The Lawnmower Man
"The Lawnmower Man" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the May 1975 issue of Cavalier and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
Plot summary
One summer, Harold Parkette is in need of a new lawn mowing service. The summer before, a neighbor's cat was accidentally killed when another neighbor's dog chased it under the mower. Harold has been putting off hiring new help for the summer, but when he sees an ad for a mowing service he calls. A van reading "Pastoral Greenery" soon pulls up to Parkette's home. The man working for the service, a hairy, pot-bellied fellow, is shown the overgrown back lawn and is hired. Harold is enjoying a rest as he reads the paper, wondering about the lawnmower man mentioning Circe, when he hears the lawnmower outside. Startled, he races to the back porch and sees the lawnmower running by itself and the naked lawnmower man following it on all fours and eating the grass. The lawnmower seemingly deliberately chases and kills a mole and Harold faints.
The Lawnmower Man (video game)
The Lawnmower Man is a video game based on the 1992 film of the same name. The game was released/published in Japan by Coconuts Japan under the title Virtual Wars (バーチャル ウォーズ, Bācharu Uōzu).
Plot
Dr. Lawrence Angelo is a scientist working for Virtual Space Industries (VSI) in "Project 5", a secret research facility that attempts to increase the intelligence of primates using psychotropic drugs and virtual reality (VR) training. Dr. Angelo is reluctant to use the research for military purposes, and after one of the chimps escapes and shoots a guard, Dr. Angelo is given a forced vacation. While taking notes on the need for experiment with a human subject, he discovers Job Smith (Jeff Fahey), a man with an intellectual disability who makes his living by doing odd jobs such as mowing the grass (hence the title of the movie). Angelo takes in Job, subjecting him to VR treatment. The first experiments quickly increase Job's intelligence, but after an accident, Dr. Angelo stops the experiments. The Shop, a secret agency overseeing Project 5, reinserts the drugs responsible for Job's violent behavior into the program and speeds up the treatment. As Job develops telekinetic powers, he starts to take revenge on those who abused him before he began the treatments, and plots to take over all of the computers in the world.
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