Greg Stillson

The Dead Zone

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Supernatural thriller
Publisher	Viking Press
Publication date	August 1979
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	428
ISBN

The Dead Zone is a science-fiction thriller novel by Stephen King published in 1979. It concerns Johnny Smith, who is injured in an accident and remains in a coma for nearly five years. Upon emergence, he exhibits clairvoyance and precognition with limitations, apparently due to a "dead zone", an area of his brain that suffered permanent damage as the result of his accident. The Dead Zone was nominated for the Locus Award in 1980.

The book is dedicated to King's son, Owen.

The prologue introduces the two main characters. In 1953, a young boy named John Smith is knocked unconscious while ice-skating; while recovering he mumbles a strange message—"Don't jump it no more"—to an adult on the scene. The knot on Johnny's head fades after a few days, and he thinks no more of it. A few months later, the adult is seriously injured while jump starting a car battery. Two years later, in an unconnected incident in Iowa, a young door to door Bible salesman named Greg Stillson, suffering emotional issues and dreaming of greatness, vindictively kicks an aggressive dog to death.

By 1970, Johnny is now a high school teacher in eastern Maine. After visiting a county fair with his girlfriend Sarah, and eerily winning repeatedly at the wheel of fortune, Johnny is involved in a car accident on his way home that lands him in a coma for four and a half years. On waking, Johnny finds that he has suffered neural injury, but on touching people and objects he is able to tell them things they did not know—in this way he knows a nurse's son would have successful surgery, states that his doctor's mother, long believed dead, is living in Carmel, California, tells Sarah that her lost wedding ring was in her suitcase pocket, and later recounts the story behind a St. Christopher medallion owned by a skeptical reporter. Johnny shrugs off local media reports of his supposed psychic talents and accepts an offer to resume teaching, but begins to suffer from severe headaches. Richard Dees, reporter for the national tabloid Inside View, maliciously prints a story denouncing his clairvoyance as phony, but this brings Johnny relief and the hope he can resume a normal life—a hope broken when he is contacted by a local sheriff desperate to solve a series of murders, including that of a child. Johnny's extra sense provides enough detail to identify the killer, who commits suicide and leaves a confession.