Stephen King
Encyclopedia
Stephen Edwin King is an American
author
of contemporary horror
, suspense
, science fiction
and fantasy
fiction
. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name
Richard Bachman
, five non-fiction
books, and nine collections of short stories
. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine
.
King has received Bram Stoker Award
s, World Fantasy Award
s, British Fantasy Society
Awards, his novella
The Way Station
was a Nebula Award
novelette nominee, and in 2003, the National Book Foundation
awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his whole career, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
(2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America
(2007).
, was a merchant seaman. King's mother, Nellie Ruth (née Pillsbury; March 13, 1913 – December 28, 1973) was born in Scarborough, Maine. They were married July 23, 1939, in Cumberland County, Maine
.
Stephen King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine
. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to De Pere, Wisconsin
, Fort Wayne, Indiana
and Stratford, Connecticut
. When King was eleven years old, the family returned to Durham, Maine
, where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver
in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King was raised Methodist.
As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works, but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing
.
King's primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre
, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing
for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled The Lurker in the Shadows that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to,” and told Barnes & Noble Studios during a 2009 interview: "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."
, in Lisbon Falls, Maine
. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC's horror comics
, including Tales from the Crypt
(he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow
). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine
, and later began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965. That story was published the following year in a revised form as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.
From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine
, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That same year his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus
, titled "Steve King's Garbage Truck", took part in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen
, and took odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. The Fogler Library at UMaine now holds many of King's papers.
After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, being unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier
. Many of these early stories have been published in the collection Night Shift. In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce
, a fellow student at the University of Maine whom he had met at the University's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops. That fall, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy
in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels. It was during this time that King developed a drinking problem, which stayed with him for more than a decade.
King and his wife, Tabitha
, have three children, Naomi
, Joe
and Owen
. Tabitha, Joe and Owen are also published writers.
was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King actually threw an early draft of the novel in the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. King and his family moved to southern Maine
because of his mother's failing health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming, later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to 'Salem's Lot (published 1975). In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he stated, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!" Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer
. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.
After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado
, where King wrote The Shining
(published 1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand
(published 1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Phillip (his third and last child), traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. He has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.
In 1985 King wrote his first work for the comic book medium, writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men
comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to assist with famine
relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont
, Stan Lee
, and Alan Moore
, as well as authors not primarily associated with that industry, such as Harlan Ellison
. The following year, King wrote the introduction to Batman
#400, an anniversary issue in which he expressed his preference for that character over Superman
.
and the American wild west as depicted by Clint Eastwood
and Sergio Leone
in their spaghetti western
s. The first of these stories, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was first published in five installments by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman
, beginning in 1977 and the last in 1981. The Gunslinger was continued as a large 7-book epic called The Dark Tower
, which were written and published infrequently over four decades.
In 1982, the fantasy small-press Donald M. Grant (known for publishing the entire canon of Robert E. Howard
) printed these stories for the first time together in hardcover form with color and black-and-white illustrations by fantasy artist Michael Whelan
, as The Gunslinger
. Each chapter was named for the story previously published in magazine form. King dedicated the hardcover edition to his editor at F&SF, Ed Ferman, who "took a chance on these stories". The original print-run was only 10,000 copies, which was, by this time, a comparatively low run for a first printing of a King novel in hardcover. His 1980 novel, Firestarter
, had an initial print-run in trade hardcover at 100,000 copies, and his 1983 novel, Christine, had a trade hardcover print-run of 250,000 copies, both by the much larger publisher Viking. The Gunslingers initial release was not highly publicized, and only specialty science-fiction and related bookstores carried it on their shelves. The book was generally not available in the larger chain stores, except by special order. Rumors spread among avid fans that there was a King book out that few readers knew about, let alone had actually read. When the initial 10,000 copies sold out, Grant printed another 10,000 copies in 1984, but these runs were still far short of the growing demand among fans for this book. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger was the beginning of his magnum opus fantasy epic. Both the first and second printings of The Gunslinger garner premium prices on the collectible book market, notably among avid readers and collectors of Stephen King, horror literature, fantasy literature, American western literature, and fans of the artwork of Michael Whelan.
In 1987, King released the second installment, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, in which Roland draws three people from 20th-century United States into his world through magical doors. Grant published The Drawing of the Three with illustrations by Phil Hale
in a slightly larger run of 30,000 copies, which was still well below King's typical initial hardcover print-run of a new book. (It
, published in 1986, had an initial print-run of 1,000,000 copies, King's largest to date.) King had believed that the Dark Tower books would only be of interest to a select group of his fans, and he had resisted releasing it on a larger scale. Finally, in the late 1980s, bowing to pressure from his publishers and fans who were searching for the books (at this point fewer than 50,000 of his millions of readers would have been able to own any of the Dark Tower books), King agreed to release The Gunslinger and all subsequent Dark Tower books in trade paperback and mass market formats. The series reached seven books, with the final installment called The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, in 2004.
In the early 2000s King revised the original book, The Gunslinger, because he felt the voice and imagery of the original stories of the late 1970s did not seem to fit the voice of the final installment of 2004. King felt the style of the work had markedly changed during the intervening 27 years. The revised version was published in 2003 by his former hardcover publisher Viking. Grant published its hardcover limited edition of the revised version of The Gunslinger along with a prequel story set in the Dark Tower world called "The Little Sisters of Eluria
" (from King's short story collection Everything's Eventual
) in 2009.
to publish a seven-issue, miniseries
spin-off
of the series called The Gunslinger Born. The series, which focuses on a young Roland Deschain
, is plotted by Robin Furth, with dialogue by Peter David
, and illustrated by Eisner Award
-winning artist Jae Lee
. The first issue was published on February 7, 2007, and King, David, Lee and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada
appeared at a midnight signing at a Times Square
, New York comic book store to promote it. The work had sold over 200,000 copies by March 2007. The success of The Gunslinger Born led to an ongoing series of miniseries published by Marvel, with Furth and David continuing to collaborate, featuring both adapted material from the Dark Tower books and new material approved by King; it also led to a second series of King adaptations in the same format, serializing the events of The Stand
.
Although The Hollywood Reporter
announced in February 2007 that plans were underway for Lost
co-creator J. J. Abrams
to do an adaptation of King's epic Dark Tower series, Abrams stated in a November 2009 interview with MTV
that he would not be adapting the series.
Akiva Goldsman
, Ron Howard
and Brian Grazer
will produce a feature film based on The Dark Tower series, with Howard slated to direct.
(1979), Roadwork
(1981), The Running Man
(1982) and Thinner
(1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The idea behind this was to test whether he could replicate his success again and to his fears that his popularity was an accident. An alternate explanation was that publishing standards at the time allowed only a single book a year. He picked up the name from the hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive
, of which he is a fan.
Richard Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym by a persistent Washington D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed similarities between the works and later located publisher's records at the Library of Congress
that named King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. This led to a press release heralding Bachman's "death"—supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym." King dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half
, about a pseudonym turning on a writer, to "the deceased Richard Bachman", and in 1996, when the Stephen King novel Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators
carried the "Bachman" byline.
In 2006, during a press conference in London, King declared that he had discovered another Bachman novel, titled Blaze
. It was published on June 12, 2007. In fact, the original manuscript had been held at King's alma mater
, the University of Maine in Orono, for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King completely rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.
King has used other pseudonyms, such as John Swithen for The Fifth Quarter.
. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5. According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking
King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston
. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator. After five operations in ten days and physical therapy
, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became worse. Soon it became nearly unbearable.
King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay
. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat once his leg was healed. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air
's Terry Gross
that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe.
Two years later, King suffered severe pneumonia as a direct result of his lung being punctured in the accident. During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story
.
In 2000, King published a serialized novel, The Plant
, online
, bypassing print publication. At first it was presumed by the public that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but he later stated that he had simply run out of stories. The unfinished epistolary novel
is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet
, and has said he sees e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012." But he also warns: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."
In August 2003 King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly
, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop of King", a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly given to Michael Jackson
.
In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel
, Cell
. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones.
In 2007, Marvel Comics
began publishing comic books based on King's Dark Tower
series, followed by adaptations of The Stand
in 2008 and The Talisman
in 2009.
In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key
, and a collection, Just After Sunset
. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N.
, which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.
In 2009, King published Ur
, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle
and available only on Amazon.com
, and Throttle
, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill
, which later was released as an audiobook Road Rage
, which included Richard Matheson
's short story "Duel". On November 10 that year, King's novel, Under the Dome
, was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986's It
. It debuted at #1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.
On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book will be a collection of four previously unpublished novella
s. The book is called Full Dark, No Stars
. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy
, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications
and later released in mass market paperback by Simon & Schuster
. This baseball-related suspense novella is not set to be reprinted in Full Dark, No Stars. The following month, DC Comics
premiered American Vampire
, a monthly comic book series written by King with short story writer Scott Snyder
, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque
, which represents King's first original comics work.
King's next novel, 11/22/63
, was published November 8, 2011, and the eighth Dark Tower
volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole will be published in 2012.
: The Talisman and a sequel, Black House. King has indicated that he and Straub will likely write the third and concluding book in this series, the tale of Jack Sawyer, but has set no time for its completion.
King also wrote the nonfiction book, Faithful, with novelist and fellow Red Sox fanatic Stewart O'Nan
.
In 1996 King collaborated with Michael Jackson
to create Ghosts, a 40-minute musical video in which the singer portrays a recluse living in a mansion confronting an unwelcoming group of townsfolk initially calling for his exodus from their community.
"Throttle", a novella written in collaboration with his son Joe Hill
, appears in the anthology He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson, (Gauntlet Press, 2009).
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
, was a paperback tie-in for the King-penned miniseries Rose Red. The book was published under anonymous authorship, and written by Ridley Pearson. This spin-off is a rare occasion of another author being granted permission to write commercial work using characters and story elements invented by King.
King has written a musical play with John Mellencamp
titled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
.
King played guitar for the rock band Rock-Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members include Dave Barry
, Ridley Pearson
, Scott Turow
, Amy Tan
, James McBride, Mitch Albom
, Roy Blount, Jr.
, Matt Groening
, Kathi Kamen Goldmark
, Sam Barry
, and Greg Iles
. None of them claim to have any musical talent. King is a fan of the rock band AC/DC
, who did the soundtrack for his 1986 film, Maximum Overdrive
. He is also a fan of The Ramones, who wrote the title song for Pet Sematary
and appeared in the music video. King referred to the band several times in various novels and stories and The Ramones referenced King on the song "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)", which is on 1981's Pleasant Dreams
. In addition he wrote the liner notes for their tribute album We're a Happy Family
. In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult
recorded an updated version of their 1974 song "Astronomy"
. The single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King.
On Sunday, October 25, 2009 the DC Comics
Vertigo
blog news feed released that King will team up with short story writer Scott Snyder
and artist Rafael Albuquerque
in a new monthly comic book series from Vertigo in March 2010 called American Vampire
. King is to write the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the five issues of the first arc. Scott Snyder will write the story of Pearl. Both stories are to weave together to form the first story arc.
