The Tommyknockers

The Tommyknockers is a 1987 horror novel by Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is more of an excursion into the realm of science fiction, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.

In his autobiography, On Writing, King attributes the basic premise to the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft. It also draws fairly obvious parallels with the classic 1956 movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers & the 1959 novelette The Big Front Yard by Clifford Simak. King wrote the book during a period of acknowledged substance abuse & has written that he realized later on that the novel was a metaphor for that addiction.

The writer & critic Kim Newman has cited another influence on the novel, saying that in it King had "more or less rewritten Quatermass & the Pit," a 1950s BBC television science-fiction serial. This influence was also picked up on in The Times newspaper's review of the book on its release.