Firestarter (novel)

Firestarter

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Thriller Science Fiction
Publisher	Viking Press
Publication date	September 29, 1980
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	426
ISBN

Firestarter is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published in September 1980. In July and August 1980, two excerpts from the novel were published in Omni. In 1981, Firestarter was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award, Locus Poll Award, and Balrog Award. In 1984, it was adapted into a movie.

The book is dedicated to the author Shirley Jackson: "In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice."

Andy and Charlene "Charlie" McGee are a father/daughter pair on the run from a government agency known as The Shop. During his college years, Andy had participated in a Shop experiment dealing with "Lot 6", a drug with hallucinogenic effects similar to LSD. The drug gave his future wife, Victoria Tomlinson, minor telekinetic abilities and him an auto-hypnotic mind domination ability he refers to as "the push". They both also developed telepathic abilities. Andy's and Vicky's powers were physiologically limited; in his case, overuse of the push gives him crippling migraine headaches and minute brain hemorrhages, but their daughter Charlie developed a frightening pyrokinetic ability, with the full extent of her power unknown. (Much later in the novel, Charlie develops an inner conviction that she will eventually be powerful enough to "change the sun" in some way.) The novel begins in medias res with Charlie and Andy on the run from Shop agents in New York City. We learn through a combination of flashbacks and current narration that this is the latest in a series of attempts by The Shop to capture Andy and Charlie, following an initial disastrous raid on the McGee family's quiet life in suburban Ohio. After years of Shop surveillance, a botched operation to take Charlie leaves her mother dead; Andy, receiving a psychic flash while having lunch with colleagues, rushes home to discover his wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped. He then uses his push ability to track the slightly-cold trail of Charlie and The Shop agents, catching up to them at a rest stop on the Interstate. He uses the push to incapacitate The Shop agents, leaving one blind and the other comatose. Charlie and Andy flee, and begin a life of running and hiding, using assumed identities. They move several times to avoid discovery before The Shop catches up to them in New York.