In 2010, King collaborated with musician Shooter Jennings
and his band Hierophant
, providing the narration for their most recent album, Black Ribbons
.
Shortly after his accident, King wrote the first draft of the book Dreamcatcher
with a notebook and a Waterman
fountain pen
, which he called "the world's finest word processor."
When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do." He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question: "Why do you assume I have a choice?"
King often uses authors as characters, or includes mention of fictional book
s in his stories, novellas and novels, such as Paul Sheldon who is the main character in Misery and Jack Torrance in The Shining
. See also List of fictional books in the works of Stephen King for a complete list. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria
.
"the author who influenced me most as a writer." Both authors casually integrate characters' thoughts into the third person narration, just one of several parallels between their writing styles. In a current edition of Matheson's The Shrinking Man
, King is quoted: "A horror story if there ever was one...a great adventure story—it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."
King refers to H. P. Lovecraft
several times in Danse Macabre
. "Gramma
", a short story made into a film in the 1980s anthology horror show The New Twilight Zone
, mentions Lovecraft's notorious fictional creation Necronomicon
, also borrowing the names of a number of the fictional monsters mentioned therein. "I Know What You Need
" from the 1976 collection Night Shift
, and 'Salem's Lot also mention the tome. In On Writing
, King is critical of Lovecraft's dialogue-writing skills, using passages from The Colour Out of Space
as particularly poor examples. There are also several examples of King referring to Lovecraftian characters in his work, such as Nyarlathotep
and Yog-Sothoth
.
King acknowledges the influence of Bram Stoker
, particularly on his novel Salem's Lot, which he envisioned as a retelling of Dracula
. Its related short story "Jerusalem's Lot", is reminiscent of Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm.
King has also referenced author Shirley Jackson
. Salem's Lot opens with a quotation from Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House
, and a character in Wolves of the Calla
references the Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle
.
King is a fan of John D. MacDonald
, and dedicated the novella "Sun Dog" to MacDonald, saying "I miss you, old friend." For his part, MacDonald wrote an admiring preface to Night Shift, and even had his famous character, Travis McGee
, reading Cujo in one of the last McGee novels and Pet Sematary in the last McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain.
In 1987 King's Philtrum Press
published Don Robertson
's novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man. In his forenote to the novel, King wrote, "Don Robertson was and is one of the three writers who influenced me as a young man who was trying to 'become' a novelist (the other two being Richard Matheson and John D. MacDonald)."
Robert A. Heinlein
's book The Door into Summer
is repeatedly mentioned in King's Wolves of the Calla
.
In an interview with King, Published in the USA Weekend
in March 2009, the author stated, "People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard
, every day I wake up and – not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree – don't see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, "Great! He's probably working somewhere. He's gonna produce another book, and I'll have another book to read." Because when he's gone, there's nobody else."
King partly dedicated his book Cell
to film director
George Romero, and wrote an essay for the Elite DVD
version of Night of the Living Dead
.
Science fiction editors John Clute
and Peter Nichols
offer a largely favorable appraisal of King, noting his "pungent prose, sharp ear for dialogue, disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to children) [all of which rank] him among the more distinguished 'popular' writers."
In his analysis of post-World War II
horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi
devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works (his supernatural novels), are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina
endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game
(1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written. Joshi suggests that King's strengths as a writer include the accessible "everyman
" quality of his prose, and his unfailingly insightful observations about the pains and joys of adolescence
. Joshi cites two early non-supernatural novels—Rage (1977) and The Running Man
(1982)—as King's best, suggesting both are riveting and well-constructed suspense thrillers, with believable characters.
In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award
for his short story "The Man in the Black Suit
".
In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, with his work being described thus:
Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster
, described King's work as "non-literature
", and critic Harold Bloom
denounced the choice:
However, others came to King's defense, such as writer Orson Scott Card
, who responded:
In Roger Ebert
's review of the 2004 movie Secret Window
, he stated, "A lot of people were outraged that [King] was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer could not be taken seriously. But after finding that his book On Writing
had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style
, I have gotten over my own snobbery."
In 2008, King's book On Writing
was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly
list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".
King has stated that his favorite book-to-film adaptations are Stand by Me
, The Shawshank Redemption
, and The Mist
.
King's first film appearance was in George Romero's
Knightriders
as a buffoonish audience member. His first featured role was in Creepshow
, playing Jordy Verrill, a backwoods redneck who, after touching a fallen meteorite in hopes of selling it, grows moss all over his body. He has since made cameos in several adaptations of his works. He appeared in Pet Sematary
as a minister at a funeral, in Thinner
as a pharmacist, in Rose Red
as a pizza deliveryman, as a news reporter in The Storm of the Century, in The Stand
as "Teddy Wieszack," in the Shining
miniseries as a band member, in The Langoliers
as Tom Holby and in Sleepwalkers
as the cemetery caretaker. He has also appeared in The Golden Years, in Chappelle's Show
and, along with fellow author Amy Tan
, on The Simpsons
as himself. In addition to acting, King tried his hand at directing with Maximum Overdrive
, in which he also made a cameo appearance as a man using an ATM that is on the fritz.
King produced and acted in a miniseries, Kingdom Hospital
, which is based on the Danish miniseries Riget by Lars von Trier
. He also co-wrote The X-Files
season 5 episode "Chinga" with the creator of the series Chris Carter
.
King made an appearance as a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy! in 1995, playing to benefit the Bangor Public Library
.
King provided the voice of Abraham Lincoln
in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation
.
In 2010, King appeared in a cameo role as a cleaner
named Bachman (a reference to his pen name Richard Bachman) on the FX series Sons of Anarchy
.
The Syfy
TV series Haven
is based on King's novella, The Colorado Kid.
, which is violent but less graphic. While conceding that he saw no artistic merit in some violent video games, King also opined that such games reflect the violence that already exists in society, which would not be lessened by such a law, and would be redundant in light of the ratings system that already exists for video games. King argued that such laws allow legislators to ignore the economic divide between the rich and poor, and the easy availability of guns, which he felt were the more legitimate causes of violence.
A controversy emerged on May 5, 2008, when a conservative blogger posted a clip of King at a Library of Congress
reading event. King, talking to high-school students, had said: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that." The comment was described by the blog as "another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military," and likened to John Kerry
's similar remark from 2006. King responded later that day, saying, "That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt...I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise." King again defended his comment in an interview with the Bangor Daily News
on May 8, saying, "I’m not going to apologize for promoting that kids get better education in high school, so they have more options. Those that don’t agree with what I’m saying, I’m not going to change their minds."
King's website states that he is a supporter of the Democratic Party
. During the 2008 presidential election, King voiced his support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama
. King was quoted as calling conservative commentator Glenn Beck
"Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."
On March 8, 2011, King spoke at a political rally in Sarasota
aimed against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), voicing his opposition to the Tea Party movement
.
King and his wife own and occupy three different houses, one in Bangor
, one in Lovell, Maine
, and they regularly winter in their waterfront mansion
located off the Gulf of Mexico
, in Sarasota, Florida
. He and Tabitha have three children and three grandchildren.
Shortly after publication of The Tommyknockers
, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addictions taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine
, Xanax
, Valium, NyQuil
, dextromethorphan
(cough medicine) and marijuana
, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.
Tabitha King
has published nine of her own novels. Both King's sons are published authors: Owen King
published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom
published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts
, in 2005. and his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box
will be adapted into a feature film by director Neil Jordan
.
King's daughter Naomi
spent two years as a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church
, in Utica, New York
. Naomi now ministers for the Unitarian Universalist Church of River of Grass, in Plantation, Florida
with her same-sex partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.
King is a fan of baseball
, and of the Boston Red Sox
in particular; he frequently attends the team's home and away games, and occasionally mentions the team in his novels and stories. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League
Championship in 1989. He recounts this experience in the New Yorker
essay "Head Down", which also appears in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes
. In 1999, King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
, which featured former Red Sox pitcher
Tom Gordon
as the protagonist's imaginary companion. In 2004, King co-wrote a book titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
with Stewart O'Nan
, recounting the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series
and World Series
. In the 2005 film Fever Pitch
, about an obsessive Boston Red Sox fan, King tosses out the first pitch of the Sox's opening day game. He has also devoted one of his columns for Entertainment Weekly on the subject of commercialism in Major League Baseball. He also starred in an ESPN
SportsCenter
advertisement referencing both his allegiance to the Red Sox and his preferred writing genre (horror fiction).
Family
King's fictional topography
Projects
Publishers
Derivative works
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
of contemporary horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
, suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Richard Bachman
Richard Bachman
Richard Bachman is a pseudonym used by horror fiction author Stephen King.-Origin:At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was such that an author was limited to a book every year, since publishing more would not be acceptable to the public...
, five non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
books, and nine collections of short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
King has received Bram Stoker Award
Bram Stoker Award
The Bram Stoker Award is a recognition presented by the Horror Writers Association for "superior achievement" in horror writing. The awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the winners are selected by ballot of the Active members of the HWA...
s, World Fantasy Award
World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
s, British Fantasy Society
British Fantasy Society
The British Fantasy Society began in 1971 as the British Weird Fantasy Society, an offshoot of the British Science Fiction Association. The society is dedicated to promoting the best in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres....
Awards, his novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
The Way Station
The Way Station
"The Way Station" is a novella by Stephen King, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in April 1980. In 1982, "The Way Station" was collected with several other stories King published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger...
was a Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
novelette nominee, and in 2003, the National Book Foundation
National Book Foundation
The National Book Foundation, founded in 1989, is an American nonprofit literary organization established "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." It achieves this through sponsoring the National Book Award, as well as the medal for Distinguished Contribution to American...
awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his whole career, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement
This World Fantasy Award is presented to individuals for their outstanding service to the fantasy field, and decided by a panel of judges at the World Fantasy Convention.-1984:* L. Sprague de Camp* Richard Matheson* E. Hoffmann Price* Jack Vance* Donald Wandrei...
(2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....
(2007).
Early life
King's father, Donald Edwin King, who was born ca. 1913 in Peru, IndianaPeru, Indiana
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 12,994 people, 5,410 households, and 3,397 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,815.5 people per square mile . There were 5,943 housing units at an average density of 1,287.7 per square mile...
, was a merchant seaman. King's mother, Nellie Ruth (née Pillsbury; March 13, 1913 – December 28, 1973) was born in Scarborough, Maine. They were married July 23, 1939, in Cumberland County, Maine
Cumberland County, Maine
Cumberland County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maine. As of 2010, the population was 281,674. Its county seat is Portland, and is the most populous of the sixteen Maine counties, as well as the most affluent. Cumberland County has the deepest and second largest body of water in the...
.
Stephen King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...
. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to De Pere, Wisconsin
De Pere, Wisconsin
De Pere is a city located in Brown County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 20,559 at the 2000 census. De Pere is a suburb of Green Bay and is part of the Green Bay Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Registered historic places:...
, Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Fort Wayne is a city in the US state of Indiana and the county seat of Allen County. The population was 253,691 at the 2010 Census making it the 74th largest city in the United States and the second largest in Indiana...
and Stratford, Connecticut
Stratford, Connecticut
Stratford is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located on Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Housatonic River. It was founded by Puritans in 1639....
