Ur (novella)

Last updated
Ur
Ur Stephen King.jpg
Cover of the original Kindle release
Author Stephen King
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s) Science fiction
Published in Amazon Kindle
Publication type E-book
Publisher Amazon.com
Publication dateFebruary 12, 2009

Ur is a novella by Stephen King. It was written exclusively for the Amazon Kindle platform, and became available for download on February 12, 2009. [1] [2] An audiobook edition was released on February 16, 2010 by Simon & Schuster Audio, read by Holter Graham. Ur was collected in King's 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams , heavily revised. [3]

Contents

Original release

King said, speaking about Ur:

The delivery mechanism to my mind is secondary for me as a writer. [...] But I did this once before with a story called Riding the Bullet and I never had so many guys in suits come up to me and ask me questions. But they didn't want to know about the story, they didn't want to know about the process, they wanted to know about the delivery system, but to me that's secondary. [...] I think people will be more interested in the business aspect of [Ur] than they will in the story. I would never have agreed to it if I didn't think it was a pretty good story. [4] I decided I would like to write a story for the Kindle, but only if I could do one about the Kindle. Gadgets fascinate me, particularly if I can think of a way they might get weird. I had previously written about homicidal cars, sinister computers, and brain-destroying mobile phones; at the time the Amazon request came in, I'd been playing with an idea about a guy who starts getting e-mails from the dead. The story I wrote, Ur, was about an e-reader that can access books and newspapers from alternate worlds. I realized I might get trashed in some of the literary blogs, where I would be accused of shilling for Jeff Bezos & Co., but that didn't bother me much; in my career, I have been trashed by experts, and I'm still standing. [5]

King's agent, Ralph Vicinanza, stated that downloads of the novella at Amazon.com had reached "five figures" in about three weeks, while also denying the novella is an infomercial for the Kindle. [6] King's publisher, Scribner, released Ur as an audiobook on February 16, 2010. [7] In an interview in October 2010, King stated that he did not write the novella for the money: "I did it because it was interesting. I'm fairly prolific. It took three days, and I've made about $80,000. You can't get that for short fiction from Playboy or anybody else. It's ridiculous." [8]

Plot

Wesley Smith, an English teacher at a Kentucky college and book aficionado, wants to go "New School" after fighting with his girlfriend and buys a Kindle. Due to a minor mistake in his credit card number, he is sent a pink Kindle (even though at the time, Kindles were always white). Slowly, he realizes that this edition was meant for another Wesley Smith from a parallel universe.

Smith's Kindle has a peculiar function called UR that can search multiple timelines for data. Interestingly enough, each time he uses this function, an enormous dark tower flashes across the screen as it loads data. Smith finds four books Ernest Hemingway wrote in an alternate universe where he lived for three more years. Further searches reveal written works by Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare from other timelines. Wesley also discovers yet another function concerning newspapers that were published in an alternate universe.

Smith tells a friend and a student about the Kindle. The three men try to connect to an issue of The New York Times from an alternate reality, but find to their horror that no papers are published on the day they requested. They learn that in this alternate reality, the world ended when the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated into World War III in November 1962.

Smith also discovers that a busload of local students, as well as his own girlfriend, will be killed by a drunk driver in fewer than three days. With help he tracks down the drunk driver and prevents her from causing the accident.

When he returns home, he finds that Low Men in Yellow Coats (as introduced in King's 1999 book Hearts in Atlantis ) are waiting for him, ready to punish him for using the forbidden function of the Kindle. He argues that perhaps this change was meant to happen—how could he have gotten the Kindle otherwise? His argument does not fully sway the Low Men, but they feel it best to simply keep it from happening again by confiscating the Kindle, leaving Wesley to ponder the vastness of a world he thought he understood. Soon afterward, Wesley learns his girlfriend loves him after all.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen King</span> American writer (born 1947)

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", his books have sold more than 350 million copies as of 2006, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published over 65 novels/novellas, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five nonfiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fredric Brown</span> American novelist and short story author

Fredric Brown was an American science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. He is known for his use of humor and for his mastery of the "short short" form—stories of 1 to 3 pages, often with ingenious plotting devices and surprise endings. Humor and a postmodern outlook carried over into his novels as well. One of his stories, "Arena", was adapted to a 1967 episode of the American television series Star Trek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Baxter (author)</span> British writer

Stephen Baxter is an English hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering.

<i>The Body</i> (King novella) 1982 coming-of-age story novella by Stephen King

The Body is a novella by American writer Stephen King. The Body was published in King's 1982 collection Different Seasons and later adapted into the 1986 film Stand by Me.

<i>Hearts in Atlantis</i> 1999 short story collection by Stephen King

Hearts in Atlantis (1999) is a collection of two novellas and three short stories by Stephen King, all connected to one another by recurring characters and taking place in roughly chronological order. The stories are loosely autobiographical; in an author's note, King writes that while the places in the book are fictionalized, "Although it is difficult to believe, the sixties are not fictional; they actually happened."

