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King, Stephen

Entry updated 14 October 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1947-    ) US author of greatest interest, in the context of this encyclopedia, as a central creator of Horror in SF, though he is perhaps most famous for his supernatural horror. With over 350 million books in print in a career that only effectively began in 1974, the example of his success, along with that of Dean Koontz, revolutionized the horror-fiction business, though the feverish over-expansion of horror as a market up to around 1990, and its subsequent deflation, cannot be laid down to him.

At first he was attracted to sf, beginning with the not-formally-published teenage stories assembled as «People, Places and Things» (coll 1960) and the unpublished novel «The Aftermath» (written in 1963 when he was sixteen); after at least one early nonfantastic tale, his first commercially published work of genre interest seems to be "Graveyard Shift" in Cavalier for October 1970. Night Shift (coll 1978) collects much of his early short fiction, his main market then being Cavalier; it includes some grisly sf in the pulp style. He was perhaps diverted from a conventional sf career by the response of Donald A Wollheim to his first novel submission: "We here at Ace Books are not interested in negative Utopias." King wrote four early novels (the first three before Carrie came out) subsequently published as paperback originals as by Richard Bachman: of these, two are sf. Apparently first drafted circa 1967, The Long Walk (1979) as by Bachman is a Hitler Wins tale set in an Alternate History version of America under fascist rule, and features a peculiarly savage sport (see Games and Sports): a hundred boys are launched on a walk, the winner being the last survivor of the torments inflicted during the ordeal. The Running Man (1982) is set in the distant Near Future, where savage to-the-death gladiatorial comments soothe the ruinously-polluted-for-profit, corporation-dominated country; it was filmed as The Running Man (1987). Shortly after the publication of a fifth novel, the supernatural Thinner (1984), the Bachman cover was blown, and an omnibus edition of the first four out-of-print Bachman titles was published as The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King (omni 1985).

Under his own name, King concentrated from the first on horror/fantasy with occasional sf grounding (see Horror in SF; Paranoia), as exemplified by the focus on Psi Powers, notably Telekinesis, in his first published novel, Carrie: A Novel of a Girl with a Frightening Power (1974), successfully filmed as Carrie (1976) and less successfully sequelled as The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999; vt Carrie 2) with virtually the same plot. Other paranormal talents feature in The Dead Zone (1979) (see Precognition), filmed as The Dead Zone (1983), the first of King's novels to be set in Castle Rock, an imagined town in Western Maine which was also the venue for Cujo (1981), The Tommyknockers (1987) [see below], The Dark Half (1989) and Needful Things (1991), the last of these providing a massive conspectus of life in Castle Rock through a structure directly derived from the play Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder (1897-1975). While King does not have the analytical approach of the Hard-SF writer, and is not especially interested in "explanations" of his Gothic creations, he has a down-to-earth quality which gives even his purely supernatural fiction a true sf "feel"; he eschews the nebulous; he describes and specifies with some exactness.

Several King novels are in fact sf by any measure (though they incorporate elements from other genres). The earliest and perhaps best is The Stand (abridged from manuscript 1978; rev vt The Stand: Complete & Uncut Edition 1990), a long and intelligent story of the Holocaust in the USA, beginning with the accidental release of a germ-warfare virus by the US military which leads to a Pandemic, the tale itself then extending into the Post-Holocaust world; in the second half of the book a supernatural struggle between powers of light and darkness weakens the impact from an sf point of view – though the two powers' versions of the ideal world contrastingly pit Utopia against Dystopia – but the novel remains a very superior example of its genre, clearly owing something to George R Stewart's Earth Abides (1949), but not imitative of it. The Stand (1994), an unusually strong television miniseries, deals well with this long and complex story. Other early sf Firestarter (1980), which involves pyrokinesis (see Psi Powers), and filmed as Firestarter (1984), Christine (1983), a Technofantasy, and The Tommyknockers (1987), which is gothic horror dressed in sf clothes, a lurid, eminently readable tale of an alien Spaceship buried for millions of years and now dug up, and of the effects it has on people nearby: sudden technological brilliance, physiological changes and a melding into a group mind (see Hive Mind; Transcendence). A four-hour ABC television miniseries dramatization, also called The Tommyknockers, was broadcast in May 1993.