. When King was eleven years old, the family returned to Durham, Maine
Durham, Maine
Durham is a town in Androscoggin County, Maine, United States. The population was 3,419 at the 2000 census. It is included in both the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine Metropolitan New England City and Town Area.-Geography:According to the United...
, where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver
Caregiver
Caregiver may refer to:* Caregiver or carer - an unpaid person who cares for someone requiring support due to a disability, frailty, mental health problem, learning disability or old age...
in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged. King was raised Methodist.
As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works, but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing
On Writing
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir and writing guide book by Stephen King, published in 2000. It is a book about the prolific author's experiences as a writer. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed On Writing 21st on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to...
.
King's primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre
Danse Macabre (book)
Danse Macabre is a non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, radio, film and comics, and the genre's influence on United States popular culture...
, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing
Dowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials, as well as so-called currents of earth radiation , without the use of scientific apparatus...
for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled The Lurker in the Shadows that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to,” and told Barnes & Noble Studios during a 2009 interview: "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."
Education and early career
King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High SchoolLisbon Falls High School
Lisbon Falls High School is an historic school on 4 Campus Avenue in Lisbon Falls, Maine.The school was built in 1904 by William R. Miller and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007....
, in Lisbon Falls, Maine
Lisbon Falls, Maine
Lisbon Falls is a census-designated place in the town of Lisbon, located in Androscoggin County, Maine, United States. The population of Lisbon Falls was 4,420 at the 2000 census...
. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC's horror comics
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...
, including Tales from the Crypt
Tales from the Crypt (comic)
Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror are three bi-monthly horror comic anthology series published by EC Comics in the early 1950s...
(he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow
Creepshow
Creepshow is a 1982 American horror anthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King. The film's ensemble cast included Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, E.G...
). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine
Mimeograph machine
The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine is a low-cost printing press that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper....
, and later began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965. That story was published the following year in a revised form as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.
From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine
University of Maine
The University of Maine is a public research university located in Orono, Maine, United States. The university was established in 1865 as a land grant college and is referred to as the flagship university of the University of Maine System...
, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That same year his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus
The Maine Campus
The Maine Campus is a twice-weekly newspaper produced by the students of the University of Maine in the United States. It covers university and Town of Orono, Maine events, and has four section: News, Opinion, Style and Sports. It serves the 20,000 students, faculty and staff of the University....
, titled "Steve King's Garbage Truck", took part in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen
Burton Hatlen
Burton Norval Hatlen was an American literary scholar and professor at the University of Maine. Hatlen worked closely with Carroll F...
, and took odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. The Fogler Library at UMaine now holds many of King's papers.
After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, being unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier
Cavalier (magazine)
Cavalier is an American magazine that was launched by Fawcett Publications in 1952 and has continued for decades, eventually evolving into a Playboy-style men's magazine...
. Many of these early stories have been published in the collection Night Shift. In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce
Tabitha King
Tabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
, a fellow student at the University of Maine whom he had met at the University's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops. That fall, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy
Hampden Academy
Hampden Academy is a public high school located on 1 Main Road North in Hampden, Maine. The school is a part of M.S.A.D. 22, and approximately 738 students from Hampden, Newburgh, and Winterport attend for grades 9–12...
in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels. It was during this time that King developed a drinking problem, which stayed with him for more than a decade.
King and his wife, Tabitha
Tabitha King
Tabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
, have three children, Naomi
Naomi King
Rev. Naomi Rachel King , is an American Unitarian Universalist minister. She is the daughter of authors Stephen King and Tabitha King....
, Joe
Joe Hill (writer)
Joseph Hillstrom King , better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer. He has published two novels—Heart Shaped Box and Horns—and a collection of short stories entitled 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the author of the graphic novel series Locke & Key...
and Owen
Owen King
Owen Philip King is an American author and the youngest son of authors Stephen and Tabitha King. He has two older siblings, Naomi King and Joseph Hillstrom King, and grew up in Bangor, Maine...
. Tabitha, Joe and Owen are also published writers.
1970s–80s work
In 1973, King's novel CarrieCarrie (novel)
Carrie is American author Stephen King's first published novel, released in 1974. It revolves around the eponymous Carrie, a shy high-school girl, who uses her newly discovered telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who tease her...
was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King actually threw an early draft of the novel in the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. King and his family moved to southern Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
because of his mother's failing health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming, later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to 'Salem's Lot (published 1975). In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he stated, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!" Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer
Uterine cancer
The term uterine cancer may refer to any of several different types of cancer which occur in the uterus, namely:*Uterine sarcomas: sarcomas of the myometrium, or muscular layer of the uterus, are most commonly leiomyosarcomas.*Endometrial cancer:...
. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.
After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, where King wrote The Shining
The Shining (novel)
The Shining is a 1977 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The title was inspired by the John Lennon song "Instant Karma!", which contained the line "We all shine on…". It was King's third published novel, and first hardback bestseller, and the success of the book firmly established King...
(published 1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand
The Stand
The Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf...
(published 1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Phillip (his third and last child), traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. He has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.
In 1985 King wrote his first work for the comic book medium, writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men
X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team in the . They were created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The X-Men #1...
comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to assist with famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont
Chris Claremont
Chris Claremont is an award-winning American comic book writer and novelist, known for his 17-year stint on Uncanny X-Men, far longer than any other writer, during which he is credited with developing strong female characters, and with introducing complex literary themes into superhero...
, Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
, and Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
, as well as authors not primarily associated with that industry, such as Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
. The following year, King wrote the introduction to Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
#400, an anniversary issue in which he expressed his preference for that character over Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
.
The Dark Tower books
In the late 1970s, King began what became a series of interconnected stories about a lone gunslinger, Roland, who pursues the "Man in Black" in an alternate-reality universe that is a cross between J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earthMiddle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....
and the American wild west as depicted by Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
and Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
in their spaghetti western
Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
s. The first of these stories, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was first published in five installments by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman
Edward L. Ferman
Edward Lewis Ferman was an American science fiction and fantasy fiction editor and magazine publisher.Ferman is the son of Joseph W...
, beginning in 1977 and the last in 1981. The Gunslinger was continued as a large 7-book epic called The Dark Tower
The Dark Tower (series)
The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "Gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King...
, which were written and published infrequently over four decades.
In 1982, the fantasy small-press Donald M. Grant (known for publishing the entire canon of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
) printed these stories for the first time together in hardcover form with color and black-and-white illustrations by fantasy artist Michael Whelan
Michael Whelan
Michael Whelan is an American artist of imaginative realism. For more than 30 years he worked as an illustrator specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art...
, as The Gunslinger
The Gunslinger
The Gunslinger is a novel by American author Stephen King, and is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, which King considers to be his magnum opus. It was first published in 1982. The story centers upon Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger who has been chasing after his adversary, "the man in...
. Each chapter was named for the story previously published in magazine form. King dedicated the hardcover edition to his editor at F&SF, Ed Ferman, who "took a chance on these stories". The original print-run was only 10,000 copies, which was, by this time, a comparatively low run for a first printing of a King novel in hardcover. His 1980 novel, Firestarter
Firestarter
Firestarter is a novel by Stephen King first published in 1980. It was nominated for a British Fantasy Award in 1981.The book is dedicated to the author Shirley Jackson: "In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice."...
, had an initial print-run in trade hardcover at 100,000 copies, and his 1983 novel, Christine, had a trade hardcover print-run of 250,000 copies, both by the much larger publisher Viking. The Gunslingers initial release was not highly publicized, and only specialty science-fiction and related bookstores carried it on their shelves. The book was generally not available in the larger chain stores, except by special order. Rumors spread among avid fans that there was a King book out that few readers knew about, let alone had actually read. When the initial 10,000 copies sold out, Grant printed another 10,000 copies in 1984, but these runs were still far short of the growing demand among fans for this book. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger was the beginning of his magnum opus fantasy epic. Both the first and second printings of The Gunslinger garner premium prices on the collectible book market, notably among avid readers and collectors of Stephen King, horror literature, fantasy literature, American western literature, and fans of the artwork of Michael Whelan.
In 1987, King released the second installment, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, in which Roland draws three people from 20th-century United States into his world through magical doors. Grant published The Drawing of the Three with illustrations by Phil Hale
Phil Hale
Philip Oliver Hale, born in 1963, is an American figurative painter who currently resides in London, England.Prior to turning to fine arts he worked as an illustrator, doing mostly figurative work...
in a slightly larger run of 30,000 copies, which was still well below King's typical initial hardcover print-run of a new book. (It
It (novel)
It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by the eponymous inter-dimensional predatory life-form that exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It"...
, published in 1986, had an initial print-run of 1,000,000 copies, King's largest to date.) King had believed that the Dark Tower books would only be of interest to a select group of his fans, and he had resisted releasing it on a larger scale. Finally, in the late 1980s, bowing to pressure from his publishers and fans who were searching for the books (at this point fewer than 50,000 of his millions of readers would have been able to own any of the Dark Tower books), King agreed to release The Gunslinger and all subsequent Dark Tower books in trade paperback and mass market formats. The series reached seven books, with the final installment called The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, in 2004.
In the early 2000s King revised the original book, The Gunslinger, because he felt the voice and imagery of the original stories of the late 1970s did not seem to fit the voice of the final installment of 2004. King felt the style of the work had markedly changed during the intervening 27 years. The revised version was published in 2003 by his former hardcover publisher Viking. Grant published its hardcover limited edition of the revised version of The Gunslinger along with a prequel story set in the Dark Tower world called "The Little Sisters of Eluria
The Little Sisters of Eluria
"The Little Sisters of Eluria" is a novella by Stephen King. It was originally published in 1998 in the collection Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy...
" (from King's short story collection Everything's Eventual
Everything's Eventual
"Everything's Eventual" is a novella by Stephen King. It was originally published in the October/November 1997 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In 2000, it was included in the game Stephen King's F13...
) in 2009.
Adaptations
In October 2005, King signed a deal with Marvel ComicsMarvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
to publish a seven-issue, miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
of the series called The Gunslinger Born. The series, which focuses on a young Roland Deschain
Roland Deschain
Roland Deschain of Gilead is a fictional character, the protagonist and antihero of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. He is the son of Steven and Gabrielle Deschain and is descended from a long line of "gunslingers", peacekeepers and diplomats of Roland's society...
, is plotted by Robin Furth, with dialogue by Peter David
Peter David
Peter Allen David , often abbreviated PAD, is an American writer of comic books, novels, television, movies and video games...
, and illustrated by Eisner Award
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
-winning artist Jae Lee
Jae Lee
Jae Lee is an American comic book artist best known for his work on Inhumans and The Sentry, both with Paul Jenkins.-Career:Lee first rose to prominence in the industry for his work on Marvel's Namor the Sub-Mariner, Inhumans , and The Sentry, as well as his creator-owned character Hellshock at...
