Lost Boys (novel)

Infobox Book |
name = Lost Boys
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Orson Scott Card
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Horror
publisher = HarperCollins
pub_date = 1992
english_pub_date =
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages = 448 pp
isbn = ISBN 0-060-16693-2
oclc =
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Lost Boys" (1992) is the first horror novel and short story by author Orson Scott Card.

Plot summary of novel

The novel, set in 1983, revolves around a game programmer and his family. His claim to fame is a fictional Atari computer game called "Hacker Snack". Step Fletcher, a devout Mormon, moves his pregnant wife DeAnne and their three children (Stevie (8), Robbie (4) and Elizabeth (a toddler)) from Indiana to North Carolina so he can start a new job as a technical writer. Fletcher must deal with several unpleasant situations. His manager, Dickie Northranger, is a greedy, petty and manipulative man who does everything he can to undermine Step's position. Glass, a young programmer at work is very friendly towards Step, always offering to baby sit his kids. Meanwhile, his new house is periodically invaded by hordes of different types of insects. Bappy, the elderly owner of the Fletcher's rented house, is on hand to clear the infestation.

Stevie's teacher hates him and Stevie becomes withdrawn. Step confronts the teacher and she leaves, but Stevie becomes even more withdrawn, playing only with his imaginary friends in the garden and on his computer. As Stevie's group of imaginary friends, who are all boys, grows, his parents become increasingly concerned and eventually take him to a psychiatrist, against their better judgment. Then they see a newspaper article about young boys who are disappearing. The names of Stevie's imaginary friends are exactly the same as the missing children, except that Stevie also knows the boys' nicknames. They notify the police, who come over to the house and question Stevie briefly, but they left with little to go on other than the confirmation that the boys are indeed dead, as opposed to simply missing. Step, who is a computer games expert, notices that the computer game that Stevie uses to play with his imaginary friends has graphics that are way beyond anything that could actually run on the computer but fails to investigate further.

At a company outing, Glass manages to get Elizabeth on her own and Step, who has suspected Glass of being a child molester for some time, yet has not told his wife, just manages to rescue his daughter in time.

At the end of the novel, Stevie figures out that it is Bappy who has been kidnapping, molesting and killing the lost boys and confronts him. Because of this, Stevie is murdered and hidden in the crawlspace beneath the Fletchers' house—with all of the other missing children. Stevie's spirit manages to appear to his family and helps all of the others to do so as well. The other boys' parents are called, and each boy says goodbye and then disappears. The murderer is arrested, and the bodies of the boys are removed from under the house. Stevie says goodbye to his family and vanishes as well.

hort story

Like many of Card's works, the novel is an expansion of a short story, his "Lost Boys", which can be found in his short story compilation "Maps in a Mirror". In the short story version, Card assumes Fletcher's role as the protagonist. Some minor plot details are different as well in this story, such as the protagonist's occupation (an editor for a computer game magazine) and the story is told from a first-person perspective instead of the novel's third-person perspective. Though he refers to many real events (such as his writing of "Ender's Game"), the short story is also completely fictional. Because of his use of himself and his real occupation, real locations and real people, Card had to append a special note stating that the story is fictitious.

Card has stated that this book was one of his hardest to write [cite web|url=http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue328/interview.html|title=There's no end to the writing game for the prolific Orson Scott Card|author=Ryan Timothy Grable|publisher=scifi.com|first=Ryan|last=Grable] due to the emotional nature of the subject material. This comes across in the writing, widely regarded by those who have read it as some of his most intense, personal writing [cite web|url=http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/10/19/123204.php|title=Lost Boys Book Review|author=Ashok K. Banker|published=blogcritics.org|first=Ashok|last=Banker] .

Charges of plagiarism

Card has claimed that many elements of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" were copied from "Lost Boys", although he realized that enough had been changed that there was no point in suing. [cite web|url=http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/reviews/everything/2004-08-08.shtml|title=Infringement, Watts, Plum, Ringworld, and Even More Books|author=Orson Scott Card|publisher=Hatrack River|first=Card|last=Orson]

The 2007 Spanish movie "The Orphanage" also has a very similar plot.

The 30th episode of Stargate Atlantis which premiered on September 23, 2005 is named "The Lost Boys".

References

ee also

*List of books portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors
*List of works by Orson Scott Card
*Orson Scott Card

External links

* [http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/lostboys.shtml About the novel "Lost Boys" from Card's website]