What scares master of suspense Dean Koontz? Plenty | Hacker News Reader

What scares master of suspense Dean Koontz? Plenty

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59 pointssamclemens53 comments

He's big on printouts for emergency backup.

OSC was, too, I think, after he lost a bunch of writing.

The refrigerator is an interesting location. It almost brings to mind the symbolism of the act/location itself, in the "why not just a cool fire safe, I mean look at your bulging wallet" sense. The guy had stainless steel interior doors custom designed for his home library.

So, using a fridge seems kinda irrational in various ways. Maybe unless you're a big _Crystal Skull_ fan.

I wonder what other authors have done along these lines. Do they save only the current manuscript, some subset of papers representing achievements, or whole pallets, etc. I mean, certainly a pallet is practically nothing, if it provides peace of mind, backs up lots of good stuff, and takes up less floor space than the golf cart?

I printed out my life timeline with major events and things once, just to have something of a history around in case of a fire, or fire and my screaming death. It felt absolutely ridiculous to print it out and store it, and I really hoped nobody found the document while cleaning out the fire-proof thingy.

But while packing it away, I got to wondering about a reasonable upper bound of storage for people who write a lot of good stuff, published or not.

When I had my family trust notarized the lawyer recommended keeping a copy in the freezer as it's the most likely place in the house to survive a house fire.

I have a hard time believing that the freezer would be better than a small fire safe for that purpose. The freezer has plastic seals that would melt, letting the heat in. All the frozen food/ice freezer would melt making for water damage.

...I mean, presumably you put it in a Ziploc bag first...

Takeaway food container. Bit of tape around the lip.

Yep, I agree, I didn't take the advice and I bought a fire safe instead.

Just FYI, they’re not really all that effective against fire outside of very narrow parameters. If you have one, consider placing it in places that tend to survive house fires, i.e., bottom corners or the structure, away from the kitchen and electrical or combustibles, preferably not below grade where the fire fighting water will flow.

As someone that just lost everything I own to fire I think this is a bad idea. The fire is a problem, certainly, but a secondary problem that killed all my paperwork was the fire service putting out the fire. That high pressure water is getting into literally everything, even things that seem like they are totally and fully water resistant.

Sorry that happened to you.

In pre-home-computer days, I heard stories about writers keeping important working documents in the refrigerator. They were generally people for whom a safe would be priced out of reach.

There is a scene in 100 years of solitude[0] where a background character (the butcher? Or baker?) dies, and while in his house they find crates and crates filled with thousands of sheets of papers, all covererd in handwriting. I think they don't even check what it is, if it's a journal or something else. They move on.

Kinda stuck with me.

Also, don't know why, but this makes me think of filmmakers using salt mines to store film negatives! [1]

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitud... [1]:https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/hidden-underg...

I don't remember this specific scene, but I want to give a shout-out for this book. It was an incredible experience reading it for the first time and it's filled to the brink with scenes that just stuck with me and caused a lasting impression.

It's not the easiest read, but imo it's not a tough one either like e.g. Proust or Moby Dick. I devoured it in no time and just can't recommend it enough.

I admit he does something well because he sells so many books but ive tried to read a few and god damn i cant do it. Theyre so poorly written, so implausible, such bad characters.

I cant believe the article puts him in a class with john grisham.

And i dont think its just my subjective opinion either. Look at the movies that have been adapted from their works in comparison. Grisham’s books were interpreted into a ton of thrillers that were successful & have stood the test of time. Same with other thriller writers. Koontz movies have universally flopped into obscurity. And while not all good books can be made into movies, its a reasonable test for a thriller.

I know this is not what the article is about, but I read a lot of junk and Dean Koontz has been on my Do Not Read Not Matter How Enticing The Blurb list for decades after being burnt twice by terrible (and terribly long) novels.

Wow. I couldn't disagree more vehemently if I tried.

I would put him well above Grisham personally. For my money, Koontz is one of the most under-appreciated writers living today. And I don't think whether a writers works have been translated into successful movies or not is even slightly meaningful as a metric.

For what it's worth though, I totally acknowledge that that is my subjective opinion.

Could you recommend one or two of his that you are particularely fond of?

I particularly -liked- False Memory, even thought it might not be one of his best if that makes sense. That is to say, it's good but I think it just particularly resonated with me due to the subject matter and some of my innate inclinations.

Beyond that, some that I would recommend include The Bad Place, The House of Thunder, The Door to December, and Intensity.

I haven't touched a DK book since at least the early aughts, but he is more than a Grisham (SUMMER BEACH NOVEL PEOPLE TALK ABOUT!). DK is kind of like the Spielberg version of a Pynchon novel. This is not a bad thing.

I cannot let go of "Lightning" from '88. That book has stuck with me in ways only a therapist could properly interpret, but activates all my historical fiction cilia and leaves me w/warm feels.

Lightning is one of my favorites as well. I never read another Koontz after it, back in '97 or so. Perhaps I should.

s/even thought/even though/

I love Terry Pratchett, but many of the TV adaptations have been a big miss. Though Good Omens was really well done, I thought.

Going Postal was quite good.

As was Hogfather. I’d even call The Colour of Magic “okay”, it had a lot of issues for sure though.

“The Watch” is so far removed from the source material to the point where both Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett have denounced it as sharing no DNA with pTerry’s work (“Batman if he's now a news reporter in a yellow trenchcoat with a pet bat”), that I would be hesitant to even count it as an adaptation.

Agreed, not good author. But someone got there before me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35833341 and worth seeing (15 seccs).

Apparently Koontz did his own voice there and I've got a lot of time for those who can laugh at themslves.

I think what he does well is “be consistent to a voice,” which you have to admit is a talent in itself. On top of that, simply having the drive to write _so freaking much_. I can barely be arsed to write a meaningful technical document or RFC and this guy’s churned out 500 _books_. That’s god damned impressive by any measure.