. The first issue was published on February 7, 2007, and King, David, Lee and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada
Joe Quesada
Joseph "Joe" Quesada is an American comic book editor, writer and artist. He became known in the 1990s for his work on various Valiant Comics books, such as Ninjak and Solar, Man of the Atom...
appeared at a midnight signing at a Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
, New York comic book store to promote it. The work had sold over 200,000 copies by March 2007. The success of The Gunslinger Born led to an ongoing series of miniseries published by Marvel, with Furth and David continuing to collaborate, featuring both adapted material from the Dark Tower books and new material approved by King; it also led to a second series of King adaptations in the same format, serializing the events of The Stand
The Stand
The Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf...
.
Although The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
announced in February 2007 that plans were underway for Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
co-creator J. J. Abrams
J. J. Abrams
Jeffrey Jacob "J. J." Abrams is an American film and television producer, screenwriter, director, actor, and composer. He wrote and produced feature films before co-creating the television series Felicity...
to do an adaptation of King's epic Dark Tower series, Abrams stated in a November 2009 interview with MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
that he would not be adapting the series.
Akiva Goldsman
Akiva Goldsman
Akiva J. Goldsman from Walker Valley, New York is an American screenwriter and film producer. He received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture....
, Ron Howard
Ron Howard
Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
and Brian Grazer
Brian Grazer
Brian Thomas Grazer is an Academy Award-winning American film and television producer who co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986 with Ron Howard. Together they have produced many acclaimed films, including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind .- Career :Brian Grazer began his career as a producer...
will produce a feature film based on The Dark Tower series, with Howard slated to direct.
Richard Bachman
In the late 1970s-early 1980s, King published a handful of short novels—Rage (1977), The Long WalkThe Long Walk
The Long Walk is a novel by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1979 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback & hardback...
(1979), Roadwork
Roadwork
Roadwork is a novel by Stephen King, published in 1981 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, which is no longer in print...
(1981), The Running Man
The Running Man
The Running Man is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books...
(1982) and Thinner
Thinner (novel)
Thinner is a 1984 novel by Stephen King, published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. It would be the last novel which King released under the Richard Bachman pseudonym until the release of The Regulators in 1996 . The photo is claimed to have been taken by Claudia Inez Bachman...
(1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The idea behind this was to test whether he could replicate his success again and to his fears that his popularity was an accident. An alternate explanation was that publishing standards at the time allowed only a single book a year. He picked up the name from the hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Bachman–Turner Overdrive is a Canadian rock group from Winnipeg, Manitoba, that had a series of hit albums and singles in the 1970s, selling over 7 million albums in that decade alone. Their 1970s catalog included five Top 40 albums and six Top 40 singles...
, of which he is a fan.
Richard Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym by a persistent Washington D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed similarities between the works and later located publisher's records at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
that named King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. This led to a press release heralding Bachman's "death"—supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym." King dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half
The Dark Half
The Dark Half is a horror novel by Stephen King, published in 1989. Publishers Weekly listed The Dark Half as the second best-selling book of 1989 behind Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1993.Stephen King wrote several books under a...
, about a pseudonym turning on a writer, to "the deceased Richard Bachman", and in 1996, when the Stephen King novel Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators
The Regulators
The Regulators is a novel by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1996 at the same time as its "mirror" novel, Desperation. The two novels represent parallel universes relative to one another, and most of the characters present in one novel's world also exist in the...
carried the "Bachman" byline.
In 2006, during a press conference in London, King declared that he had discovered another Bachman novel, titled Blaze
Blaze (novel)
Blaze is a crime novel by Stephen King, published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. King announced on his website that he "found it" in an attic. In fact it was written before Carrie and King offered the original draft of the novel to his Doubleday publishers at the same time as Salem's Lot...
. It was published on June 12, 2007. In fact, the original manuscript had been held at King's alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
, the University of Maine in Orono, for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King completely rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.
King has used other pseudonyms, such as John Swithen for The Fifth Quarter.
Car accident and thoughts of retirement
On June 19, 1999 at about 4:30 p.m., King was reading a book and walking on the shoulder of Route 5, in Lovell, MaineLovell, Maine
Lovell is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 974 at the 2000 census. Lovell is the site of Kezar Lake, a resort area.-History:...
. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5. According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking
King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston
Lewiston, Maine
Lewiston is a city in Androscoggin County in Maine, and the second-largest city in the state. The population was 41,592 at the 2010 census. It is one of two principal cities of and included within the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine metropolitan New England city and town area and the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine...
. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator. After five operations in ten days and physical therapy
Physical therapy
Physical therapy , often abbreviated PT, is a health care profession. Physical therapy is concerned with identifying and maximizing quality of life and movement potential within the spheres of promotion, prevention, diagnosis, treatment/intervention,and rehabilitation...
, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became worse. Soon it became nearly unbearable.
King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat once his leg was healed. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air
Fresh Air
Fresh Air is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States. The show is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its longtime host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 450 stations and claimed 4.5 million listeners. The show...
's Terry Gross
Terry Gross
Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air, an interview format radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by National Public Radio....
that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe.
Two years later, King suffered severe pneumonia as a direct result of his lung being punctured in the accident. During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story
Lisey's Story
Lisey's Story is a novel by Stephen King combining the elements of psychological horror and romance. It was released on October 24, 2006, and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2007.-Plot:...
.
2000s work
In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable and reduced his stamina. He has since resumed writing, but states on his website that:
"I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be."
In 2000, King published a serialized novel, The Plant
The Plant
The Plant is an unfinished serial novel published in 2000 as an e-book by American author Stephen King.The novel is about the editor in a paperback publishing house, who gets a manuscript from what seems like a crackpot. The manuscript is about magic, but it also contains photographs that seem very...
, online
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, bypassing print publication. At first it was presumed by the public that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but he later stated that he had simply run out of stories. The unfinished epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...
is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet
Riding the Bullet
Riding the Bullet is a novella by Stephen King. This work marks King's debut on the Internet. Simon & Schuster, with technology by SoftLock, first published Riding the Bullet in 2000 as the world's first mass-market electronic book, available for download at $2.50...
, and has said he sees e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012." But he also warns: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."
In August 2003 King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop of King", a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly given to Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
.
In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
, Cell
Cell (novel)
Cell is an apocalyptic horror novel published by American author Stephen King in 2006. The story follows a New England artist struggling to reunite with his young son after a mysterious signal broadcast over the global cell phone network turns the majority of his fellow humans into mindless vicious...
. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones.
In 2007, Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
began publishing comic books based on King's Dark Tower
The Dark Tower (comics)
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born is a seven-issue comic book limited series, published in 2007 by Marvel Comics. It is the first story arc of five based on The Dark Tower series of novels by Stephen King. It is plotted by Robin Furth, scripted by Peter David, and illustrated by Jae Lee and...
series, followed by adaptations of The Stand
The Stand (comics)
The Stand: Captain Trips is a five-issue comic book miniseries, the first of six The Stand series by Marvel Comics, adapting Stephen King's novel of the same name. It is to be overseen by King, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, illustrated by Mike Perkins, and colored by Laura Martin...
in 2008 and The Talisman
The Talisman (comics)
The Talisman is a comic book adaptation published by Del Rey of the novel of the same name written by Stephen King and Peter Straub.The first issue, a limited edition #0, was released at Comic-Con in July 2009. This prequel issue was published in non-limited release on October 21, 2009...
in 2009.
In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key
Duma Key
Duma Key is a horror novel by American novelist Stephen King published in 2008. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is King's first novel to be set in Florida or Minnesota.-Plot:...
, and a collection, Just After Sunset
Just After Sunset
Just After Sunset is the fifth collection of short stories by Stephen King. It was released in hardcover by Scribner on November 11, 2008, and features a holographic dust jacket. On February 6, 2008, the author's official website revealed the title of the collection to be Just Past Sunset. About a...
. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N.
N.
N. is a novella written by Stephen King that appears in his collection Just After Sunset .-Plot summary:In the outer circle of a nested narrative, a woman named Sheila writes to her childhood friend Charlie about her brother Johnny, a psychiatrist who recently committed suicide...
, which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.
In 2009, King published Ur
Ur (novella)
Ur is a novella by Stephen King. It was written exclusively for the platform Amazon Kindle, and became available for download on February 12, 2009. It was later released on audiobook.-Release:King said, speaking about Ur:...
, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle
The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...
and available only on Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
, and Throttle
Throttle (novella)
Throttle is a novella written in co-authorship by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. It was published in February 2009 by Gauntlet Press in a limited edition anthology honoring Richard Matheson entitled He Is Legend, and in a mass-market audiobook entitled Road Rage, also containing Matheson's...
, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill
Joe Hill (writer)
Joseph Hillstrom King , better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer. He has published two novels—Heart Shaped Box and Horns—and a collection of short stories entitled 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the author of the graphic novel series Locke & Key...
, which later was released as an audiobook Road Rage
Road Rage (audiobook)
Road Rage is the title of an audiobook published in February 2009 by HarperAudio. It combines two short stories: Richard Matheson's Duel and its homage called Throttle written by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill...
, which included Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, all of which have been...
's short story "Duel". On November 10 that year, King's novel, Under the Dome
Under the Dome
Under the Dome is a novel by Stephen King, published in November 2009. It is a partial rewrite of a novel King attempted writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, under the titles The Cannibals and Under the Dome...
, was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986's It
It (novel)
It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by the eponymous inter-dimensional predatory life-form that exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It"...
. It debuted at #1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.
On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book will be a collection of four previously unpublished novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s. The book is called Full Dark, No Stars
Full Dark, No Stars
Full Dark, No Stars, published in November 2010, is a collection of four novellas by the author Stephen King, all dealing with the theme of retribution...
. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy
Blockade Billy
Blockade Billy is a 2010 novella by Stephen King. It tells the story of William "Blockade Billy" Blakely, a fictional catcher who briefly played for the New Jersey Titans during the 1957 season. It took King two weeks to write it...
, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications
Cemetery Dance Publications
Cemetery Dance Publications is a specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992.Cemetery...
and later released in mass market paperback by Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
. This baseball-related suspense novella is not set to be reprinted in Full Dark, No Stars. The following month, DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
premiered American Vampire
American Vampire
American Vampire is an Eisner Award-winning comic book series created by writer Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque.The series imagines vampires as a population made up of many different secret species, and charts moments of vampire evolution and inter-species conflict throughout history...
, a monthly comic book series written by King with short story writer Scott Snyder
Scott Snyder
Scott Snyder is an American writer best known for his 2006 short story collection Voodoo Heart, and his work in comic books, including American Vampire, Detective Comics, Batman, Batman: Gates of Gotham and Swamp Thing.-Career:...
, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque
Rafael Albuquerque
Rafael Albuquerque is a Brazilian comic book creator primarily for his artwork on books such as DC Comics' Blue Beetle and American Vampire. Though primarily a penciler and inker of interior comic art, he has also done work as a cover artist, colorist and writer.-Career:Albuquerque begun his...
, which represents King's first original comics work.
King's next novel, 11/22/63
11/22/63
11/22/63 is a novel by Stephen King about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the John F. Kennedy assassination which occurred on November 22, 1963 . The novel was officially announced on the author's official site on March 2, 2011. A short excerpt was released online on June 1, 2011...
, was published November 8, 2011, and the eighth Dark Tower
The Dark Tower (series)
The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "Gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King...
volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole will be published in 2012.
