Dean R. Koontz Is A Hack (Part 3 of 5)

And I say that in full acknowledgement of his work ethic and his dedication.

What he lacks in skill and talent he compensates for in hard work and effort.

And being lucky enough to have a last name that starts with a K.

Koontz knocked around popular fiction from the mid-1960s, writing sci-fi / fantasy / horror / gothic romance / generic sleaze under a variety of pen names (he denies the sleaze today now that he’s a big and important New York Times best-selling author, but back in 1972 he wrote a book on how to write popular fiction in which he acknowledges writing sleaze and gives advice on how to do it so who are we to believe, him or our lying eyes?).  Professionally and critically, readers regarded him as a hack.  Not as bad as Lionel Fanthorpe, perhaps, but certainly a lower tier writer, someone who’s latest book you grabbed when you were jonesing for a particular genre and none too particular about the quality.

Then in 1974 Stephen King’s Carrie came out and the following year Salem’s Lot and Koontz’ agent asked if he had any horror novels available and Koontz said he had a whole bunch whose rights reverted back to him and they found a publisher who put those old books back in print in a cover format identical to the cover format used by Stephen King’s paperback publisher and when Stephen King fans came to the bookstore to look for any new Stephen King books who did they find sitting right beside him on the shelf?

Dean R. Koontz.

Koontz managed to keep that career spike going by hard work and dedicated effort but not from an appreciable increase in skill.

Nonetheless, more power to him for being willing to do the work.

But if AI were available in 1974-75, King would have been flanked by dozens of generic horror novels bearing pen names like Kincade and Kinley.

Now, to be fair let me define what I mean by a “hack.”  A hack is someone with enough of a skill set to generate acceptable soulless mediocrity.

I worked with a lot of hacks in TV animation, guys and gals just in it for the money, writing to order, revealing not one whit of their own personalities in the process (admittedly some of them lacked any personality).

They could be called living, breathing large language models.  They could ape what others did and usually could mix and match two or more sources to mask their unoriginality, but they made product, not art.

And for the studios and networks they worked for -- soulless entities who would (and did) promote gladiatorial combat if it boosted their profits -- the hacks looked good enough.

Some of us, however, were genuinely creative writers.

We were the problem children.

The hacks could deliver X number of pages in Y number of days and the studios knew they could get an acceptable mediocre episode out of it, something good enough to keep viewers from turning the channel, just good enough to keep them in the habit of watching that particular show week after week.

The creative writers?

Story editor Michael Reaves and I once got into a screaming argument with Fred Silverman over how to destroy a magnetic monster in an episode I wrote. 

Silverman wanted the monster dumped in a glacier.

No, no, no, Michael and I said.  Magnets get stronger when you freeze them.  Stick to the original script and dump it in a volcano.  Heat destroys magnetism.

Silverman insisted on the glacier.

We insisted on the volcano.

Silverman eventually won because he carried the power to get whatever he wanted no matter how stupid, but we went down swinging.

A hack would simply jot down “change volcano to glacier” and do what they were told.

Why fight over a trivial point like this?

Because Michael and I spent our lives trying to figure out the best way of telling a story.

And one of the best things one can do as a creator is not put anything in your work that rings false (exceptions for deliberate jokes / satires / etc.).

It mattered to us that our Saturday morning audience get stories that regardless of how fanciful, nonetheless remained grounded in truth and facts.

You get the chutzpah to stand up to the former head of ABC and NBC and current guy who signs your paycheck by spending a lifetime working at your craft, not churning out product.

© Buzz Dixon