Looking back it’s striking how period-specific Stephen King books were: Carrie was about the re-debut of fundamentalist...
Looking back it’s striking how period-specific Stephen King books were: Carrie was about the re-debut of fundamentalist Christianity in the culture AND PSI-enabled “gifted children” (the latter was also Firestarter); The Tommyknockers had a UFO MacGuffin; Cujo, Pet Sematary, and Children of the Corn were about yuppies from the “dangerous” city where you couldn’t assume marriages were forever anymore going to rural small-town America and realizing you couldn’t assume it was safe or wholesome either
oh yeah what was with all those psi power gifted kids books, I recall John Wyndham wrote a bunch of those
my thirdhand impression was that this was the result of New Spiritualist woo hounds having kids and devising an elaborate mythology for why their kids were slightly weird. like changelings except I guess more positive because these were yuppies with one or two children they were obsessed with
I’ve been waiting to see if the “indigo child” thing linked up with this memeplex at all but so far no takers. the whole subculture got eaten by the antivaxxer movement I think
as a child reading these books I confidently assumed they were geared towards me and the authors knew that 13 year olds love to read about other 13 year olds who can set things on fire with their minds