Collaborations
King has written two novels with acclaimed horror novelist Peter StraubPeter Straub
Peter Francis Straub is an American author and poet, most famous for his work in the horror genre. His horror fiction has received numerous literary honors such as the Bram Stoker Award, World Fantasy Award, and International Horror Guild Award, placing him among the most-honored horror authors in...
: The Talisman and a sequel, Black House. King has indicated that he and Straub will likely write the third and concluding book in this series, the tale of Jack Sawyer, but has set no time for its completion.
King also wrote the nonfiction book, Faithful, with novelist and fellow Red Sox fanatic Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan
- Life and work :Born on February 4, 1961 to John Lee O'Nan and Mary Ann O'Nan, née Smith. He and his brother were raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania....
.
In 1996 King collaborated with Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
to create Ghosts, a 40-minute musical video in which the singer portrays a recluse living in a mansion confronting an unwelcoming group of townsfolk initially calling for his exodus from their community.
"Throttle", a novella written in collaboration with his son Joe Hill
Joe Hill (writer)
Joseph Hillstrom King , better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer. He has published two novels—Heart Shaped Box and Horns—and a collection of short stories entitled 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the author of the graphic novel series Locke & Key...
, appears in the anthology He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson, (Gauntlet Press, 2009).
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red is a 2001 novel by Ridley Pearson focusing on the life of the fictional John and Ellen Rimbauer and the construction of their mansion, Rose Red, in the early 20th century. Built on an old Indian burial ground, Rose Red is considered haunted and...
, was a paperback tie-in for the King-penned miniseries Rose Red. The book was published under anonymous authorship, and written by Ridley Pearson. This spin-off is a rare occasion of another author being granted permission to write commercial work using characters and story elements invented by King.
King has written a musical play with John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp, previously known by the stage names Johnny Cougar, John Cougar, and John Cougar Mellencamp, is an American rock singer-songwriter, musician, painter and occasional actor known for his catchy, populist brand of heartland rock that eschews synthesizers and other artificial sounds...
titled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
-Album release:The plan is to release a three-CD/book package featuring major artists performing Mellencamp's songs, and the book will contain the play's dialogue. According to Rolling Stone, two of those artists will be Elvis Costello and Neko Case. It was later announced that Kris Kristofferson,...
.
King played guitar for the rock band Rock-Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members include Dave Barry
Dave Barry
David "Dave" Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and columnist, who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comedic novels.-Biography:Barry was born in Armonk, New York,...
, Ridley Pearson
Ridley Pearson
Ridley Pearson, born on March 13, 1953 in Glen Cove, New York, is an American writer. Pearson has historically written suspense and thriller novels for an adult audience, but has also begun branching out by writing adventure books for children....
, Scott Turow
Scott Turow
Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...
, Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
, James McBride, Mitch Albom
Mitch Albom
Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom is an American best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have sold over 30 million copies worldwide...
, Roy Blount, Jr.
Roy Blount, Jr.
Roy Alton Blount, Jr. is an American writer. Best known as a humorist, Blount is also a reporter, actor, and musician with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band composed entirely of writers. He is also a former president of the Authors Guild....
, Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
, Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Kathi Kamen Goldmark is an American author, columnist, publishing consultant, radio and music producer, songwriter, and musician...
, Sam Barry
Sam Barry (author)
Samuel "Sam" Barry is an American author, columnist, publishing professional, and musician. Barry writes a national column and blog for BookPage with his wife, author Kathi Kamen Goldmark...
, and Greg Iles
Greg Iles
Greg Iles is an American bestselling novelist who lives in Natchez, Mississippi.Iles was born in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father ran the U.S. Embassy Medical Clinic. He was raised in Natchez, Mississippi, where he attended Trinity Episcopal Day School and graduated from the University of...
. None of them claim to have any musical talent. King is a fan of the rock band AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
, who did the soundtrack for his 1986 film, Maximum Overdrive
Maximum Overdrive
Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American action-horror-science fiction film written and directed by novelist Stephen King. The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King's short story, Trucks, which was included in King's first collection of short stories, Night Shift.Maximum Overdrive is...
. He is also a fan of The Ramones, who wrote the title song for Pet Sematary
Pet Sematary (film)
Pet Sematary is a 1989 horror film adaptation of Stephen King's novel of the same name. Directed by Mary Lambert and written by King, the film features Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed, Denise Crosby as Rachel Creed, Blaze Berdahl as Ellie Creed, Miko Hughes as Gage Creed, and Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall...
and appeared in the music video. King referred to the band several times in various novels and stories and The Ramones referenced King on the song "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)", which is on 1981's Pleasant Dreams
Pleasant Dreams
Pleasant Dreams is the sixth studio album by the American punk rock band the Ramones. It was released on July 20, 1981 through Sire Records. Pleasant Dreams reached #58 on the US Billboard album charts. It was frowned upon by guitarist Johnny Ramone because to him it sounded "too slick" and is...
. In addition he wrote the liner notes for their tribute album We're a Happy Family
We're a Happy Family
We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to Ramones is a tribute album to the Ramones by various artists. It started when Johnny Ramone was confronted with the idea of a tribute album and was asked if he wanted to participate, to which he agreed, as long as he would have full control over the project...
. In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult
Blue Öyster Cult
Blue Öyster Cult, often abbreviated BÖC, is an American rock band, most of whose members first came together in Long Island, NY in 1967 as the band Soft White Underbelly...
recorded an updated version of their 1974 song "Astronomy"
Astronomy (song)
"Astronomy" is a rock song by Blue Öyster Cult that has appeared on several of the band's albums. It was first published on their 1974 album Secret Treaties...
. The single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King.
On Sunday, October 25, 2009 the DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
Vertigo
Vertigo (comics)
Vertigo is an imprint of the American comic-book publisher DC Comics. Its books are marketed to a sophisticated audience, and may contain graphic violence, substance abuse, frank depictions of sexuality, profanity, and controversial subjects...
blog news feed released that King will team up with short story writer Scott Snyder
Scott Snyder
Scott Snyder is an American writer best known for his 2006 short story collection Voodoo Heart, and his work in comic books, including American Vampire, Detective Comics, Batman, Batman: Gates of Gotham and Swamp Thing.-Career:...
and artist Rafael Albuquerque
Rafael Albuquerque
Rafael Albuquerque is a Brazilian comic book creator primarily for his artwork on books such as DC Comics' Blue Beetle and American Vampire. Though primarily a penciler and inker of interior comic art, he has also done work as a cover artist, colorist and writer.-Career:Albuquerque begun his...
in a new monthly comic book series from Vertigo in March 2010 called American Vampire
American Vampire
American Vampire is an Eisner Award-winning comic book series created by writer Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque.The series imagines vampires as a population made up of many different secret species, and charts moments of vampire evolution and inter-species conflict throughout history...
. King is to write the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the five issues of the first arc. Scott Snyder will write the story of Pearl. Both stories are to weave together to form the first story arc.
In 2010, King collaborated with musician Shooter Jennings
Shooter Jennings
Waylon Albright "Shooter" Jennings is an American singer-songwriter active in the country music and Southern rock genres as well as making his first foray into psychedelic rock in 2009...
and his band Hierophant
Hierophant
A hierophant is a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy. The word comes from Ancient Greece, where it was constructed from the combination of ta hiera, "the holy," and phainein, "to show." In Attica it was the title of the chief priest at the...
, providing the narration for their most recent album, Black Ribbons
Black Ribbons
Black Ribbons is a concept album by Shooter Jennings with his band Hierophant. The album features dialogue written by horror author Stephen King, who also narrates the album...
.
Writing style
King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met. He also has a simple definition for talent in writing: "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."Shortly after his accident, King wrote the first draft of the book Dreamcatcher
Dreamcatcher (novel)
Dreamcatcher is a horror novel written by Stephen King. It was adapted into a 2003 movie of the same name. The book, written longhand, was the author's tool for recuperation from a 1999 car accident, and was completed in half a year...
with a notebook and a Waterman
Waterman pens
The Waterman pen company is a major manufacturer of fountain pens. Established in 1884 in New York City by Lewis Edson Waterman, it is one of the few remaining first-generation fountain pen companies, as Waterman S.A.. It is currently owned by Newell Rubbermaid.- History :The initial years of...
fountain pen
Fountain pen
A fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of water-based liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action...
, which he called "the world's finest word processor."
When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do." He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question: "Why do you assume I have a choice?"
King often uses authors as characters, or includes mention of fictional book
Fictional book
A fictional book is a book that sometimes provides the basis of the plot of a story, a common thread in a series of books, or the works of a particular writer or canon of work. A fictional book may also be used as a mode of conceit to illustrate a story within a story.-Prominent fictional...
s in his stories, novellas and novels, such as Paul Sheldon who is the main character in Misery and Jack Torrance in The Shining
The Shining (novel)
The Shining is a 1977 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The title was inspired by the John Lennon song "Instant Karma!", which contained the line "We all shine on…". It was King's third published novel, and first hardback bestseller, and the success of the book firmly established King...
. See also List of fictional books in the works of Stephen King for a complete list. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria
Fangoria
Fangoria is an American magazine devoted to horror and exploitation films, which has a number of associated brands:* Fangoria Comics* Fangoria Films* Fangoria RadioFangoria may also refer to:* Fangoria , a Spanish electro pop band...
.
Influences
King has called Richard MathesonRichard Matheson
Richard Burton Matheson is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I Am Legend, all of which have been...
"the author who influenced me most as a writer." Both authors casually integrate characters' thoughts into the third person narration, just one of several parallels between their writing styles. In a current edition of Matheson's The Shrinking Man
The Shrinking Man
The Shrinking Man is a novel by Richard Matheson published in 1956. It was adapted into a motion picture called The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957 by Universal Pictures. A remake has been proposed which has been pushed back several times from 2001 to the current day; at one point it was to have...
, King is quoted: "A horror story if there ever was one...a great adventure story—it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."
King refers to H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
several times in Danse Macabre
Danse Macabre (book)
Danse Macabre is a non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, radio, film and comics, and the genre's influence on United States popular culture...
. "Gramma
Gramma (short story)
"Gramma" is a short story by Stephen King first published in Weirdbook magazine in 1984, and collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. Certain characters/creatures/unearthly powers featured in the works of H.P...
", a short story made into a film in the 1980s anthology horror show The New Twilight Zone
The New Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone is the first of two revivals of Rod Serling's acclaimed 1950/60s television series of the same name. It ran for two seasons on CBS before producing a final season for syndication.-Series history:...
, mentions Lovecraft's notorious fictional creation Necronomicon
Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
, also borrowing the names of a number of the fictional monsters mentioned therein. "I Know What You Need
I Know What You Need
"I Know What You Need" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the September 1976 issue of Cosmopolitan, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.-Plot summary:...
" from the 1976 collection Night Shift
Night Shift (book)
Night Shift is the first collection of short stories by Stephen King, first published in 1978. Many of King's most famous short stories were included in this collection.-Stories collected:-Details:...
, and 'Salem's Lot also mention the tome. In On Writing
On Writing
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir and writing guide book by Stephen King, published in 2000. It is a book about the prolific author's experiences as a writer. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed On Writing 21st on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to...
