10 Best Unfinished Stephen King Novels
6. Charlie
Charlie is an unpublished short story that owes a rather large debt to the 1958 film The Blob. The story concerns an asteroid miner who discovers a pink cube in the course of his search. A black substance comes out of the cube and begins to chase the miner back to his hut. Once there, it breaches the airlock and consumes him.
This is a very familiar story outline to anyone familiar with the Steve McQueen classic (later remade in 1988 by Chuck Russell). In the '58 version, the Blob arrives on Earth via a meteor that crashes down. It is prodded by an unsuspecting farmer, releasing the Blob within.
It then proceeds to consume him, and many others in the town, growing all the while, until McQueen realises that it is vulnerable to cold. This allows them to defeat the creature, cooling it long enough for it to be transported to, and dumped in, the Arctic. Effectively, this serves as something of a spiritual prequel to The Thing.
King has often spoken of his great love for horror cinema, particularly that of the time in which he was growing up - The Blob falls very definitely into that time period. Perhaps he knew that Charlie was a little too on the nose to get away with as an independant story, but it certainly makes for a loving tribute to the B-movies of his childhood.