The Talisman (1984) with Peter Straub is an uneasy collaboration in which two very strong individual writers seem to jostle one another, with King's own sometimes unstoppably prolix voice in the ascendancy; the sequel, Black House (2001) with Straub is relatively concise and very much more finely – even at times masterfully – tuned. Primarily a fantasy quest, the sequence culminates in a descent Underground in a Parallel World whose lineaments are those that King explores at very much greater length in the Dark Tower series of Fantasy Westerns beginning with The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982), and ending with The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004). Different in tone from most of King's work – and perhaps more demandingly inventive than usual – these have an undeniable mythic charge, partly because of the alienated-adolescent theme that runs through them. As the series continued, it increasingly took on a quest structure distinct from the Western topoi that feature primarily in the first volumes, inhabiting a landscape whose metaphysical pathos is driven by the Post-Holocaust imagery that increasingly pervades the tale; a self-aware AI is a major threat to the protagonists.

Later sf novels, or novels in which sf and supernatural modes are Equipoisal, sometimes forcedly, include the long and exceedingly ambitious It (1986), in which an Alien, once defeated by a group of adolescents, devastatingly returns in the form of a clown; Desperation (1996) – plus The Regulators (1996) as by Richard Bachman, which tells the same story from a different universe – in which a local community is decimated when – again – an Alien shapes events from within (Desperation won a Locus Award); Dreamcatcher (2001), with an Invasion of Alien parasites (see Parasitism and Symbiosis) which infiltrate not only our planet but our intestines and are opposed by kids with Psi Powers; From a Buick 8 (2002), in which what looks like a car is in fact a gateway to another Dimension; Cell (2006), a Disaster tale, told rather as though by an enriched Richard Bachman, in which cellphones across the world suddenly and simultaneously act as Basilisks, stripping their victims of higher mental functions, creating Hive-Mind mobs of Zombies whose behaviour threatens to end civilization and may – for the tale's Slingshot Ending is equivocal – do so; Under the Dome (2009), which – vastly sophisticating the premise which inspires Josephine Young Case's At Midnight on the 31st of March (1938), and deepening the impact of similarly claustrophobic narratives of his own – describes the sudden imposition of a barrier that encloses a small Maine town, transforming it into a kind of Pocket Universe where the nature of what it means to be human is savagely tested; 11/22/63 (2011), an ambitious Time Travel novel whose protagonist returns several times through a portal to 1958 to test the possibility of preventing President J F Kennedy's assassination and then to do so, only to find that, when too often manipulated, the corridors of Alternate History tangle into a state of Entropy, which is to say universal chaos and the End of the World, an outcome only remedied after the protagonist has once again returned to ensure JFK's murder; and Revival (2014), a supernatural tale whose underlying terror – we are soon told that the inherent aspect of the world is malice, that "Something tricks us. That is what I believe." – is deeply similar to the terror that opens into vastation (see Horror in SF). In End of Watch (2016), the final volume of the otherwise nonfantastic Bill Hodges Trilogy, the yet-uncaptured serial killer Villain, having been experimented upon by a Mad Scientist neurologist, has acquired Telepathic powers, which allow him to turn a seemingly obsolete Computer Videogame into a weapon: those who attempt to play it immediately commit Suicide (see Basilisks). Sleeping Beauties (2017) with Owen King complexly plays on interactions between Zombies and Utopias (for more details see Owen King). The Outsider (2018) begins as a criminal investigation into a possible serial killer, but exfoliates into the supernatural. Elevation (2018), another tale set in King's default Maine town of Castle Rock, features a man who begins to lose weight but does not shrink; deadpan but deliberately, the tale is almost light-hearted. The protagonist of The Institute (2019), which is set in a very Near Future America, finds himself unpacking the amorality that governs the eponymous coercive Keep, in which children with Psi Powers are ruthlessly trained as government operatives in the disintegrating world outside; analogies with the real world have been suggested by some American critics. Structured around the relationship between the "real" world and an inner sur-"real" world of Story, evocative here of the Television series The 10th Kingdom (2000), the ambitious Fairy Tale (2022) not only opens a portal to Empis within, a seemingly infinitely recursive cauldron of Story whose reality depends on its remaining storyable, but represents Empis as subject to a savage Thinning [for this term, and for Little, Big, see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. Holly Gibney, the detective protagonist of Holly (2023), who has appeared in the Bill Hodges Trilogy (see above) and elsewhere, here investigates against a Covid background a series of disappearances whose explanation may lie in a deluded campaign to literally extract the "essence" of its creative victims as a kind of vaccine against the human condition (see Eugenics).