, King is critical of Lovecraft's dialogue-writing skills, using passages from The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space
"The Colour Out of Space" is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in March 1927. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts...
as particularly poor examples. There are also several examples of King referring to Lovecraftian characters in his work, such as Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep, also known as the Crawling Chaos, is a malign deity in the Cthulhu Mythos fictional universe created by H. P. Lovecraft. First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem of the same name, he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers and in the tabletop...
and Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth is a cosmic entity of the fictional Cthulhu Mythos and the Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft. Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward...
.
King acknowledges the influence of Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
, particularly on his novel Salem's Lot, which he envisioned as a retelling of Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
. Its related short story "Jerusalem's Lot", is reminiscent of Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm.
King has also referenced author Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson was an American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years...
. Salem's Lot opens with a quotation from Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
For the Richard Matheson novel, see Hell House, made into a film titled The Legend of Hell House.The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the twentieth century,...
, and a character in Wolves of the Calla
Wolves of the Calla
Wolves of the Calla is the fifth book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. This book continues the story of Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, and Oy as they make their way toward the Dark Tower...
references the Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the final novel by Shirley Jackson, published in 1962, three years before her death in 1965. In 1966, the novel was adapted into a play by Hugh Wheeler...
.
King is a fan of John D. MacDonald
John D. MacDonald
John Dann MacDonald was an American crime and suspense novelist and short story writer.MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in his adopted home of Florida...
, and dedicated the novella "Sun Dog" to MacDonald, saying "I miss you, old friend." For his part, MacDonald wrote an admiring preface to Night Shift, and even had his famous character, Travis McGee
Travis McGee
Travis McGee is a fictional character, created by prolific American mystery writer John D. MacDonald. Unlike most detectives in crime fiction, McGee is neither a police officer nor a licensed private investigator; instead, he is a self-described "salvage consultant" who recovers others' property...
, reading Cujo in one of the last McGee novels and Pet Sematary in the last McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain.
In 1987 King's Philtrum Press
Philtrum Press
Philtrum Press is a small publishing house run by Stephen King.Primarily the work of Stephen King's personal assistant, Marsha DeFillipo ,conducting small press operations from his front business offices in Bangor, Maine....
published Don Robertson
Don Robertson (author)
Don Robertson was an American novelist.Robertson was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended East High School. He briefly attended Harvard and Western Reserve University before working as a reporter and columnist for The Plain Dealer, the Cleveland News and the Cleveland Press.Robertson is probably...
's novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man. In his forenote to the novel, King wrote, "Don Robertson was and is one of the three writers who influenced me as a young man who was trying to 'become' a novelist (the other two being Richard Matheson and John D. MacDonald)."
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
's book The Door into Summer
The Door into Summer
The Door into Summer is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and published in hardcover in 1957. It is a fast-paced hard science fiction novel, with a key fantastic element, and romantic elements...
is repeatedly mentioned in King's Wolves of the Calla
Wolves of the Calla
Wolves of the Calla is the fifth book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. This book continues the story of Roland Deschain, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Jake Chambers, and Oy as they make their way toward the Dark Tower...
.
In an interview with King, Published in the USA Weekend
USA Weekend
USA Weekend is a national publication distributed through more than 800+ newspapers in the United States. It reaches 47 million readers in 22.6 million households every weekend. Awarded for its journalism and design, USA WEEKEND focuses on social issues, entertainment, health, food and travel....
in March 2009, the author stated, "People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard
Elmore Leonard
Elmore John Leonard Jr. , better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.Among his...
, every day I wake up and – not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree – don't see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, "Great! He's probably working somewhere. He's gonna produce another book, and I'll have another book to read." Because when he's gone, there's nobody else."
King partly dedicated his book Cell
Cell (novel)
Cell is an apocalyptic horror novel published by American author Stephen King in 2006. The story follows a New England artist struggling to reunite with his young son after a mysterious signal broadcast over the global cell phone network turns the majority of his fellow humans into mindless vicious...
to film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
George Romero, and wrote an essay for the Elite DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
version of Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
.
Critical response
Although critical reaction to King's work has been mostly positive, he has occasionally come under fire from academic writers.Science fiction editors John Clute
John Clute
John Frederick Clute is a Canadian born author and critic who has lived in Britain since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history."...
and Peter Nichols
Peter Nichols
Peter Nichols FRSL is an English writer of stage plays, film and television.Born in Bristol, England, he was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and served his compulsory National Service as a clerk in Calcutta and later in the Combined Services Entertainments Unit in Singapore where he...
offer a largely favorable appraisal of King, noting his "pungent prose, sharp ear for dialogue, disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to children) [all of which rank] him among the more distinguished 'popular' writers."
In his analysis of post-World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi
S. T. Joshi
Sunand Tryambak Joshi — known as S. T. Joshi — is an award-winning Indian American literary critic, novelist, and a leading figure in the study of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and other authors of weird and fantastic fiction...
devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works (his supernatural novels), are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina
Deus ex machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...
endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game
Gerald's Game
Gerald's Game is a psychological horror novel by Stephen King. The story is about a woman who accidentally kills her husband while she is handcuffed to the bed as part of a bondage game, and, following the subsequent realisation that she is trapped with little hope of rescue, begins to let the...
(1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written. Joshi suggests that King's strengths as a writer include the accessible "everyman
Everyman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
" quality of his prose, and his unfailingly insightful observations about the pains and joys of adolescence
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
. Joshi cites two early non-supernatural novels—Rage (1977) and The Running Man
The Running Man
The Running Man is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books...
(1982)—as King's best, suggesting both are riveting and well-constructed suspense thrillers, with believable characters.
In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
for his short story "The Man in the Black Suit
The Man in the Black Suit
"The Man in the Black Suit" is a short story by Stephen King. It was originally published in the October 31, 1994 issue of The New Yorker magazine. In 1995, it won the World Fantasy Award and the O. Henry Award for Best Short Fiction. In 1997, it was published in the limited-edition collection Six...
".
In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, with his work being described thus:
Stephen King’s writing is securely rooted in the great American tradition that glorifies spirit-of-place and the abiding power of narrative. He crafts stylish, mind-bending page-turners that contain profound moral truths–some beautiful, some harrowing–about our inner lives. This Award commemorates Mr. King’s well-earned place of distinction in the wide world of readers and book lovers of all ages.
Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
, described King's work as "non-literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
", and critic Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
denounced the choice:
The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.
However, others came to King's defense, such as writer Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
, who responded:
Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite."
In Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
's review of the 2004 movie Secret Window
Secret Window
Secret Window is a 2004 psychological horror film starring Johnny Depp and John Turturro. It was written and directed by David Koepp, based on the novella Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King, featuring a musical score by Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli. The story appeared in King's...
, he stated, "A lot of people were outraged that [King] was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer could not be taken seriously. But after finding that his book On Writing
On Writing
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir and writing guide book by Stephen King, published in 2000. It is a book about the prolific author's experiences as a writer. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed On Writing 21st on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to...
had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
, I have gotten over my own snobbery."
In 2008, King's book On Writing
On Writing
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir and writing guide book by Stephen King, published in 2000. It is a book about the prolific author's experiences as a writer. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed On Writing 21st on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to...
was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".
Appearances and adaptations in other media
King and his wife Tabitha own Zone Radio Corp, a radio station group consisting of WZON 103.1 FM and 620 AM.King has stated that his favorite book-to-film adaptations are Stand by Me
Stand by Me (film)
Stand by Me is a 1986 American drama film directed by Rob Reiner. Based on the novella The Body by Stephen King, the film takes its title from the Ben E. King song of the same name, which plays over the end credits.-Plot:...
, The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont and starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman....
, and The Mist
The Mist (film)
The Mist is a 2007 American science-fiction horror film based on the 1980 novella of the same name by Stephen King. The film is written and directed by Frank Darabont, who had previously adapted Stephen King's works The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile...
.
King's first film appearance was in George Romero's
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
Knightriders
Knightriders
Knightriders is a 1981 film written and directed by George A. Romero. It was filmed entirely on location in Pennsylvania, especially in Fawn Township and Natrona...
as a buffoonish audience member. His first featured role was in Creepshow
Creepshow
Creepshow is a 1982 American horror anthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King. The film's ensemble cast included Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, E.G...
, playing Jordy Verrill, a backwoods redneck who, after touching a fallen meteorite in hopes of selling it, grows moss all over his body. He has since made cameos in several adaptations of his works. He appeared in Pet Sematary
Pet Sematary (film)
Pet Sematary is a 1989 horror film adaptation of Stephen King's novel of the same name. Directed by Mary Lambert and written by King, the film features Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed, Denise Crosby as Rachel Creed, Blaze Berdahl as Ellie Creed, Miko Hughes as Gage Creed, and Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall...
as a minister at a funeral, in Thinner
Thinner (film)
Thinner is a 1996 horror film directed by Tom Holland and written by Michael McDowell with the screenplay by Tom Holland. The film is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.-Plot:...
as a pharmacist, in Rose Red
Rose Red (film)
Rose Red is a television miniseries scripted by horror novelist Stephen King. The series was premiered in the United States on ABC on January 27, 2002. The story involves a cavernous Seattle mansion called Rose Red, which is investigated by parapsychologist Dr. Joyce Reardon and a team of...
as a pizza deliveryman, as a news reporter in The Storm of the Century, in The Stand
The Stand (TV miniseries)
# Project Blue [1:33]# The Dream Begins [2:08]# On the Road to Kansas [3:57]# The Trashmen in Vegas [1:58]# Headin' West [1:56]# Larry & Nadine [2:38]# Mother Abigail [3:10]# 'Sorry Mister, I Don't Understand' [2:54]# Mid Country [3:22]...
as "Teddy Wieszack," in the Shining
The Shining (TV miniseries)
The Shining is a three-part television miniseries based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. Directed by Mick Garris from King's teleplay, the series was first aired in 1997.-Plot:...
miniseries as a band member, in The Langoliers
The Langoliers (TV miniseries)
The Langoliers is a miniseries consisting of 2 episodes of 2 hours each . It was directed and written by Tom Holland and based on the novella by Stephen King. The series was produced by Mitchell Galin and David R. Kappes...
as Tom Holby and in Sleepwalkers
Sleepwalkers (film)
Sleepwalkers is a 1992 American horror film based on an original screenplay by Stephen King and directed by Mick Garris.-Plot summary:...
as the cemetery caretaker. He has also appeared in The Golden Years, in Chappelle's Show
Chappelle's Show
Chappelle's Show is an American sketch comedy television series created by comedian Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, with Chappelle hosting the show as well as starring in various skits. Chappelle, Brennan and Michele Armour were the show's executive producers. The series premiered on January 22,...
and, along with fellow author Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
, on The Simpsons
Insane Clown Poppy
"Insane Clown Poppy" is the third episode of the twelfth season of The Simpsons. It aired on November 12, 2000 in the US. In the episode, during an outdoor book fair, Krusty finds out he has a daughter , but loses her trust after gambling away her violin to Fat Tony, prompting Homer and Krusty to...
as himself. In addition to acting, King tried his hand at directing with Maximum Overdrive
Maximum Overdrive
Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American action-horror-science fiction film written and directed by novelist Stephen King. The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King's short story, Trucks, which was included in King's first collection of short stories, Night Shift.Maximum Overdrive is...
