Weird Fic Picks - Gordon Houston

In today's Weird Fic Picks, we hear from Gordon - who brilliantly plays Gareth in Chapter 4 and the Animatronic Pig in Chapter 10 - as he talks to us about one of his favourite authors, Stephen King, and his recent work, The Institute. 

Transcript:

Hello! My name is Gordon. I play the roles of Gareth and the Chitterling’s Chapel Animatronic Pig in The Silt Verses.

And welcome to Weird Fic Picks, a Patreon-exclusive series where the cast and crew share some of their favourite stories from horror, science fiction and dark fantasy.

Today I would like to talk about my favourite author - and that is Stephen King. I think that there is a reason he is so popular, I think he is a fantastic writer...he fairly churns them out, actually...quite a few books every year, different stories in different genres.

And my favourite book full-stop is one of his, actually, which is The Green Mile. One of his original books. Not a lot of people know that he wrote The Green Mile, and he wrote it in five parts.

His publisher wanted him to emulate the style of classical authors like Charles Dickens who used to release books in parts over a series of months or weeks, and Stephen King wrote the book in five different parts.

He...as far as I know...did not really know what was going to happen in each part as he wrote it. He knew the general story and where it was going to start and where it was going to end, but he did not know what was going to happen in each part.

So he was discovering as he was writing, and it just means that when you buy the full collection, the whole thing is just cliffhanger after cliffhanger. Which just keeps you engaged and reading.

I like a lot of Stephen King’s books. The Shining is really good. Salem’s Lot. Needful Things is another brilliant book that not an awful lot of people know about.

But today I would like to recommend to you one of his most recent novels, that came out in September 2019, and that is The Institute.

(I’m going to keep this wee chat spoiler-free so that you can go out and read it yourself.)

Very early on in The Institute - and this isn’t a spoiler, this is in the blurb - a group of intruders break into twelve-year-old Luke Ellis’ home, murder his parents and bundle him into the back of a black SUV.

And he wakes up at the Institute, in a room that looks exactly like his room at home, except he can’t look out of the windows. And when he tries to leave his room, he finds himself in a very clinical-looking corridor, and there are a lot of other children there with him. They all seem to get tested on, they get tokens to the vending machine, but they’re not allowed to leave…

And it’s just a great story. The intrigue of - what is the Institute? Why have these children been chosen? The relationships that develop between the children. The characters are just wonderfully written, and I would describe it as a page-turner. It was very engaging to read, and the characters are very endearing - I did find myself getting attached to the characters and rooting for the characters, which is good.

And the finale gets your heart racing! Those of you who have read Stephen King before know that he does include a supernatural element in an awful lot of his books. He’s known for writing horror, but even in his more thriller/crime novels, every now and then a supernatural element gets dropped in there, and this book is no different. The intrigue and mystery of what the Institute is about is just really interesting and engaging, and...yeah, I’d recommend that you read that!

I don’t actually want to say an awful lot, in case I spoil the story. But if that small blurb was enough to grab you, I urge you to go and pick that book up and give it a read.

Obviously the book involves children in quite tense and dire circumstances at points, so if that isn’t for you then maybe this isn’t the book for you, but it is a great action-packed mysterious supernatural book, involving these children and what they are capable of.

It’s a great read! Pick it up!

So yeah, I hope that has given you a taste of what The Institute is about and will make you consider picking The Institute up and giving it a read.

I don’t think you will regret it at all.

And thank you for listening to me ramble on, and thank you for listening to Weird Fic Picks!