Michael Sauers
What’s New & Updated May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020
Not a lot of new content this week but I was able to fill a small hole in my collection with the cassette version of City of Night, so I consider that a tick in the win column.
- Devoted UK HC photo
- Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein Book Two City of Night cassette image, length, and cover price
What’s New & Updates April 27, 2020
April 27, 2020
I’m trying to get more done but the current environment isn’t helping. But I did get two items added. Here’s hoping everyone is sating safe.
- Two promotional posters for What the Night Knows.
What’s New & Updated April 20, 2020
April 20, 2020
Only one new item this week but it’s another in the “just when you think you’ve found everything” category. In this case it’s a fourth appearance of Dean’s “Godzilla Versus Megadeth” which was reprinted in an Ohio concert venue’s promotional newspaper in July 1995. Go figure.
- Rock & Roll at the Newport appearance of “Godzilla Versus Medageth”
What’s New & Updated April 13, 2020
April 13, 2020
Another week and a handful of new content. New normal still isn’t normal but I’m trying to add something every day or two. This doesn’t mean I’m not researching and filing daily. Just the number of articles mentioning The Eyes of Darkness lately are adding about 10 items a day to my files. So, without further ado, this weeks additions & updates.
- Devoted CD Audiobook & Australian trade HC
- Elsewhere added to Appendix H
- Clip from Cursed Films containing the mask from The Funhouse film
- “The Horror in Novels” by John Coyne to Appendix G
- “Life’s Work” (Interview) to Appendix B
- Poisoned Pen Bookstore interview to Appendix B
Dean’s statement on his “prediction” of COVID-19
April 9, 2020
What’s New & Updated April 6, 2020
April 6, 2020
I’m slowly finding my new normal working from home so I’m starting to get some new content into the site. No promises on weekly updates but here’s one for now.
- Devoted Trade HC, MP3-CD, and Kindle details
- Elsewhere
- “Odds and Ends”
- “To My Faithful Readers”
- Useless News Spring 2020
Updates are on hiatus
March 16, 2020
Good morning everyone. My day job is at a public-service non-profit. While we’ve close our building, we’re keeping our staff employed by moving as much of our services as possible online. As a result, I’m completely focusing on this for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. This site’s not going anywhere, but please don’t expect any updates with any regularity.
Stay safe everyone!
Michael
What’s New & Updated March 9, 2020
March 9, 2020
This week has been nothing but Eyes of Darkness prediction work. From my extensive blog post debunking the whole thing, to just trying to archive all of the articles mentioning it. So,while there’s no official content updates from this past week, if you’d like to dive into the conspiracy theory, feel free to check out the several pages of bookmarks I’ve already archived.
The end-all be-all blog post debunking how Dean Koontz “predicted” the coronavirus
March 4, 2020
It would be impossible for me to send the following response to everyone tweeting that Dean “predicted” the coronavirus:
Nope. In 1981 version it was “Gorki-400” from Russia. Was not Whuan from China until 1996 revision. And images of 2020 date is from a Sylvia Browne book, not a Koontz book.
By ya know what? I’ve sent it to a heck of a lot of people. Trouble is, my little response doesn’t ever cover all of the claims presented and doesn’t give me a lot of room to back it up. So, henceforth, my new response tweet will be “nope” and a link to this page. Enjoy!
Claim: Dean predicted the corona virus in his 1981 book The Eyes of Darkness
A couple of base-level problems:
- Coronavirus is a family of viruses. SARS is a coronavirus. MERS is a coronavirus. Even some forms of the common cold. The current virus is COVID-19. So at best, he “predicted” COVID-19, not coronaviruses. (Way to start an argument Mr. Pedantic.)
- In the 1981 book The Eyes of Darkness by Leigh Nichols (yes a pseudonym of Dean’s) the virus is named “Gorki-400” and is from Russia. Russians are convenient bad guys in 1981 due to the existence of the Soviet Union. (Ah the simpler times of the Regan-era.)
