Firestarter is a 1980 novel by Stephen King. It's about a 7-year-old girl named Charlene Roberta McGee (she goes by Charlie), who can start fires just by thinking about it, or if she's feeling particularly upset; she also has a hint of precognition and a fair amount of telekinesis. Her father, Andy, has an ability he calls the 'push', allowing him to influence people; and her mother, Vicky, has a very limited form of telekinesis, which only extends to closing doors and turning off the television from across the room.They have those abilities because Andy and Vicky participated in an experiment sponsored by a government organization called The Shop during their college days; they were told that there was a 50% chance they would be injected with a small dose of harmless hallucinogenic drug and a 50% chance of being injected with water. It was actually an incredibly dangerous Psycho Serum, which gave them - and all the other participants in the test - paranormal abilities. Out of these other people, all but 3 are either dead or in a mental asylum of some sort. (The third one lost his abilities and is living a normal life.)The agents of the Shop kept the McGees under surveillance, eventually killing Vicky and kidnapping Charlie. However, Andy freed her, using his 'mind domination' ability. At the beginning of the book, Charlie and her father are on the run from the Shop, whose members want to use Charlie's power to "influence" world leaders.Also made into a movie of the same name in 1984, starring Drew Barrymore as Charlie, David Keith as Andy, George C. Scott as Rainbird, Martin Sheen as Hollister and Heather Locklear as Vicky. There was a Contested Sequel sometime later on titled Firestarter 2: Rekindled in 2002.Julia Ecklar has written and recorded a song based on the novel, called "Daddy's Little Girl."Referenced by the Neverwinter Nights 2 mod saga Dark Waters with an incident in the second chapter involving a girl about to be burned at the stake for starting fires.
This book has examples of:
Affably Evil: Rainbird gains Charlie's trust by posing as a friendly janitor.
Cap Hollister often comes across as a kind, elderly gentleman.
All Psychology Is Freudian: Wanless' explanation of Charlie's relationship with her father, and how the McGees controlled her ability by creating a complex.
Arcadian Interlude: Andy and Charlie have a short break from being chased by the Shop when they stop for a big country lunch at Irv and Norma Manders' farm. Charlie returns alone after the death of her father and the destruction of the Shop.
Although the weather is rough, the winter Andy and Charlie spend hiding out at his grandfather's cottage in Vermont is on the whole peaceful and restorative.
Blackmail: Rainbird blackmails Captain Hollister into both letting him live (Hollister want's him to have an "accident" after he captures Charlie) and letting him get close to Charlie, by revealing he has gathered enough incrimidating evidence to have the Shop closed down and Captain Hollister put behind bars for the rest of his life.
Blessed with Suck: Andy's powers give him pain and minor brain hemorrhages when he uses them; Charlie's does not, but she has a hard time controlling them (and, of course, they are chased because of them).
Bullying a Dragon: The government knows how powerful Charlie and Andy are, or have the potential to be, so what do they do? Give them all sorts of reasons to hate the government!
Cement Shoes: The subjects for the Lot Six experiment were chosen from people with no living relatives, so there would be fewer problems if they die. The Shop still had to kill the godfather of one of the victims, who had been determined to find out the truth of what had happened to his godson. Rather than getting to the bottom of what happened, the only place he wound up getting to was "the bottom of the Baltimore Trench, where he presumably still was, with two cement blocks tied around whatever remained of his legs."
Creepy Crossdresser: Dr. Pynchot who has secretly enjoyed dressing up in women's underwear since his college days.
Daddy's Girl: Charlie (though it's because her mother is killed).
Death Seeker: Rainbird pretty much. The root of his obsession with Charlie.
Does Not Like Shoes: Rainbird goes barefoot when he's alone. He's fascinated with shoes and has a whole collection of them; he just doesn't like wearing them.
Dramatic Chase Opening: The book starts with Andy and Charlie chased by the Shop agents in New York.
Driven to Suicide: Several participants of the Lot Six experiment. Also, Dr. Pynchot (in the book) who commits suicide by shoving his arm into the garbage disposal while it's running, after Andy triggered an 'echo' in his mind.
