examiner and a former colleague from the one school at which King taught—Hampden Academy.
King also says, ‘Although the towns surrounding ’salem’s Lot are very real, ’salem’s Lot exists
wholly in the author’s imagination....” Note the use of the lower case ‘s’ in ’salem’s lot, as it appears
in the original novel. As time has passed the shortened version of the town’s name (Jerusalem’s Lot)
has, in general, come to be referred to as ’Salem’s Lot, or even Salem’s Lot (no apostrophe).
In 1999 King published an Introduction to the novel for the first time. Yet another Introduction
appears in the ’Salem’s Lot Illustrated Edition, released by Doubleday in 2005. Both are described
in detail later in this chapter.
Untitled—The Shining (1977)
An untitled piece of three sections appears at the beginning of The Shining, King’s novel of a
man slowly descending into madness under the influence of his own weakness and the malevolence of
a Bad Place. The short piece is effectively an Author’s Note. The first section dedicates the novel to
the King’s second child, ‘This is for Joe Hill King, who shines on.’ The second section
acknowledges the editor of King’s first three published novels, William (Bill) Thompson, ‘a man of
wit and good sense’.
The final section reads, ‘Some of the most beautiful resort hotels in the world are located in
Colorado, but the hotel in these pages is based on none of them. The Overlook and the people
associated with it exist wholly within the author’s imagination.’ Of course, we now know the book
was inspired by the King’s stay at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado91. In fact, the mini-
series version of the tale, Stephen King’s The Shining, was filmed at The Stanley, between February
and June of 1996.
King wrote a four-page Introduction for a 2001 edition of the book, detailed later in this
chapter.
Author’s Note—The Stand (1978)
Opening this piece by noting that The Stand is fiction King says, ‘Many of the events occur in
real places, and with these places I have taken the liberty of changing them to whatever degree best
suited the course of my story. This is a monstrous impertinence, and that is as good a definition of the
word “novel” as any.’ King thanks two staff of the Bridgton (Maine) Family Medical Center for
answering his questions on the mutating nature of the flu virus (one, Russ Dorr, would also be
acknowledged in Pet Sematary and Misery; and honored through the use of his name for a bit-part
character played by director John Landis in the mini-series of The Stand). The Note was significantly
revised for its appearance in the Complete & Uncut edition (the revision is covered later in this
chapter).
The 1980 Signet mass-market paperback editions of King’s great apocalyptic novel carry this
additional line, ‘Minor revisions have been made for the Signet edition of this novel.’ In fact, the
revisions were not all that minor, considering they revolved around changing the timeline of events in
the original novel from 1980 to 1985. Most, if not all, overseas paperback editions stayed with the
1980 timeline. When the Complete & Uncut edition of The Stand was released the timeline changed
again, to 1990 (and has stayed there in subsequent editions).
Foreword—Night Shift (1978)
This lengthy Foreword to King’s first short story collection was one of his earliest dissertations
on horror, particularly the emotion of fear. King wrote it in his Bridgton, Maine home on 27 February
1977 (‘… a cold February rain is falling outside. It’s night.’)
On the subject of fear King tells his readers, ‘We sense the shape. Children grasp it easily,
forget it, and relearn it as adults. The shape is there, and most of us come to realize what it is sooner
or later: it is the shape of a body under the sheet. All our fears add up to one great fear, all our fears
are part of that great fear—an arm, a leg, a finger, an ear. We’re afraid of the body under the sheet.
It’s our body. And the great appeal of horror fiction through the ages is that it serves as a rehearsal for
our own deaths.’92
‘Those working in the genre...know that the entire field of horror and the supernatural is a kind
of filter screen between the conscious and the subconscious; horror fiction is like a central subway
station in the human psyche between the blue line of what we can safely internalize and the red line of
what we need to get rid of in some way or another.’
Taking up a discussion of the ‘big-bug’ and ‘teen’ horror movies of the 1950s (he would expand
this line of argument significantly in Danse Macabre), King says, ‘Great horror fiction is almost
always allegorical; sometimes the allegory is intended, as in Animal Farm and 1984, and sometimes
it just happens—J.R.R. Tolkien swore up and down that the Dark Lord of Mordor was not Hitler in
fantasy dress, but the theses and term papers to just that effect go on and on...maybe because, as Bob
Dylan says, when you got a lot of knives and forks, you gotta cut something.’
