Thanks RD for the suggestion on this one. This is a novella that King wrote specifically for Amazon and the Kindle. Its essentially a scifi story set specifically in the Dark Tower universe (but I guess more generally its just Stephen's universe). Wesley is an English professor who, after a break up with his girlfriend ("Why don't you read off a computer like the rest of us"), decides to join the fray and buys one of these new fangled Kindle machines. But he doesn't get a normal one somehow. It has a secret menu that allows him to download books from famous authors from other universes; Poe wrote novels? Hemingway wrote a book about his dog? Shakespeare plays you've never heard of. For a bibliophile, the draw is intoxicating. But then in the best King way, the twist happens. He tells a couple friends about this device, and as they are exploring, they find a area that gives them news of these other worlds, not just books. It then becomes an issue of can you change time, and if you do, who's going to notice? First I thought it was a little ironic reading a story about a mysterious kindle ON a kindle, but that's the world we live in. I thought it was an excellent read and it makes me want to go back and reread some of the other interconnected works in the Dark Tower world (not so much the main series, I've read that enough, but the others that I've only read once way back in the day). ( )

Wonderful. Classic King. ( )

Nel complesso è un buon racconto, ai fan del Re farà piacere sentire parlare di Torre Nera e Uomini bassi in soprabito giallo. Ma mettiamoci in testa una cosa, il corso della storia non può essere cambiato. "Tutte le cose servono il Vettore". :) ( )

Ur reminds me of a Dad saying to a son, "All of all the opportunities you had in life and that's what you chose to do?" Well, at least he won the girl in the end, right? ( )

In UR, Wesley Smith decides to buy a Kindle after breaking up with his girlfriend - or rather, her walking out of his life. He purchases a couple of titles before exploring the Experimental option on the Main Menu. The usual stuff appears, but it's the UR Functions that catch his attention. Soon after, Wesley discovers several novels from writers like Hemingway that were never published and some that came to being after his death. Soon, realization sets in - this e-reader taps into alternate realities, providing its owner with archive newspapers from other URs and ultimately, future newspaper editions of the Wesley's UR.

The story's a great read, using a popular science fiction device with a hint of stories like The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper and stories like it - which is the one about the reader gets future obituaries only to die of a heart attack when he receives his? It's clear, though, that Stephen King has a some beef against technology. Which is cool, considering a man who keeps writing about all the messed up ways things can kill us. ( )