Empty Promise: After Charlie finds out that her mother is dead, Andy tells her that everything will be all right, while knowing perfectly well that nothing is ever all right.
Even Evil Has Standards: Cap Hollister on a number of occasions. He is disgusted when Dr. Wanless tells him about how his brother burned his child's hand with a match to stop him from playing with matches and about an experiment that tried to convince participants to wet their pants. He is also horrified when he mistakenly thinks Rainbird wants to rape Charlie and loathes Rainbird's enthusiasm about killing her.
Fate Worse Than Death / Cool and Unusual Punishment: When Andy and Charlie escape from the Shop the first time he puts one of the agents responsible for Vicky's death in a coma, and permanently blinds the other one.
And by that, we mean he mindrapes him into "knowing" he's blind.
Eye Scream: One of the participants in the Lot Six experiment goes insane and claws out his own eyes.
Fingore: The Shop agents pulled some of Vicky's fingernails out before killing her to get her to tell where Charlie was.
Gilded Cage: When Charlie and her father Andy get kidnapped by the Shop they are given attractive living quarters. Andy notes however that his apartment has no inside handle.
Heroic RROD: Andy eventually has a stroke because he overuses his power.
Hypno Fool: The Shop agent that Andy puts into a coma. He wakes up after six months, but from that moment on, everytime somebody mentions the word "sleep" in his presence, he will fall into a deep slumber again that usually lasts for four hours to a day.
I Love the Dead: When Andy temporarily gains telepathic powers during the Lot Six experiment, he reads the mind of one of the Shop agents present, and learns that he killed four people and raped one of the bodies.
Immune to Bullets: At the end, Charlie reaches this; her powers become fast and strong enough to boil bullets before reaching her.
In Medias Res: The novel starts with Andy and Charlie escaping from the agents of the Shop. Their backstory is told in parts in Andy's flashbacks.
Knockout Ambush: The Shop agents capture Andy and Charlie this way. Charlie is shot by Rainbird with a tranquilizer dart from long range, and Andy, distraught over this, is easily taken out from short range.
Lamarck Was Right: Andy and Vicky gain mental domination powers and telekinesis, respectively, from a drug given to them in an experiment. Their daughter is born with telekinesis and pyrokinesis as a result. This is Hand Waved when the father speculates that the drug must have affected their DNA. King mentioned afterwards that he never liked that explanation, preferring stories where supernatural things just happen, and are never explained.
Mad Scientist: Dr. Wanless. Lampshaded when Andy's friend compares him to Dr. Cyclops.
Magical Defibrillator: Averted; Lot Six causes a heart attack for one of the participants of the experiment. They use a defibrillator on him, but he dies anyway.
Magical Native American: A rare example of subversion. Rainbird's death-oriented mysticism makes him terrifying and dangerous rather than understanding and helpful.
No Control Group: The participants of the Lot Six experiment are told that half of them will only be injected with distilled water in a double-blind test. Actually, everyone gets Lot Six.
No Conservation of Energy: Lampshaded. In an interdepartmental memo, a Shop scientist writes that they have no idea where the heat Charlie is producing is coming from. "Figure that one out and you've got the Nobel Prize in your hip pocket!"
No Sell: When Andy first describes his powers, he makes it clear that his "push" does not work on everybody. How effective it will be depends on a persons ethnicity (Caucasians are easy to manipulate, while Asians are very hard), age (the older a person is, the harder it becomes to manipulate their mind), and intelligence (intelligent people are the easiest to manipulate, while very dumb or even insane people are immune to the push).
One-Dimensional Thinking: Subverted. Three men try and run away from a line of fire at the climax. It seems to be played straight until two of them try changing direction. Possibly double subverted when the fire just splits in three and follows them anyway.
One Girl Army: Charlie, as the arrogant idiots of The Shop found out the hard way.
Mistaken For Pedophile: Cap in the book wrongly assumes Rainbird wants to rape Charlie when he says he plans to know her "intimately." Rainbird's intentions towards Charlie are murkier in the movie, however.
