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Review: Downloading King's 'The Plant,' Part One
(CNN) -- I was concerned. Monday, when Stephen King released the first installment of his new online novel "The Plant," I was in south Texas. This wasn't a concern in itself, nor was the thought of whether I'd enjoy "The Plant." What did concern me was that all I had with me was a company laptop with a cranky, slow modem, and I wasn't at all sure that I'd be able to download King's Internet-only work without crashing my whole system. Not long ago, I'd downloaded King's first foray into the world of online publishing, a novella titled "Riding the Bullet." To do that, I'd had to install a program called the Glassbook Reader and go through several steps before getting to download the material. By the time I'd finished setting it all up, the last thing I wanted to do was sit and read the thing.
The idea of downloading "The Plant," then, had me wary. It would have been so much easier, I thought, if I were home in California with the comfort of my DSL connection, where the waiting would be minimal. But King, or his software wizards, made it fast and easy. King-ly speedFirst, I logged onto www.stephenking.com and clicked on "Downloads." Then, I was taken to a page that gave me with information on how to download the first part of the novel and how to pay. Each installment costs $1, and site visitors are given three options: immediate payment through Amazon.com; an agreement to pay later; or "I do not agree" (to pay). Click on the last one and the site zings back a message: "No stealing from the blind newsboy." Somewhere, I could hear King laughing. Since Amazon.com is taking care of processing the payments on its secure servers, and since I've probably sponsored the college education of at least one of the Amazon.com executives' kids through my purchases over the past five years, I was completely comfortable giving Amazon.com my credit card information. Once I was paid up, I clicked on the "download" link and saved the file to my hard drive. The file is in .pdf format, for use with Adobe Acrobat Reader, and was less than 150 kilobytes. Downloading it took maybe a minute, even over my excruciatingly slow Internet dial-up connection. Downloading the Acrobat Reader is slightly more time-consuming, but Adobe's download page is reasonably user-friendly, and King provides a direct link to the download page that streamlines the process considerably. 'Planting' the seedAesthetically, Part One of "The Plant" is very pleasant to look at. Acrobat allows for very attractive presentation of material, and King takes advantage of the format to have some fun playing with fonts. The title is in a stately open-faced font. The copyright data has some fun printer's marks -- something approaching "Wingdings" and "Webdings," Word fans. But there's something about reading on a computer that sucks away a little of the joy of reading, even for a Web junkie like me. Although I could print out the pages and take them to the couch and curl up like I would with a regular book, it's just not the same. I don't think I'm ready to give up print for this, at least not yet. Part One does little more than set up the story, and substantively it's not quite worth the hoopla. The concept behind the novel has been acknowledged by King as being based on work he started and didn't finish in the early 1980s, and the small amount of text he made available on Monday is just a teaser designed to spark interest. So far, all we know is that a bored editor in a failing publishing house has decided to take a risk on a new book. Of course, if King is still the King we know and love, it's going to be the worst mistake this editor has ever made. Given the author, "The Plant" isn't a bad investment. It's worth kicking down a buck every now and then to see what happens next in a Stephen King story, isn't it? RELATED STORIES: Full text of popular books available online for free RELATED SITE: The Official Stephen King Web Presence
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