King's short fiction, whose themes and narrative techniques sometimes intensify the range of effects displaced within his longer works, has been assembled in several volumes, beginning with Night Shift (coll 1978) [see above], and including several collections where almost all the work of his early career has appeared: Different Seasons (coll 1982), Skeleton Crew (coll 1985; exp 1985; exp 2015), Four Past Midnight (coll 1990) and Nightmares and Dreamscapes (coll 1993). Later short work, some significantly subtler than in his seeming 1980s heyday, has primarily been assembled in Hearts in Atlantis (coll of linked stories 1999), Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales (coll 2002), Just After Sunset (coll 2008), Full Dark, No Stars (coll 2010), The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (coll 2015). The previously unpublished tales assembled in the strong If It Bleeds (coll 2020) include "The Life of Chuck", so rigorously Equipoisal among various readings available – including being set in an Alternate Cosmos – that the component routes through its moebius strip structure must be understood as variously but equally illuminative of one good ordinary man's life at the End of the World; You Like it Darker (coll 2024) contains, in the previously unpublished "Two Talented Bastids", an ironized explanation of the success of a Maine writer not easily distinguishable from King himself.

It is often suggested that most films based on King's novels, stories and original screenplays are poor. In fact Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), The Dead Zone (1983), Cujo (1983), Stand By Me (1986), Misery (1990) and The Mist (2007) – the latter based on "The Mist" (in Dark Forces, anth 1980, ed Kirby McCauley) – are all strong films, although King dislikes the second, directed by Stanley Kubrick according to his own lights. The Shawshank Redemption (1994), neither sf nor horror, is a fine Prison buddy movie based on a novella from Different Seasons; The Green Mile (2000), also set in Prison, is also very strong. Fantasy/horror films aside from those already mentioned are Salem's Lot (tv miniseries 1979), Creepshow (1982), Christine (1983), Cat's Eye (1984), Children of the Corn (1984), Silver Bullet (1985), Creepshow II (1987), Pet Sematary (1989), Graveyard Shift (1990) and It (tv miniseries 1990). Return to Salem's Lot (1987) directed by Larry Cohen is "based on characters created by Stephen King". Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990) directed by John Harrison, an anthology film based on the television series of the same name, contains an adaptation of King's "The Cat from Hell" (June 1977 Cavalier). The eight-hour television anthology miniseries The Golden Years of Stephen King (1991) was a ratings flop, and was re-released on videotape in 1992 with a new ending and cut to 236 minutes. The Dark Half (1991 but released 1993 because of Orion Pictures' financial problems), directed by George Romero, is a valiant attempt to dramatize a not wholly satisfactory original. King rightly repudiated the sf film The Lawnmower Man (1992) – nominally based on his short story "The Lawnmower Man" (May 1975 Cavalier) – as having nothing to do with his work, and won a lawsuit demanding that his name be removed from the credits. He wrote an original screenplay for the uneven Vampire film Sleepwalkers (1992; vt Stephen King's Sleepwalkers). Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992) is a sequel to a film based on an King story, but otherwise has no connection with him. Stephen King's "Sometimes They Come Back" (1993) is a 97-minute television movie adaptation directed by Tim McLoughlin. Needful Things (1994), 120 minutes, directed by Fraser C Heston, is less satisfyingly apocalyptic than the original novel. A further adaptation disliked by King – together with his own source novel – is Dreamcatcher (2003).