The Peter Principle: Lampshaded by Rainbird in reference to Patrick Hockstetter, one of the shop doctors in charge of Andy and Charlie. When summoned back to the shop one night for an emergency involving Charlie, Hockstetter is mainly peeved that he was interrupted while watching a James Bond film.
Pineal Weirdness: An acceptable variation. The extrasensory powers induced by Lot Six are connected to changes this drug creates in the pituitary gland. Dr. Wanless says that if the soul exists, it is probably located in this gland.
Psychic Assisted Suicide: Cap thinks that the Shop could use Andy's power for that: "Imagine him getting close enough to that pinko Ted Kennedy to suggest in a low voice of utter conviction that suicide was the best answer."
Psychic Nosebleed / Deadly Nosebleed: In the film, Andy gets one of these whenever he uses his power (in the book, he has terrible headaches).
Mind Over Matter - Charlie's mother, Vicky, has some limited powers of telekinesis. Charlie also has this power; she uses it to get change from payphones.
Telepathy - Andy and Vicky could converse without talking when they were under the effect of Lot Six (though not later). Charlie also has limited telepathic powers.
Psycho for Hire: Rainbird. He kills people because he's obsessed with death. From the money he receives for it, he mostly buys shoes that he never wears.
Psycho Psychologist: Dr. Pynchot who grins too much and gets Andy hooked on Thorazine. He also suggests torturing Andy with electric shocks in front of Charlie to convince her to start lighting fires.
Psycho Serum: Lot Six, the experimental substance given to 12 college students, including Charlie's parents, in hopes of boosting their ESP abilities. Most of the participants didn't live very long afterward.
Puberty Superpower: Not precisely, but it's hinted that the psychic powers are linked to the pituitary gland, which goes nuts at puberty. Charlie is already extremely powerful, and she's prepubescent. At the end she reflects that someday she might be able to affect the sun itself.
At least some of the Shop's scientists think that the pituitary gland is the key to the powers, and during puberty they fear Charlie will literally be able to destroy the world at will.
Race Lift: Rainbird in the novel is Native American. In the movie, he's played by George C. Scott.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Charlie burns down every building belonging to the Shop, and kills Rainbird, Dr. Pynchot and pretty much every agent in her line of sight after her father dies.
The So-Called Coward: The Shop continually underestimates Andy, regarding him as an outclassed English professor.
Tomboyish Name: Charlene's nickname "Charlie". Also her alias "Bobbi" used by the kind-hearted farmer Irv Manders.
Too Dumb to Live: You have a girl who you know can start fires — BIG honkin' fires — just with her mind. Wouldn't it be a lot better to, oh, be nice to her?
Rainbird once muses how stupid the Shop's agents are, comparing them to thieves who he had heard of. They blew a safe, destroying all the money in it because they used too much explosive. "The Shop, like the FBI and CIA, had a long history of killing the money. If you can't get what you want with foreign aid, go in there with some Thompsons and gelignite and assassinate the bastard. Put some cyanide gas in Castro's cigars. It was crazy, but you couldn't tell them that. All they could see where RESULTS, glittering and blinking like some mythical Vegas jackpot. So they killed the money and stood there with a bunch of useless green scraps sifting through their fingers and wondered what the hell had happened."
The movie finale definitely counts. After she puts up a bulletproof heat shield and absolutely destroys the first two or three agents that try to shoot her, you'd think that the rest of them would just get the hell out of there, but no, they keep right on marching up and trying to shoot her, and keep right on getting fried.
Transvestite: Dr. Pynchot returns to being one of these in the book, as a side effect of being "pushed" by Andy.
Villainous Breakdown: Captain Hollister receives an awful side-effect of Andy's powers, heightening his love for golf and fear of snakes, to the point that they're pretty much the only things he can think of. When Andy and Charlie finally meet, he believes he finds a snake in the barn and screams loudly in terror. This leads to the complete and utter destruction of the compound, and the deaths of himself, Andy, Rainbird, and countless Shop employees.
Villains Out Shopping: Rainbird's home has entire rooms full of shoes that he collects during his travels.
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