- The original Twitter post that started all this used a photo of a vaguely current mass market paperback edition. (Can’t tell what printing the tweeter used but that edition was released in 1996 and was the “current” cover until 2008.) It’s obvious the author of that tweet saw the 1981 copyright date in a much more recent edition and thought “Hey! He wrote this is 1981! How prescient!”
Claim: Ok, it was changed from Gorki-400 to Wuhan-400 in the re-release under his own name in 1989?
Yes, the book was re-released under his own name by Dark Harvest in 1989. Guess what? Still “Gorki-400” in that edition. It wasn’t until the 1996 re-re-release that the name of the virus was changed to “Wuhan-400” and it’s origin moved to China. (The relevant Snopes article originally said “1989.” Later said it had changed “by 2008.” As of this writing it just points out that the Amazon.com preview that shows “Wuhan-400” is from a 2008 release.)
Claim: In The Eyes of Darkness Dean specified that a world-wide virus would happen in 2020.
More recent versions of the twitter post have added an additional photo of some text stating “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like virus will spread throughout the globe…” In no way do any of these re-tweets point out this this image is not from a page of any edition of The Eyes of Darkness, nor even of any Dean Koontz book. It’s a page from 2008’s End of Days by Sylvia Browne. I’ll let you read about her and her “predictions.” (I’ll wait.) Oh, and that’s just a few years after SARS (2003) so hell, I could have “predicted” it would happen again.
Claim: But “Wuhan-400.” “In around 2020.” 20 times 20 = 400
Nope. Not making this up. It’s out there. Score one for frickin’ numerology.
Claim: So he revised the book and wrote “Wuhan-400” in 1996. That’s still a 24-year-old prediction. What say you?
A few final points:
- Dean revised a whole bunch of his older novels in the mid 1990s.
- By 1996 the Soviet Union was no more so who’s the new “bad guy” for the story that would make sense at the time? China.
- The Wuhan Institute of Virology was founded in 1956. A minimal amount of research in 1995, even sans-internet, would have made that a good choice of a “source” within China.
Lastly, if you’re still not convinced by all of this it still couldn’t have been Dean who “predicted” it first. The Simpsons beat him by 3 years in 1993. Better yet, the film Akira beat that by another 5 years in 1988. I’ll let you decide.
Update 27 March 2020: Dean’s opinion on the matter…
What’s New & Updated March 2, 2020
March 2, 2020
In general I don’t list eBook editions unless there’s something unique about it such as it’s the first release. (The Book of Counted Sorrows anyone?) So since Devoted will be released only on the Kindle platform, will be an “in motion” title, and I figured out how to animate the cover on the site, it’s getting an entry.
- Devoted Kindle entry
- The Night Window PPBK
On another note, I’m sort of obsessing over the utter stupidity that is the “Dean predicted the coronavirus in 1981” conspiracy theory. I’m thinking about writing the ultimate blog post about it which would out do Snopes by several levels of detail. Should I so ya’all have something to point to, or should I just try to ignore it. Leave your thoughts here if you have an opinion.
What’s New & Updated February 24, 2020
February 24, 2020
You would think a four-day weekend would allow me to focus on this project a bit. Mix in babysitting a toddler for most of that weekend then no so much. So here’s what I could do this week. On the brighter site, The PPBK edition of The Night Window will be out on Tuesday so look for those details soon.
- Snopes article to The Eyes of Darkness – Revised DK
- TV Guide September 9-15, 2000 to Sole Survivor (TV)
Snopes says: Mostly False
February 19, 2020
Please, can we just stop with this nonsense now?
Claim
Author Dean Koontz predicted the 2020 new coronavirus outbreak in his 1981 novel “The Eyes of Darkness.”
Rating
Mostly False
What’s True
An image shows a genuine page from Dean Koontz’s novel “The Eyes of Darkness” containing the words “Wuhan-400.”
What’s False
However, Dean Koontz did not predict an outbreak of a new coronavirus. Other than the name, this fictional biological weapon has little in common with the virus that caused an outbreak in 2020.
Read the full article, which even talks about Gorki-400, @ Snopes.com
Whuan-400 a.k.a. Gorki-400
February 17, 2020
Read this post instead. It’s got a lot more detail.
