Lost Boys
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- For other uses see Lost Boys (disambiguation)
Lost Boys is a 1992 novel and short story by Orson Scott Card set in the 1980s.
Contents |
[edit] Novel
The novel revolves around a former game programmer and his family. His claim to fame is a fictional Atari game called Hacker Snack. Step Fletcher, a devout Mormon, moves his pregnant wife DeAnne and their three children (Stevie (8), Robbie (4) and Elizabeth (toddler)) from Indiana to North Carolina so he can start a new job as a technical writer. Fletcher must deal with several unpleasant situations. His boss is greedy and manipulative, Stevie's teacher hates the boy, and one of his co-workers is a pedophile. Meanwhile, his new house is periodically being invaded by hordes of insects, and his son, Stevie becomes withdrawn, playing only with his imaginary friends. As Stevie's group of friends grows, his parents become increasingly concerned and eventually take him to a psychologist, against their better judgment. Then they see a newspaper article about young boys who are disappearing. The names of Stevie's imaginary friends are the same as the missing children.
Major spoiler: At the end of the novel, Stevie figures out who has been kidnapping and killing the children and confronts the man. Because of this, Stevie is murdered and hidden in the crawlspace beneath the Fletchers' house—with all of the other missing children. Stevie's spirit manages to appear to his family and helps all of the others to do so as well. The other boys' parents are called, and each one says goodbye and disappears. The murderer is arrested, and the bodies of the boys are removed from under the house. Stevie says goodbye to his family and vanishes as well.
[edit] Short Story
Like many of Card's works, the novel is an expansion of the short story "Lost Boys" which can be found in his short story compilation Maps in a Mirror. In the short story version, Card assumes Fletcher's role as the protagonist. Some minor plot details are different as well in this story, such as the protagonist's occupation (an editor for a computer game magazine) and the story is told from a first-person perspective instead of the novel's third-person perspective. Though he refers to many real events (such as his writing of Ender's Game), the short story is also completely fictional. Because of his use of himself and his real occupation, real locations and real people, Card had to append a special note stating that the story is fictitious.
Card has stated that this book was one of his hardest to write [1] due to the emotional nature of the subject material. This comes across in the writing, widely regarded by those who have read it as some of his most intense, personal writing [2].
[edit] References
- ^ Grable, Ryan. There's no end to the writing game for the prolific Orson Scott Card. scifi.com.
- ^ Banker, Ashok. Lost Boys Book Review.
