The Institute

AUTHOR’S NOTE

A few words if you please, Constant Reader, about Russ Dorr.

I met him over forty years ago—well over—in the town of Bridgton, Maine, where he was the single physicians’ assistant in the three-doc medical center. He saw to most of my family’s minor medical problems, everything from stomach flu to the kids’ ear infections. His standard witticism for fever was clear liquids—“just gin and vodka.” He asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I wrote novels and short stories, mostly scary ones about psychic phenomena, vampires, and other assorted monsters.

“Sorry, I don’t read stuff like that,” he said, neither of us knowing that he would eventually read everything I wrote, usually in manuscript and often while various works were in progress. Other than my wife, he was the only one who saw my fiction before it was fully dressed and ready for its close-up.

I began to ask him questions, first about medical matters. Russ was the one who told me about how the flu changes from year to year, making each new vaccine obsolete (that was for The Stand ). He gave me a list of exercises to keep the muscles of comatose patients from wasting away (that was for The Dead Zone). He patiently explained how animals contracted rabies, and how the disease progressed (for Cujo).

His remit gradually expanded, and when he retired from medicine, he became my full-time research assistant. We visited the Texas School Book Depository together for 11/22/63—a book I literally could not have written without him—and while I absorbed the gestalt of the place (looking for ghosts… and finding them), Russ took pictures and made measurements. When we went to the Texas Theatre, where Lee Harvey Oswald was captured, it was Russ who asked what was playing that day (a double feature consisting of Cry of Battle and War is Hell ).

On Under the Dome he gathered reams of information about the micro ecosystem I was trying to create, from the capacity of electricity generators to how long food supplies might last, but the thing he was most proud of came when I asked if he could think of an air supply for my characters—something like SCUBA tanks—that would last for five minutes or so. It was for the climax of the book, and I was stumped. So was Russ, until he was stuck in traffic one day, and took a good look at the cars all around him.

“Tires,” he told me. “Tires have air in them. It would be stale and nasty-tasting, but it would be breathable.” And so, dear readers, tires it was.

Russ’s fingerprints are all over the book you have just read, from the BDNF tests for newborns (yes, it’s a real thing, only a bit fictionalized), to how poison gas could be created from common household products (don’t try this at home, kids). He vetted every line and fact, helping me toward what has always been my goal: making the impossible plausible. He was a big, blond, broad-shouldered man who loved a joke and a beer and shooting off bottle rockets on the Fourth of July. He raised two wonderful daughters and saw his wife through her final lingering illness. We worked together, but he was also my friend. We were simpatico. Never had a single argument.

Russ died of kidney failure in the fall of 2018, and I miss him like hell. Sure, when I need information (lately it’s been elevators and first-generation iPhones), but a lot more when I forget he’s gone and think, “Hey, I should give Russ a call or drop him an email, ask what’s going on.” This book is dedicated to my grandsons, because it’s mostly about kids, but it’s Russ I’m thinking about as I put it to bed. It’s very hard to let old friends go.

I miss you, buddy.

Before I quit, Constant Reader, I should thank the usual suspects: Chuck Verrill, my agent; Chris Lotts, who deals with foreign rights and found a dozen different ways to say Do you hear me; Rand Holsten, who does movie deals (lately there’s been a lot of them); and Katie Monaghan, who handles publicity for Scribner. And a huge thank-you to Nan Graham, who edited a book that’s full of many moving parts, parallel timelines, and dozens of characters. She made it a better book. I also need to thank Marsha DeFilippo, Julie Eugley, and Barbara MacIntyre, who take the calls, make the appointments, and give me those vital hours I use each day to write.

Last but hardly least, thanks to my kids—Naomi, Joe, and Owen—and to my wife. If I may borrow from George R. R. Martin, she is my sun and stars.