The end-all be-all blog post debunking how Dean Koontz “predicted” the coronavirus
So yeah, I didn’t think I’d write another post about this wild conspiracy theory that Dean “accurately predicted” the coronavirus but here we are again. The reason I am is that folks are getting a simple basic fact wrong: The fact that Dean wrote about Wuhan-400 in 1981 when The Eyes of Darkness was originally published. Turns out, the virus in the book was originally from Russia and named Gorki-400. It wasn’t named Wuhan-400 until Dean revised the book in 1996. Here’s four examples, two of the original text, and two of the revised text.
What’s New & Updated February 17, 2020
February 17, 2020
Was hoping for a few more items this week but since there’s no mail today, we get just these two.
- “Great Art and Muppet Hatred,” Screamplays Limited Edition
- TV Guide June 30-July 6, 2001 to Black River (TV)
What’s New & Updated February 10, 2020
February 10, 2020
I want to start with another big shout out to Deena Warner of Deena Warner Design for all of the bug squashing she’s done over the past week. We think we’ve found them all, but if you see one, please report it ASAP and we’ll get it taken care of. (Be sure to check out her other amazing sites. Chances are you’ll recognize a site or two.)
As for content, I got my hands on a copy of Cursed! this week so updated its page along with a few more TV guides that arrived in the mail over that past few weeks. (Just two more of those to go.) This pretty much catches me up on a pile of odds & ends, so back to the Fanzines and Letters I go.
- Beyond the Cover with Special Guest #1 NYT Bestselling Author Dean Koontz to Appendix A
- Cursed! updated cover image and note regarding the publisher’s “comment”
- Firsts, October 2003 to The Key to Midnight (LN)
- Insanity by Dean Koontz to Appendix F
- John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch to Watchers (DK)
- Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines to Beastchild and “Temple of Sorrow”
- “Ten Years Ago: Dean Koontz” in Firsts, October 2003 to Appendix B
- TV Guide April 24-30, 1999 to Mr. Murder
- TV Guide October 3-9, 2004 to Ephemera
- TV Guide October 3-9, 2004 to Frankenstein
Beyond the Cover with Special Guest #1 NYT Bestselling Author Dean Koontz
February 10, 2020
1/20/2020
What more can you say about Dean Koontz? He’s one of the most prolific writers ever, and one of the most popular writers of the 20th and 21st Century. Dean has done almost everything a writer can do, but late in his career he decided it was time to do something different. Signing with Amazon for a novella series, that includes six stories that all roll together called “Nameless”. Amazon Prime members will get the books for FREE! Yep, you heard that right, FREE for Prime Members. We were lucky enough to be invited to Dean’s house and have a great three hour conversation with him. You will hear the the hour long interview we had with Dean, sitting in his office. The “Nameless” series consists of these six books: IN THE HEART OF THE FIRE, PHOTOGRAPHING THE DEAD, THE PRAYING MANTIS BRIDE, RED RAIN, THE MERCY OF SNAKES and MEMORIES OF TOMORROW.
Source: LaunchpadDM
Wuhan-400
February 10, 2020
This is all over Twitter. I give up, I can’t not post this…
The wait is nearly over
February 8, 2020
After nearly nine years, my lettered copy of Screamplays is on its way!
What’s New & Updated February 3, 2020
February 3, 2020
Well, the site was stable this week with just some minor bug squashing going on. If you see any PHP errors on a page, please drop me a line and we’ll get them dealt with ASAP. So, without further ado, here’s some new content for you.
- The Illustrated Book of Science Fiction Lists by Mike Ashley to “Cosimc Sin” & The Vision (DRK)
- An Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Walton to Beastchild (novella) & Beasthchild
- TV Guide, October 20-26, 1979 to CHiPs: Counterfeit
- TV Guide, September 29-October 5, 1990 to The Face of Fear (TV)
Mean Book Club: Relentless by Dean Koontz
January 30, 2020
Listen to “Relentless by Dean Koontz” on Spreaker.