One film adaptation of a story by King – "Trucks" (June 1973 Cavalier) – was directed by King himself from his own screenplay: Maximum Overdrive (1986). Though not as bad as some critics stated, it flopped commercially. Technically sf, it has Earth passing through the tail of a Comet that mysteriously gives self-awareness to Machines (trucks, lawnmowers, hairdryers, electric carving knives, etc.), which then revolt against humans. This paranoid Technofantasy is crudely made with very broad stereotypes, but at least one sequence, of a boy cycling through a quiet township littered with bodies, suggests latent cinematic talent. Storm of the Century (1999) is a screenplay for the Television film about a Mysterious Stranger figure who psychologically torments the inhabitants of a small town.

King's occasional critical commentaries, the reverse of academic in style, are usually observant and interesting, and his analysis of horror is deeply informed and strongly argued, especially in Danse Macabre (1981), whose remit includes horror in books, films and comics; it won a Hugo for Best Nonfiction Book in 1982. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) won a Locus Award for nonfiction. King has won Grandmaster awards in the fields of horror and fantasy where his work has been of domineering importance for several decades; these include the 2004 World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. His pungent prose, his sharp ear for dialogue, his disarmingly laid-back, frank style, in which he has couched passionately fierce denunciations of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to Children), put him among the more distinguished of "popular" writers. Indeed, he has been one of the writers who have, over the last decades of the twentieth century, essentially vitiated the distinction between "popular" and "serious". Some considerable furore surrounded the presentation to King of a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation in 2003. Given his continued productivity, and abundance of invention, over the years since, this furore seems last-ditch, indeed preposterous. Nowadays, the perception is not so much that Stephen King has been at finally allowed to sit at the head table, but that he never really had to ask. [PN/JC]

see also: Cinema; Clichés; Discovery; EC Comics; ESP; France; Intelligence; Media Landscape; Music; Spacemen.

Stephen Edwin King

born Portland, Maine: 21 September 1947

works

series

Dan Torrance

Dark Tower

The Plant

Talisman

  • The Talisman (West Kingston, Rhode Island: Donald M Grant, 1984) with Peter Straub [Talisman: hb/R J Krupowicz]
  • Black House (New York: Random House, 2001) with Peter Straub [Talisman: hb/Marc Cohen]

The Green Mile

Secretary of Dreams

Bill Hodges Trilogy

  • Mr Mercedes (New York: Scribner, 2014) [Bill Hodges Trilogy: hb/Sam Weber]
  • Finders Keepers (New York: Scribner, 2015) [Bill Hodges Trilogy: hb/Sam Weber]
  • End of Watch (New York: Scribner, 2016) [Bill Hodges Trilogy: hb/Sam Weber]
    • The Bill Hodges Trilogy (New York: Scribner, 2016) [omni assembling the above three: published in three consecutively numbered volumes: Bill Hodges Trilogy: hb/Sam Weber]

Gwendy

  • Gwendy's Button Box (Baltimore, Maryland: Cemetery Dance Publications, 2017) with Richard Chizmar [novella: Gwendy: hb/Ben Baldwin]
  • Gwendy's Final Task (Baltimore, Maryland: Cemetery Dance Publications, 2022) with Richard Chizmar [Gwendy: hb/Ben Baldwin]

