Firestarter

Firestarter explores government experiments and conspiratorial practices, two things under public scrutiny in the years preceding King’s composition of the novel. In 1975, and later in 1977, public attention was brought to programs the CIA had been conducting in secret that fell under the name of Project MK-Ultra. The ostensible purpose of these programs was to develop a pharmacological approach to interrogation. To this end several drugs, most notably LSD, were given to consenting and nonconsenting test subjects who were then subjected to various methods of physical and psychological torture. These tests were carried out on American and Canadian university campuses, CIA black sites, brothels, and a host of unwitting locations. They were conducted over the course of 20 years before the heightened scrutiny of the Watergate scandal propelled the CIA director to order most of the MK-Ultra files destroyed. Regardless, in 1975 the project was revealed to the American public, who were shocked to find out that their own government had been experimenting on them.

King suggests that knowledge of these programs was very common. Even Irv Manders, a rural farmer, is aware of their existence. In the novel, the government tries to suppress knowledge regardless of who gets hurt, a major element of tension. The paucity of evidence has left the program open to all manner of conspiratorial thinking. The MK-Ultra project has since become firmly rooted in the public consciousness, inspiring video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010, 2020) and underscoring the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016).

In the Afterword, King mentions that he was inspired by American studies that try to influence the “Kirlian aura.” This is the coupling of a belief in an aura—which somehow demonstrates a subject’s well-being or vitality—and the photographic process invented in Russia by researcher and investor Semyon Kirlian, which, to early observers, appeared to produce photographs of auras. Subsequent scientific studies have determined that these so-called auras actually result from moisture on the photographic plate combined with the moisture in the object.

However, for roughly a decade, the technology excited the passions of artists such as David Bowie and George Harrison, and even appeared as an image in the opening credits of the television series The X-Files (1993). An aura, or a metaphysical field that is manipulatable by special circumstance or ability, underlines King’s portrayal of how otherworldly powers operate.