Growing up Koontz was kind of my filler in between Stephen King novels. Felt inferior, but enjoyable enough. Great for airplanes, where you could likely finish it on the flight back home.

I haven't reread them, but Hideaway and The Door to December really stuck in my mind, especially the latter.

Weird, I feel the other way around. I was just telling my family the other day that if there's a Dean Koontz novel in an AirBNB or a house I'm a guest in, I'm absolutely picking it up and probably finishing it in a weekend.

(Although, now that I'm looking through his bibliography, I don't see a single title I remember, though some plots are coming back to me.)

I kinda like him, Koontz has written some gems. This is being unnecessary mean.

> I cant believe the article puts him in a class with john grisham.

I think the article is comparing their similar mass market appeal. Grisham, Koontz and King all consistently sell enough books to make them a mainstay on airport book racks.

Grisham, Koontz, and King have all been coasting on the reputations they earned in their early days for decades now.

Their early works are still their best, and each new novel they release seems to mark a new low point.

  Still, every night Koontz places a freshly printed copy of whatever manuscript he’s working on in the fridge — just in case of a conflagration.

I know this is all about showing how eccentric he is, but really? I'd be more interested to understand why he doesn't use offsite backups. The fact that he's printing it implies a digital copy.

I suspect premature release of an upcoming book by a hacker group is a more real threat than a fire.

Plus he's probably set in his ways. He also doesn't even use the internet, even to do research.

Was listening to a podcast about this a while back; it's very much a thing (though it's usually via social engineering; emailing the editor pretending to be a translator or similar). There's some mystery over _why_ people do it, IIRC; there's not much money in it.

I don't think there's much mystery - it's almost entirely for bragging rights. I remember when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows was leaked on LUElinks a week or two before release and it was just some random bloke who wanted to impress everyone. Same with the recent Discord leaks.

The odd thing is it’s not just the mainstream stuff that this happens with, tho; extremely obscure authors are also targeted.

That was what was so puzzling about it! Extremely sophisticated social engineering techniques over the better part of a decade, for no obvious reason [0]! It did seem to dry up after they arrested Bernardini for it a year or two back [1,2], though:

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/books/publishing-manuscri...

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/165234/filippo-bernardini-li...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/books/publishing-manuscri...

Ah! Yes, that’s the guy. Bizarre story. I kind of want him to write a memoir about it, though for maximum irony someone would have to steal it, of course.

My guess is that sort of thing involves the publisher that has early drafts of the manuscript though, was that the case? They seem like a weaker link (more people involved) than the author.

Also I'd be curious to know the hierarchy of which leaks are more valuable. I'd speculate (I could be way off) that mass market paperbacks like this are not a hot commodity in the warez world, but then again I don't know what would be. Maybe that's all part of the mystery.

I read some f'ed up Koontz novels while growing up that I still can't shake.

Seriously makes me wonder how some people (Stephen King is similar) can come up with so many weird ideas.

The moth thing pulling the fox into the hole, breaking all its bones

I liked the movie too

The answer is rather obvious

https://archive.is/zHegT

Heard him on Art Bell 20 years ago. Was a great interview. I remember him being really down to earth.

I imagine that, to him, putting his manuscript in the fridge is somewhat akin to the way an average person locks their home's doors when they go out.

Any really serious fire, or burglar, is not going to be stopped by your precaution. But it might still make the difference, in any number of less-extreme incidents.

That said, we in IT know a bit about backups and data redundancy. Dean would be well advised to, and probably does, have his data backed up in multiple physical and virtual locations.

Brian from Family Guy should worry him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKAouJB5SXg

I've always found Koontz books enjoyable, if mostly forgettable. He never really escaped Stephen King's shadow, but he's thrived there magnificently.

> Still, every night Koontz places a freshly printed copy of whatever manuscript he’s working on in the fridge — just in case of a conflagration.

Don't modern refrigerators use pentane as the refrigerant which is pretty flammable?

If there were a fire, there is a good chance that the inside of the refrigerator could be literally toast.

A fireproof safe would be a better option for physical copies and offsite backups of digital copies.

For on-site, I'd get a high-end document/data safe. Some of them swing open like a fridge, if he has a ritual he wants to preserve.

Also, some techie could rig up transparent off-site backups that are guaranteed not to cause the interruption/distraction that he goes to pains to avoid.

>He installed a towering fence, which partially obstructs the view, to protect his golden retriever Elsa from rattlesnakes.

How high is this fence? I feel like a 4-foot-high solid fence is more than plenty to keep rattlesnakes from jumping over. I'd be more worried about them burrowing under. Is it working?

I assume there's rattlesnakes in Orange County. Probably even Mojaves and those are one of the more venomous in the US. Then again, Orange County surely has plenty of antivenin for any venomous snakes in the area and an individual with a mansion wouldn't have trouble getting his animal to the vet quickly and could afford the treatment. Sounds like he's blocking his own view due to disordered thinking. It appears to be the point of the article, but man that guy's life is so negatively affected by his fears. I should feel bad for him, but I just can't.

Wait, rattlesnakes can JUMP?

If that's what you'd call the sort of vertical, but mostly lateral launch they do when striking. My point was more that they can only extend themselves so far up a vertical object before they just fall over. A solid 4-foot fence is plenty as far as most snakes trying to get over it. A 6-foot fence will defeat any snake headed in the upwards direction. Your biggest concern, should you be trying to exclude snakes, is that they burrow and it doesn't matter how high you build that fence if you don't sink it into the ground a couple few feet.

One of his books had the main character eating scrambled eggs seasoned with red bell pepper and basil. I tried it, and it was delicious.

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