UR (Stephen King)
UR is a novel by Stephen King from 2009, which he wrote exclusively for the Amazon Kindle electronic reader .
Go to content
English professor Wesley Smith buys such a device in order to familiarize himself with the new technology and to defy his ex-girlfriend, who thinks it is too old-fashioned. But Wesley's Kindle is different from the start: It is pink - although, according to official information, the device is only available in white. It also has a strange function called the “UR function”.
Wesley quickly finds out incredible things: his Kindle can log into parallel worlds and track down works there that were never written here, in our world. For example, he stumbles upon a Hemingway novel written in a universe where the writer lived longer than ours.
After the initial enthusiasm, however, Wesley's fascination gives way to deep dismay when he realizes that his Kindle can do even more: It features newspaper articles from the future - and suddenly Wesley finds himself on a mission to save the life of his ex-girlfriend.
Release history
Almost 3 weeks after publication, the number of downloads reached the five-digit range. Amazon refuses to publish exact figures on Kindle or individual e-books. A revised version of the novella was published in Stephen King's anthology, Bazaar of Bad Dreams .
Link to other works by King
- The main character meets the "low men" from King's novel Atlantis .
- By looking at parallel worlds, there are further clear references to the Dark Tower cycle ; the dark tower itself is specifically mentioned.
- King had already used a similar motif in the short story "Word Computer of the Gods".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detailed table of contents in KingWiki
- ↑ News on liljas-library