Is “The End Times” a novel? A newspaper? An inventive collaboration between two titans of genre fiction? All of the above.
Northfield writer and filmmaker Benjamin Percy will collaborate with Stephen King on “The End Times,” a serialized novel set after a pandemic. Local book lovers may remember that Percy interviewed the horror maestro and “Carrie” author on stage in Minneapolis, as part of the Loft Literary Center’s 2019 Wordplay festival. The protagonist of “The End Times,” which Percy has said will pay tribute to the power of reporting, is a Minnesota woman who restarts a printing press. She tries to keep her grieving fellow citizens informed as they pick up the pieces.
Renaissance man Percy — whose work includes novels such as “The Dead Lands,” the film “Summering” and writing Wolverine comics for Marvel — has written that “The End Times” was conceived as an experiment and as a relief from viewing stories on screens. That’s why it will begin appearing in November, in monthly installments and in the form of a fictional newspaper called the End Times. Although they’re uncommon today, serialized novels used to be huge. Most of Charles Dickens’ novels appeared in installments, as did Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” books and Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
Physical copies of “The End Times” are already sold out (copies will be printed in the offices of the Ortonville Independent) but readers can sign up for a digital version at badhandbooks.com. Digital subscribers will receive a discount on the book, when it’s eventually published. A portion of the proceeds from digital subscriptions will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union.