Outsider

individual titles

  • Carrie: A Novel of a Girl with a Frightening Power (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1974) [hb/Alex Gotfryd]
  • 'Salem's Lot (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1975) [hb/Thomas Holdorf]
  • The Stand (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1978) [hb/John Cayea]
  • The Dead Zone (New York: The Viking Press, 1979) [hb/One + One Studio]
  • Firestarter (Huntington Woods, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1980) [the trade edition (New York: The Viking Press, 1980) appeared in the following month: hb/Michael Whelan]
  • Cujo (New York: The Viking Press, 1981) [hb/Steven Stroud]
  • Pet Sematary (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1983) [hb/Linda Fennimore]
  • Christine (West Kingston, Rhode Island: Donald M Grant, 1983) [hb/Stephen Gervais]
  • Cycle of the Werewolf (Westland, Michigan: The Land of Enchantment/Christopher Zavisa Publisher, 1983) [hb/Bernie Wrightson]
  • The Eyes of the Dragon (Bangor, Maine: The Philtrum Press, 1985) [hb/]
  • It (New York: Viking Press, 1986) [hb/Bob Giusti]
  • Misery (New York: Viking Press, 1987) [hb/Bob Giusti]
  • The Tommyknockers (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1987) [hb/One + One Studio]
  • The Dark Half (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989) [hb/Davies]
  • Needful Things (New York: Viking Press, 1991) [hb/Rob Wood]
  • Gerald's Game (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992) [hb/uncredited]
  • Dolores Claiborne (New York: Viking Press, 1992) [hb/Rob Wood]
  • Insomnia (Shingletown, California: Mark V Ziesing, 1994) [hb/Phil Hale]
  • Rose Madder (New York: Viking Press, 1995) [hb/George Kerrigan and Neil Stuart]
  • Desperation (Hampton Falls, New Hampshire: Donald M Grant, 1996) [see also The Regulators as by Richard Bachman below: hb/Don Maitz]
  • Bag of Bones (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998) [hb/Larry Rostant]
  • The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (New York: Scribner, 1999) [hb/Shasti O'Leary]
  • Hearts in Atlantis (New York: Simon and Schuster/Scribner, 1999) [definable as a coll of linked stories: hb/Phil Hefferman]
  • Dreamcatcher (New York: Simon and Schuster/Scribner, 2001) [hb/Cliff Nielsen]
  • From a Buick 8 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002) [hb/Larry Rostant]
  • The Colorado Kid (New York: Hard Case Crime, 2005) [pb/Glen Orbik]
  • Cell (New York: Simon and Schuster/Scribner, 2006) [hb/Mark Stutzman]
  • Lisey's Story (New York: Simon and Schuster/Scribner, 2006) [hb/Mark Stutzman]
  • Duma Key (New York: Simon and Schuster/Scribner, 2008) [hb/Mark Stutzman]
  • Under the Dome (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009) [hb/Rex Bonomelli]
  • 11/22/63 (New York: Scribner, 2011) [hb/Rex Bonomelli]
    • 11.22.63 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2011) [vt of the above: hb/]
  • Joyland (New York: Titan Books/Hard Case Crime, 2013) [pb/Glen Orbik]
  • Revival (New York: Scribner, 2014) [hb/Tal Goretsky]
  • Sleeping Beauties (New York: Scribner, 2017) with Owen King [hb/Frederico Bebber]
  • Elevation (New York: Scribner, 2018) [hb/Baoyan Zeng]
  • Apt Pupil (New York: Scribner, 2018) [originally published in Different Seasons below: hb/]
  • The Sun Dog (New York: Scribner, 2018) [originally published in Four Past Midnight below: hb/]
  • The Institute (New York: Scribner, 2019) [hb/]
  • Later (New York: Hard Case Crime, 2021) [pb/Paul Mann]
  • Sleeping Beauties: A Graphic Novel Part 1 (San Diego, California: IDW Publishing, 2021) with Owen King [graph: hb/]
  • Billy Summers (New York: Scribners, 2021) [hb/]
  • Fairy Tale (New York: Scribners, 2022) [illus/Gabriel Rodriguez and Nicolas Delort: hb/Will Staehle]
  • Holly (New York: Scribners, 2023) [hb/]

novels as by Richard Bachman

  • Rage (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1977) as by Richard Bachman [pb/uncredited]
  • The Long Walk (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1979) as by Richard Bachman [pb/uncredited]
  • Roadwork: A Novel of the First Energy Crisis (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1981) as by Richard Bachman [pb/D Millsap]
  • The Running Man (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1982) as by Richard Bachman [pb/uncredited]
  • Thinner (New York: New American Library/Signet Books, 1984) as by Richard Bachman [pb/uncredited]
  • The Regulators (New York: Penguin Books/Dutton, 1996) [see also Desperation as Stephen King above: hb/Mark Ryden]
  • Blaze (New York: Scribner, 2007) as by Richard Bachman [rewritten from 1972-1973 manuscript: hb/Mark Dye and Londie Podelsky]