<i>Riding the Bullet</i> 2000 novella by Stephen King

Riding the Bullet is a horror novella by American writer Stephen King. It marked King's debut on the Internet. Simon & Schuster, with technology by SoftLock, first published Riding the Bullet in 2000 as the world's first mass-market e-book, available for download at $2.50. That year, the novella was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction and the International Horror Guild Award for Best Long Form. In 2002, the novella was included in King's collection Everything's Eventual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wil Wheaton</span> American actor (born 1972)

Richard William Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. He portrayed Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me, Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers, and Bennett Hoenicker in Flubber. Wheaton has also appeared in recurring voice acting roles as Aqualad in Teen Titans, Cosmic Boy in Legion of Super Heroes, and Mike Morningstar/Darkstar in the Ben 10 franchise's original continuity. He appeared regularly as a fictionalized version of himself on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory and in the roles of Fawkes on The Guild, Colin Mason on Leverage, and Dr. Isaac Parrish on Eureka. Wheaton was the host and co-creator of the YouTube board game show TableTop. He has narrated numerous audio books, including Ready Player One and The Martian.

<i>Everythings Eventual</i> 2002 story collection by Stephen King

Everything's Eventual is a 2002 collection of 11 short stories and 3 novellas by American writer Stephen King.

<i>Star Trek: New Frontier</i> Star Trek spinoff novel series

Star Trek: New Frontier is a series of interlinked novels written by Peter David, published by Simon & Schuster imprints, Pocket Books, Pocket Star, and Gallery Books, from 1997 to 2015. New Frontier was the first Star Trek tie-in fiction property not to be based on a television series. The series was created by John J. Ordover.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an American writer and editor. She writes under various pseudonyms in multiple genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, and mainstream.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Castle Rock (Stephen King)</span> Part of Stephen King’s fictional Maine

Castle Rock is a fictional town appearing in Stephen King's fictional Maine topography, providing the setting for a number of his novels, novellas, and short stories. Castle Rock first appeared in King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone and has since been referred to or used as the primary setting in many other works by King.

Stewart O'Nan is an American novelist.

The Laundry Files is a series of novels by British writer Charles Stross. They mix the genres of Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour. Their main character for the first five novels is "Bob Howard", a one-time I.T. consultant turned occult field agent. Howard is recruited to work for the Q-Division of SOE, otherwise known as "the Laundry", the British government agency which deals with occult threats. "Magic" is described as being a branch of applied computation (mathematics), therefore computers and equations are just as useful, and perhaps more potent, than classic spellbooks, pentagrams, and sigils for the purpose of influencing ancient powers and opening gates to other dimensions. These occult struggles happen largely out of view of the public, as the Laundry seeks to keep the methods for contacting such powers under wraps. There are also elements of dry humour and satirisation of bureaucracy.

<i>Everythings Eventual</i> (novella) Novella by Stephen King

Everything's Eventual is a fantasy novella by American writer Stephen King. It was originally published in the October/November 1997 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In 2000, it was included in the game Stephen King's F13, and in 2002, in King's collection of the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Hill (writer)</span> American writer (born 1972)

Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phil D'Amato</span> Fictional character

Dr. Phil D’Amato is the central character in three science fiction mystery novelettes and three novels written by Paul Levinson. The first novelette, "The Chronology Protection Case", was adapted into a radio play which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. The first novel, The Silk Code, won the Locus Award for the Best First Novel of 1999. The fictional D'Amato, who has a PhD in forensic science, is a detective with the NYPD.

Throttle is a novella written by Joe Hill and Stephen King. It was published in February 2009 by Gauntlet Press in a limited edition anthology honoring Richard Matheson titled He Is Legend, and in a mass-market audiobook titled Road Rage, also containing Matheson's short story "Duel", which served as inspiration for Throttle. A comic book adaptation by IDW Publishing was published in the spring of 2012.

Holter Ford Graham is an American actor and voice actor and the son of historian Hugh Davis Graham. He appeared in his first film, Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive, at age thirteen. He is best known for his film work in the original John Waters’s Hairspray; the Oscar-nominated Fly Away Home; Six Ways to Sunday; Spin the Bottle; and Offspring, as well as his television work on Damages, Rescue Me, Law & Order, Army Wives, and New York Undercover. From 2008–2010, Graham was the co-host of Planet Green’s, Wasted. Since 2000, he has been the voice of HBO, and has narrated over 150 audio books, winning dozens of awards for his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rysa Walker</span> American science fiction writer (born 1961)

Rysa Walker is an American science fiction writer. Her first book, Timebound, won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in 2013. Since then, she has published two series of novels, along with several short stories and other works.

<i>If It Bleeds</i> 2020 collection of four novellas by Stephen King

If It Bleeds is a collection of four previously unpublished novellas by American writer Stephen King. The stories in the collection are titled "Mr. Harrigan's Phone", "The Life of Chuck", "If It Bleeds", and "Rat". It was released on April 28, 2020.

References

  1. UR (Kindle Edition) at Amazon.com
  2. UR, Exclusively on Amazon's Kindle - Now Available from Stephen King's website
  3. "Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #186 | Cemetery Dance Online: Horror News, Fiction, Reviews, Interviews, and more!". cemeterydanceonline.com. Archived from the original on 2015-11-01.
  4. "AOL to pay $315 million for Huffington Post". USA Today. Archived from the original on February 12, 2009.
  5. "Stephen King on the Kindle and the iPad". Entertainment Weekly. March 26, 2010.
  6. Archived March 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  7. "UR :: Read by Holter Graham :: The Simon & Schuster AudioBook". Promo.simonandschuster.com. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
  8. Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. (October 29, 2010). "Why E-Books Aren't Scary". The Wall Street Journal.