or a Sierra Club tote bag, so getting anything is a bonus. I think it’s just such a shame that it’s this story, instead of something, well, better. I know King can do better than this. Part of me suspects he churned this out in a night because he forgot a deadline or something. But either way, it leaves a sort of bitter taste in my mouth. Not that I regret buying it, of course. It’s still kind of cool to have, just for the exclusivity factor and because I like Humble Bundle and I like Stephen King. I really hope that they try this sort of thing again, maybe with other authors, or maybe just a big Stephen King eBook bundle with tons more stuff to read. But unless you really want to read it yourself, maybe just donate directly to the ACLU instead. For once, this is a King exclusive I’d say you can skip.