CRITIQUE ARCHIVE

http://www.stephenking.com

By Charisse Massay

At first this site worried me. I was an avid reader of Stephen King when I was younger and was fairly excited to take this site. Then I stopped to think, 'it's Stephen King, his website will

be incredibly complex!' When I looked at the site, I was shocked at how simple it was. There are eight links off the main page to sites for news, questions, a biography, past works and upcoming events. Each click would open a page with a side link bar guiding the user to other links on the site; at the

top of this bar, there was a ever changing image of a posing Stephen King. It was somewhat disturbing and amusing all at the same time. I couldn't shake the image of Stephen King at a photo shoot with a cameraman telling him to 'work for the camera.'

The 'News' link was to Time.com who is distributing the third excerpt of the upcoming book 'Dreamcatcher' for download. It came with a stylish flash intro and a somewhat interactive reading. The previous installments were availablein html form. "The Man" was a biography written with his wife. 'The Plant' seems to be an e-book that King is distributing over the internet, unfortunately when logged in, there were some problems involving the next installment

so I was not able to look at the layout.

The three links, ' The Past,' 'The Now' and 'The Future' were documentation of King's projects that have

been and will be produced over a thirty year span. 'The Past' includes listings of his novels (from Carrie 1974 to Hearts in Atlantis 1999), books other than novels, movies, television shows and works about King. 'The Now' lists what projects King is working on currently including fiction, non-fiction, e-books and movies. 'The Future' includes plans for the next three years.

'Rumors' and 'Answers' included frequently asked questions as well as some rumors that had been sent in by fans around the country. These questions

ranged from 'Is it true that [Stephen King] has an annual campfire ghost story event?' to 'I need an agent/publisher, can [SK] tell me the name of a good one?' These questions were answered by a press secretary or by someone other than Stephen King. The answers were in the third person and did not exceed three sentences. I felt somewhat let down. Even though the answers were short, I would have hoped that King would have had the time to answer these twenty questions himself. If

the answers were in the first person, I would have been inclined to believe that King had a large part in the content of the site. Instead it seemed to be put together by his publicity staff alone.