, in which he also made a cameo appearance as a man using an ATM that is on the fritz.
King produced and acted in a miniseries, Kingdom Hospital
Kingdom Hospital
Kingdom Hospital is a thirteen-episode television miniseries based on Lars von Trier's The Kingdom , which was developed by horror writer Stephen King in 2004 for American television...
, which is based on the Danish miniseries Riget by Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
. He also co-wrote The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
season 5 episode "Chinga" with the creator of the series Chris Carter
Chris Carter (screenwriter)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He is the creator of The X-Files and Millennium.- Ten Thirteen Productions :...
.
King made an appearance as a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy! in 1995, playing to benefit the Bangor Public Library
Bangor Public Library
The Bangor Public Library is the public library serving Bangor, Maine. The library was first founded in 1830 as the Bangor Mechanic Association's private library. In 1873, several other associations' libraries combined with it to form the Bangor Mechanic Association Public Library. In 1883, former...
.
King provided the voice of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation
Assassination Vacation
Assassination Vacation is a book by Sarah Vowell, published in 2005, in which she travels around the United States researching the assassinations of U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and James Garfield...
.
In 2010, King appeared in a cameo role as a cleaner
Cleaner (crime)
In crime fiction, a cleaner is a person who destroys or removes any incriminating evidence at the scene of a crime, typically a murder, as if the crime never happened...
named Bachman (a reference to his pen name Richard Bachman) on the FX series Sons of Anarchy
Sons of Anarchy
Sons of Anarchy is an American television drama series created by Kurt Sutter about the lives of a close-knit outlaw motorcycle club operating in Charming, a fictional town in Northern California...
.
The Syfy
Syfy
Syfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
TV series Haven
Haven (TV series)
Haven is a supernatural drama television series loosely based on the Stephen King novel The Colorado Kid. The show, filmed on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, Canada, is an American/Canadian co-production. The one-hour drama premiered on July 9, 2010, on Syfy...
is based on King's novella, The Colorado Kid.
Political activism
In April 2008, King spoke out against HB 1423, a bill pending in the Massachusetts state legislature that would restrict or ban the sale of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. Although King stated that he had no personal interest in video games as a hobby, he criticized the proposed law, which he sees as an attempt by politicians to scapegoat pop culture, and to act as surrogate parents to others' children, which he asserted is usually "disastrous" and "undemocratic". He also saw the law as inconsistent, as it would forbid a 17-year-old, legally able to see Hostel: Part II, from buying or renting Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 open world action video game developed by British games developer Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, the fifth original console release and eighth game overall...
, which is violent but less graphic. While conceding that he saw no artistic merit in some violent video games, King also opined that such games reflect the violence that already exists in society, which would not be lessened by such a law, and would be redundant in light of the ratings system that already exists for video games. King argued that such laws allow legislators to ignore the economic divide between the rich and poor, and the easy availability of guns, which he felt were the more legitimate causes of violence.
A controversy emerged on May 5, 2008, when a conservative blogger posted a clip of King at a Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
reading event. King, talking to high-school students, had said: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that." The comment was described by the blog as "another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military," and likened to John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
's similar remark from 2006. King responded later that day, saying, "That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt...I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise." King again defended his comment in an interview with the Bangor Daily News
Bangor Daily News
The Bangor Daily News is an American newspaper that was founded on June 18, 1889; in 1900 the paper merged with the Bangor Whig and Courier. The Bangor Publishing Co. publishes the paper in Bangor, Maine, in addition to two weekly papers distributed by the BDN and several others distributed by the...
on May 8, saying, "I’m not going to apologize for promoting that kids get better education in high school, so they have more options. Those that don’t agree with what I’m saying, I’m not going to change their minds."
King's website states that he is a supporter of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
. During the 2008 presidential election, King voiced his support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
. King was quoted as calling conservative commentator Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Edward Lee Beck is an American conservative radio host, vlogger, author, entrepreneur, political commentator and former television host. He hosts the Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks...
"Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."
On March 8, 2011, King spoke at a political rally in Sarasota
Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers...
aimed against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), voicing his opposition to the Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
.
Personal life
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
, one in Lovell, Maine
Lovell, Maine
Lovell is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 974 at the 2000 census. Lovell is the site of Kezar Lake, a resort area.-History:...
, and they regularly winter in their waterfront mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
located off the Gulf of Mexico
Gulf of Mexico
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...
, in Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota is a city located in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. It is south of the Tampa Bay Area and north of Fort Myers...
. He and Tabitha have three children and three grandchildren.
Shortly after publication of The Tommyknockers
The Tommyknockers
The Tommyknockers is a 1987 horror novel by Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is more of an excursion into the realm of science fiction for King, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.In his...
, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addictions taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, Xanax
Alprazolam
Alprazolam is a short-acting anxiolytic of the benzodiazepine class of psychoactive drugs. Alprazolam, like other benzodiazepines, binds to specific sites on the GABAA gamma-amino-butyric acid receptor...
, Valium, NyQuil
NyQuil
NyQuil is a brand of over the counter medication which is intended to relieve various symptoms of the common cold. Because all of the medications within the NyQuil imprint contain sedating antihistamines, hypnotics, and/or alcohol, they are intended to be taken before sleep...
, dextromethorphan
Dextromethorphan
Dextromethorphan is an antitussive drug. It is one of the active ingredients in many over-the-counter cold and cough medicines, such as Robitussin, NyQuil, Dimetapp, Vicks, Coricidin, Delsym, and others, including generic labels. Dextromethorphan has also found other uses in medicine, ranging...
(cough medicine) and marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...
, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.
Tabitha King
Tabitha King
Tabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
has published nine of her own novels. Both King's sons are published authors: Owen King
Owen King
Owen Philip King is an American author and the youngest son of authors Stephen and Tabitha King. He has two older siblings, Naomi King and Joseph Hillstrom King, and grew up in Bangor, Maine...
published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom
Joe Hill (writer)
Joseph Hillstrom King , better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer. He has published two novels—Heart Shaped Box and Horns—and a collection of short stories entitled 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the author of the graphic novel series Locke & Key...
published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts
20th Century Ghosts
20th Century Ghosts is American author Joe Hill's first published book-length work. An anthology of short stories, it was first published in October 2005 in the United Kingdom and released in October 2007 in the United States.-Publication history:...
, in 2005. and his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box
Heart-Shaped Box (novel)
Heart-Shaped Box is the debut horror novel of author Joe Hill.-Synopsis:Aging rock star Judas Coyne spends his retirement collecting morbid memorabillia such as a witch's confession, a real snuff film and, after being sent an e-mail directly about the item online, a dead man's suit. He is told, by...
will be adapted into a feature film by director Neil Jordan
Neil Jordan
Neil Patrick Jordan is an Irish filmmaker and novelist. He won an Academy Award for The Crying Game.- Early life :...
.
King's daughter Naomi
Naomi King
Rev. Naomi Rachel King , is an American Unitarian Universalist minister. She is the daughter of authors Stephen King and Tabitha King....
spent two years as a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church
Unitarian Universalism
Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a...
, in Utica, New York
Utica, New York
Utica is a city in and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 62,235 at the 2010 census, an increase of 2.6% from the 2000 census....
. Naomi now ministers for the Unitarian Universalist Church of River of Grass, in Plantation, Florida
Plantation, Florida
Plantation is the name of the following places in the U.S. state of Florida:*Plantation, Florida, a city in Broward County; the largest of the places named "Plantation" in Florida*Plantation, Sarasota County, Florida, a census-designated place...
with her same-sex partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.
King is a fan of baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, and of the Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
in particular; he frequently attends the team's home and away games, and occasionally mentions the team in his novels and stories. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League
Little League
Little League Baseball and Softball is a non-profit organization in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States which organizes local youth baseball and softball leagues throughout the U.S...
Championship in 1989. He recounts this experience in the New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
essay "Head Down", which also appears in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Nightmares & Dreamscapes is a short story collection by Stephen King published in 1993.-Stories:-Adaptations:"The Night Flier" and "Dolan's Cadillac" were both adapted to films of the same respective names. "Chattery Teeth"' was adapted into a segment of the film Quicksilver Highway...
. In 1999, King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a psychological horror novel by Stephen King. In 2004, a pop-up book adaptation was released, designed by Kees Moerbeek and illustrated by Alan Dingman.- Plot summary :...
, which featured former Red Sox pitcher
Pitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...
Tom Gordon
Tom Gordon
Thomas Gordon , nicknamed "Flash", is a former Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. He played with the Kansas City Royals , Boston Red Sox , Chicago Cubs , Houston Astros , Chicago White Sox , New York Yankees , Philadelphia Phillies and the...
as the protagonist's imaginary companion. In 2004, King co-wrote a book titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
Faithful is a book co-written by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan. It chronicles exchanges between King and O'Nan about the Red Sox's season, beginning with an e-mail in summer 2003, and throughout the 2004 season, from Spring Training to the World Series...
with Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan
- Life and work :Born on February 4, 1961 to John Lee O'Nan and Mary Ann O'Nan, née Smith. He and his brother were raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania....
, recounting the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series
2004 American League Championship Series
The 2004 American League Championship Series was the Major League Baseball playoff series to decide the American League champion for the 2004 season. It was played between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, at Fenway Park and the original Yankee Stadium, from October 12 to October 20, 2004...
and World Series
2004 World Series
The 2004 World Series was the Major League Baseball championship series for the 2004 season. It was the 100th World Series and featured the American League champions, the Boston Red Sox, against the National League champions, the St. Louis Cardinals...
. In the 2005 film Fever Pitch
Fever Pitch (2005 film)
Fever Pitch, which was released as The Perfect Catch outside of the United States and Canada, is a 2005 Farrelly brothers romantic comedy film. It is a remake of a 1997 British film of the same name. Both films are loosely based on the Nick Hornby book of the same name, a best-selling memoir in...
, about an obsessive Boston Red Sox fan, King tosses out the first pitch of the Sox's opening day game. He has also devoted one of his columns for Entertainment Weekly on the subject of commercialism in Major League Baseball. He also starred in an ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
SportsCenter
SportsCenter
SportsCenter is a daily sports news television show, and the flagship program of American cable network ESPN since the network launched on September 7, 1979. Originally broadcast only daily, SportsCenter is now shown up to twelve times a day, replaying the day's scores and highlights from major...
advertisement referencing both his allegiance to the Red Sox and his preferred writing genre (horror fiction).
Awards
- Alex AwardsAlex AwardsThe Alex Awards are also a separate award given for excellence in entertainment packaging.The Alex Awards is an annual event designed to commend and honor the ten books published for adults during the previous year, which have been also judged to have "special appeal" for young readers, primarily...
2009: Just After SunsetJust After SunsetJust After Sunset is the fifth collection of short stories by Stephen King. It was released in hardcover by Scribner on November 11, 2008, and features a holographic dust jacket. On February 6, 2008, the author's official website revealed the title of the collection to be Just Past Sunset. About a... - American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults
- 1978: 'Salem's Lot
- 1981: FirestarterFirestarterFirestarter is a novel by Stephen King first published in 1980. It was nominated for a British Fantasy Award in 1981.The book is dedicated to the author Shirley Jackson: "In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice."...