collections

stories and miscellaneous

  • The Star Invaders (Durham, Maine: Gaslight Books, 1964) [story: chap: pb/]
  • The Monkey (New York: Montcalm Publications, 1980) [story: chap: pull-out booklet from November 1980 issue of Gallery: pb/]
  • The Raft (New York: Montcalm Publications, 1982) [story: chap: pull-out booklet from November 1982 issue of Gallery: pb/Peter Catalanotto]
  • Creepshow (New York: Plume, 1982) [coll: graphic adaptations of segments from the film: pb/Jack Kamen]
  • Black Magic and Music: A Novelist's Perspective of Bangor (Bangor, Maine: for the author, 1983) with Brad Terry and Friends of Jazz [nonfiction: chap: pb/]
  • The Breathing Method (Bath, Avon: Chivers Press/Lythway Books, 1984) [novella: hb/]
  • My Pretty Pony (New York: Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum, 1988) [story: chap: hb/]
  • Dolan's Cadillac (Northridge, California: Lord John Press, 1989) [story: chap: hb/]
  • Suffer the Little Children (New York: Viking Press, 1993) [story: chap: first appeared February 1972 Cavalier: pb/Ron Wood]
  • Umney's Last Case (New York: Penguin Books, 1995) [story: chap: pb/George Tooker]
  • Storm of the Century (New York: Pocket Books, 1999) [screenplay for the Television drama: pb/]
  • Riding the Bullet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000) [story: ebook: na/]
  • The Mist (New York: New American Library/Signet, 2007) [novella: first appeared in Dark Forces (anth 1980) edited by Kirby McCauley: pb/Drew Struzan]
  • One for the Road (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2010) [story: chap: first appeared March-April 1977 Maine: hb/James Hannah]
  • Mile 81 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011) [novella: ebook: na/]
  • A Face in the Crowd (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012) with Stewart O'Nan [story: ebook: na/]
  • Throttle (New York: William Morrow, 2012) with Joe Hill [ebook: first version appeared in He Is Legend: An Anthology Honoring Richard Matheson(anth 2009) edited by Christopher Colon: na/Adam Johnson]
  • In the Tall Grass (New York: Scribner, 2012) with Joe Hill [story: ebook: first appeared July 2012 Esquire: na/Kyle Kabel]
  • The Dark Man (Baltimore, Maryland: Cemetery Dance, 2013) [poem: chap: first appeared Fall 1969 Ubris: hb/Glen Chadbourne]
  • A Good Marriage (New York: Scribner, 2014) [novella: ebook: na/]
  • Big Driver (New York: Scribner, 2014) [coll: ebook: na/]
  • Charlie the Choo-Choo (New York: Scribner, 2016) as by Beryl Evans [story: ebook: na/Ned Dameron]
  • 1922 (New York: Scribner, 2017) [novella: pb/]
  • The Langoliers (New York: Scribner, 2019) [story: first appeared in Four Past Midnight (coll 1990): pb/]
  • Red Screen (San Francisco, California: Humble Bundle, 2021) [story: ebook: na/Eric Amling]

titles not by Stephen King

  • Another Quarter Mile: Poetry (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Dorrance and Company, 1979) [poetry: coll: sometimes listed as by King; the author is a different Stephen King: Dorrance is a vanity press: hb/]

nonfiction

works as editor

  • Six Scary Stories (Baltimore, Maryland: Cemetery Dance Publications, 2016) [anth: hb/Vincent Chong]
  • Flight or Fright (Baltimore, Maryland: Cemetery Dance Publications, 2018) with Bev Vincent [anth: hb/François Vaillancourt]

about the author

links

previous versions of this entry



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