Stephen King isn’t short on plaudits for his many diverse achievements, but fans with short memories may have forgotten that the author was an early adopter and champion of on-line publishing. Over cries of “fad” from many in print media, King years ago lent name-brand credibility to the e-book by releasing his unfinished novel THE PLANT and short tale RIDING THE BULLET as on-line exclusives. King’s story UR made its debut in glowing liquid crystal, and he recently granted visitors to his website a number of free downloadable chapters from an early version of UNDER THE DOME called THE CANNIBALS. That fearless, forward mindset earned King a 2000 Time magazine cover and feature article praising his vision, so it’s no surprise to see King continuing his Internet infatuation, with his new e-novella MILE 81 (Simon & Schuster) speeding across unwary computer screens everywhere.

With this tale offered so soon after the riled rattlesnake called FULL DARK, NO STARS, readers might be bracing themselves for something comparably harsh and dour. Instead, MILE 81 reads like a ricochet from King’s early short-fiction period, a time when he sold his terse supernatural thrillers to whichever magazine editor valued lurid shock over good taste. If not for the inclusion of modern touchstones like iPads and Justin Bieber, MILE 81 could easily tuck inside King’s 1985 collection SKELETON CREW and not disrupt the tenor of that classic book one smidgen.

The opening of MILE 81 sees a young boy named Pete exploring an abandoned highway rest stop in an effort to demonstrate his bravery to the neighborhood crew of preteen daredevils. As is almost always the case when King writes kids, Pete’s meanderings and entertaining inner monologues come across as perfectly authentic (Pete’s hilarious idea for a sequel to Bieber’s corn-syrup hit “Baby” is worth the story’s three-buck price tag by itself). Soon the story’s hammer drops in the form of a nondescript, mud-blotted station wagon appearing in the rest stop’s parking lot and simply waiting. A logjam of characters unwittingly present themselves to complicate things and, since King no longer dabbles much in the pool of traditional monsters that were a hallmark of his early days, MILE 81 should be celebrated as the day King took on the notion of the vehicular Venus Flytrap.

Yes, brain cells will need some quieting down as the whole thing threatens to sink under the silliness of the setup and a very questionable resolution, but just approach with Saturday-matinee good cheer and enjoy these retro King stylings as a diversion before his presumably weightier novel 11/22/63 hits store shelves in two months’ time (a short preview for that book is included after MILE 81 concludes).

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