- Balrog Awards 1980: Night ShiftNight Shift (book)Night Shift is the first collection of short stories by Stephen King, first published in 1978. Many of King's most famous short stories were included in this collection.-Stories collected:-Details:...
- Black Quill Awards 2009: Duma KeyDuma KeyDuma Key is a horror novel by American novelist Stephen King published in 2008. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is King's first novel to be set in Florida or Minnesota.-Plot:...
- Bram Stoker AwardBram Stoker AwardThe Bram Stoker Award is a recognition presented by the Horror Writers Association for "superior achievement" in horror writing. The awards have been presented annually since 1987, and the winners are selected by ballot of the Active members of the HWA...
- 1987: Misery
- 1990: Four Past MidnightFour Past MidnightFour Past Midnight is a collection of four novellas by Stephen King, published in 1990. The four stories are "The Langoliers"; "Secret Window, Secret Garden"; "The Library Policeman"; and "The Sun Dog".- The Langoliers :...
- 1995: "Lunch at the Gotham CaféLunch at the Gotham CafeLunch at the Gotham Cafe is a short story by Stephen King. It originally appeared in the 1995 anthology Dark Love . In 1997, it was published in the limited-edition collection Six Stories...
" - 1996: The Green Mile
- 1998: Bag of BonesBag of BonesBag of Bones is a 1998 novel by Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife...
- 2002: Lifetime Achievement AwardBram Stoker Award for Lifetime AchievementThe Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement is an award presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre. This award is often presented to a writer, but it may also be given for influential accomplishments in other creative fields.-Recipients:*...
- 2006: Lisey's StoryLisey's StoryLisey's Story is a novel by Stephen King combining the elements of psychological horror and romance. It was released on October 24, 2006, and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 2007.-Plot:...
- British Fantasy SocietyBritish Fantasy SocietyThe British Fantasy Society began in 1971 as the British Weird Fantasy Society, an offshoot of the British Science Fiction Association. The society is dedicated to promoting the best in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres....
Award- 1981: Special Award
- 1982: CujoCujoCujo is a psychological horror novel by Stephen King. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1982, and was made into a film in 1983....
- 1983: "The Breathing MethodThe Breathing MethodThe Breathing Method is a novella by Stephen King which was released as part of his Different Seasons collection in 1982, and is currently the only story in the collection not to have been made into a movie. It is placed in the section entitled "A Winter's Tale".-Plot:David, the narrator of the...
" - 1987: ItIt (novel)It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by the eponymous inter-dimensional predatory life-form that exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It"...
- 1999: Bag of BonesBag of BonesBag of Bones is a 1998 novel by Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife...
- 2005: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
- Deutscher Phantastik Preis
- 2000: Hearts in AtlantisHearts in AtlantisHearts in Atlantis is a collection of two novellas and three short stories by Stephen King, all connected to one another by recurring characters and taking place in roughly chronological order....
- 2001: The Green Mile
- 2003: Black House
- 2004: International Author of the Year
- 2005: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
- 2000: Hearts in Atlantis
- Horror Guild
- 1997: Desperation
- 2001: Riding the BulletRiding the BulletRiding the Bullet is a novella by Stephen King. This work marks King's debut on the Internet. Simon & Schuster, with technology by SoftLock, first published Riding the Bullet in 2000 as the world's first mass-market electronic book, available for download at $2.50...
- 2001: On WritingOn WritingOn Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir and writing guide book by Stephen King, published in 2000. It is a book about the prolific author's experiences as a writer. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed On Writing 21st on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to...
- 2002: Black House
- 2003: From a Buick 8From a Buick 8From a Buick 8 is a novel by horror writer Stephen King. Published on September 24, 2002, this is the second novel by Stephen King to feature a supernatural car...
- 2003: Everything's EventualEverything's Eventual"Everything's Eventual" is a novella by Stephen King. It was originally published in the October/November 1997 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In 2000, it was included in the game Stephen King's F13...
- Hugo AwardHugo AwardThe Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
1982: Danse MacabreDanse Macabre (book)Danse Macabre is a non-fiction book by Stephen King, about horror fiction in print, radio, film and comics, and the genre's influence on United States popular culture... - International Horror Guild AwardInternational Horror Guild AwardThe International Horror Guild Award is a recognition presented by the International Horror Guild to recognize the achievements of those who create in the field of horror and dark fantasy. Nancy A. Collins, the founder of the award, felt there was a need for an award granted by a large,...
1999: Storm of the CenturyStorm of the CenturyStorm of the Century, alternatively known as Stephen King's Storm of the Century, is a 1999 horror TV miniseries written by Stephen King and directed by Craig R. Baxley. Unlike many other King mini-series, Storm of the Century was not based upon a Stephen King novel - King wrote it as a screenplay... - Locus Awards
- 1982: Danse Macabre
- 1986: Skeleton CrewSkeleton CrewSkeleton Crew is the second collection of short fiction by Stephen King. The first collection, Night Shift, was published seven years prior in 1978. Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas, was published between the two in 1982. Skeleton Crew was originally published in hardcover form by...
- 1997: Desperation
- 1999: Bag of Bones
- 2001: On Writing
- Mystery Writers of AmericaMystery Writers of AmericaMystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....
2007: Grand Master Award - National Book AwardNational Book AwardThe National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
2003: Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age 1982: Firestarter
- O. Henry AwardO. Henry AwardThe O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
1996: "The Man in the Black SuitThe Man in the Black Suit"The Man in the Black Suit" is a short story by Stephen King. It was originally published in the October 31, 1994 issue of The New Yorker magazine. In 1995, it won the World Fantasy Award and the O. Henry Award for Best Short Fiction. In 1997, it was published in the limited-edition collection Six...
" - Quill Award 2005: Faithful
- Shirley Jackson AwardShirley Jackson AwardThe Shirley Jackson Awards are literary awards named after Shirley Jackson in recognition of her legacy in writing. These awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic are presented at Readercon, an annual conference on imaginative...
2009: Morality - Spokane Public Library Golden Pen Award 1986: Golden Pen Award
- University of MaineUniversity of MaineThe University of Maine is a public research university located in Orono, Maine, United States. The university was established in 1865 as a land grant college and is referred to as the flagship university of the University of Maine System...
1980: Alumni Career Award - Us Magazine 1982: Best Fiction Writer of the Year
- World Fantasy AwardWorld Fantasy AwardThe World Fantasy Awards are annual, international awards given to authors and artists who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the field of fantasy...
- 1980: Convention AwardWorld Fantasy Convention AwardThis special World Fantasy Award is given for peerless contributions to the fantasy genre, and presented at the annual World Fantasy Convention. Past winners have included authors, artists, and publishers.-1978:...
- 1982: "The ReachThe ReachThe Reach is a short story by Stephen King. First published in Yankee in 1981 under the title "Do the Dead Sing?", it was later collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. It was also included in American Gothic Tales in 1996....
" - 1995: "The Man in the Black Suit"
- 2004: Lifetime AchievementWorld Fantasy Award for Life AchievementThis World Fantasy Award is presented to individuals for their outstanding service to the fantasy field, and decided by a panel of judges at the World Fantasy Convention.-1984:* L. Sprague de Camp* Richard Matheson* E. Hoffmann Price* Jack Vance* Donald Wandrei...
- 1980: Convention Award
- World Horror ConventionWorld Horror ConventionThe World Horror Convention is an annual professional gathering of the World Horror Society and other interested parties.-Site selection:Historically, all World Horror Conventions have been held in the United States or Canada, usually alternating between east and west sides of the country...
1992: World Horror Grandmaster
See also
Bibliography- Short fiction by Stephen KingShort fiction by Stephen KingThis is a list of short fiction by Stephen King. This includes short stories, novelettes, and novellas, as well as poems. It is arranged chronologically by first publication...
- Stephen King bibliographyStephen King bibliographyThis Stephen King bibliography is a complete list of books published by Stephen King. For individual shorter works, see: Short fiction by Stephen King. Note that books related to The Dark Tower series are denoted with +...
- Unpublished and uncollected works by Stephen King
Family
- Joseph Hillstrom KingJoe Hill (writer)Joseph Hillstrom King , better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American author and comic book writer. He has published two novels—Heart Shaped Box and Horns—and a collection of short stories entitled 20th Century Ghosts. He is also the author of the graphic novel series Locke & Key...
- Naomi KingNaomi KingRev. Naomi Rachel King , is an American Unitarian Universalist minister. She is the daughter of authors Stephen King and Tabitha King....
- Owen KingOwen KingOwen Philip King is an American author and the youngest son of authors Stephen and Tabitha King. He has two older siblings, Naomi King and Joseph Hillstrom King, and grew up in Bangor, Maine...
- Tabitha KingTabitha KingTabitha King is an American author and activist. She is married to writer Stephen King.-Family:King met her husband, author Stephen King, in college through her work-study job in the Fogler Library. Their daughter Naomi Rachel was born in 1970. They married on January 2, 1971...
King's fictional topography
- Castle Rock, MaineCastle Rock (Stephen King)Castle Rock, Maine is part of Stephen King’s fictional Maine topography and provides the setting for a number of his novels, novellas, and short stories...
- Derry, MaineDerry (Stephen King)Derry, Maine is a fictional town and a part of Stephen King's fictional Maine topography, and, like Castle Rock, it has served as the setting for a number of his novels, novellas, and short stories. It first appeared in the short story "The Bird and the Album" and was expanded on in both It and...
- Jerusalem's Lot, MaineJerusalem's Lot (Stephen King)Jerusalem's Lot is a fictional town in the works of horror fiction writer Stephen King...
Projects
- Dollar BabyDollar BabyThe Dollar Baby is a term coined by best-selling author Stephen King in reference to a select group of students and aspiring filmmakers or theatre producers whom he has granted permission to adapt one of his short stories for $1...
- Rock Bottom RemaindersRock Bottom RemaindersThe Rock Bottom Remainders is a rock and roll band consisting of published writers, most of them both amateur musicians and popular English-language book, magazine, and newspaper authors. The band took its self-mocking name from the publishing term remaindered book, a work of which the unsold...
Publishers
- Cemetery Dance PublicationsCemetery Dance PublicationsCemetery Dance Publications is a specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992.Cemetery...
- ScribnerCharles Scribner's SonsCharles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
- Doubleday
- Grant
- Philtrum PressPhiltrum PressPhiltrum Press is a small publishing house run by Stephen King.Primarily the work of Stephen King's personal assistant, Marsha DeFillipo ,conducting small press operations from his front business offices in Bangor, Maine....
- Viking PressViking PressViking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
Derivative works
- Media based on Stephen King works
External links
- Stephen King's Official Web Site
- Official Website for Carrie The Musical
- Stephen King's Home
- Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation
- Working with the King - Shotsmag Ezine Interview with Philippa Pride, King's UK editor
- La Torre Nera – Stephen King Italian/English Website
- Club Stephen King French English Website
- Video of a March 2008 interview with King in Sarasota, Fla.
- German web site
- Stephen King quotes...everyday