Of some interest to readers of this chapter is the case King makes: ‘… here is a truth that makes
the strongest writer gnash his teeth: with the exception of three small groups of people, no one reads a
writer’s preface. The exceptions are: one, the writer’s close family (usually his wife and his mother);
two, the writer’s accredited representative (and the editorial people and assorted munchkins), whose
chief interest is to find out if anyone has been libeled in the course of the writer’s wanderings; and
three, those people who have had a hand in helping the writer on his way...Other readers are apt to
feel...that the author’s preface is a gross imposition, a multi-page commercial for himself....’ While
King may be right about most authors (or indeed, himself, at that point in his career) this is no longer
the case with King’s Constant Readers. This volume is testament to the extraordinary interest King
creates with any of his non-fiction; and Constant Readers will regularly turn to the Introduction,
Argument or Afterword in King’s works for enlightenment and entertainment.
He closes with acknowledgements to members of the three groups who read the prefaces: to
Tabitha (‘my best and most trenchant critic’); their children; his late mother (‘to whom this book is
dedicated’, ‘no one—including myself—was more pleased than she when I broke through’’’);
William (Bill) Thompson (‘who showed kindness to a young writer with no credentials some years
ago’); ‘the people who bought my first work’—‘Robert A.W. Lowndes, who purchased the first two
stories I ever sold’93, Douglas Allen and Nye Willden for Cavalier and Gent, staff of the New American Library, Penthouse magazine, and Cosmopolitan.
In an early acknowledgement of his audience (soon to be ‘Constant Readers’), King says,
‘There’s one final group that I’d like to thank, and that is each and every reader who ever unlimbered
his or her wallet to buy something that I wrote. In a great many ways, this is your book because it sure
never would have happened without you. So thanks.’
Parts of this Foreword were later incorporated into the book length Danse Macabre; and the
entire piece was reprinted as Foreword to Night Shift in the Book-of-the-Month Club collection of
King pieces, Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing (2000).
Author’s Note—The Dead Zone (1979)
This Note, to one of King’s great tragedies, is short and largely relates to stating the book is
fiction, ‘All of the major characters are made up. Because it plays against the historical backdrop of
the last decade, the reader may recognize actual figures...It is my hope that none of these figures have
been misrepresented.’ King also states, ‘There is...no town of Castle Rock in Maine.’ Castle Rock
first appeared in this novel (in something of a bit part), became King’s first great fictional ‘home
town,’ and was finally so important that King apparently felt it was distracting him, leading to the
delivery of the ‘last Castle Rock story’, Needful Things, twelve years later. The town’s creator has
since relented and allowed both passing reference to the town (e.g., Riding the Bullet) and set
significant scenes there in Bag of Bones. In the realm of King’s fiction, at least, there is a town of
Castle Rock in Maine.
Synopsis—The Way Station (April 1980)
The Way Station was the second of the five parts of the original version of The Gunslinger to be
published in The Magazine of Fantasy and science-fiction (this one in the April 1980 issue). For
each of the latter four parts King summarized the action to date for readers by use of a Synopsis. He
would use the same technique for volumes two to five of the Dark Tower Cycle when they were
published in novel format, using the term, Argument.
This short piece (only five paragraphs) summarizes the action in The Gunslinger, the first Dark
Tower fiction, which appeared in F&SF (the accepted abbreviation for this venerated magazine) for
October 1978, more than eight years after King first wrote the fateful line, ‘The man in black fled
across the desert and the gunslinger followed’. Copies of F&SF can be secured from used magazine
dealers, particularly those specializing in these genres, and King resellers. The piece was also
reprinted in Bev Vincent’s The Road to the Dark Tower94.
Synopsis—The Oracle and the Mountains (February 1981)
The Oracle and the Mountains was the third part of the original version of The Gunslinger,
published in The Magazine of Fantasy and science-fiction for February 1981.
This piece is fairly lengthy, at one and a half pages, considering it summarizes what were then
simply two short stories; and effectively summarizes the action in The Gunslinger and The Way
Station. King begins, ‘This is the third tale of Roland, the last gunslinger, and his quest for the Dark
Tower which stands at the roots of time.’ The piece was also reprinted in Bev Vincent’s The Road to
the Dark Tower.
Synopsis—The Slow Mutants (July 1981)
The Slow Mutants was the fourth part of the original version of The Gunslinger, published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and science-fiction for July 1981.
This piece summarizes the action to date in the tale of Roland Deschain. In fact, the first half or
so of the one and three quarter pages virtually reproduces the Synopsis for The Oracle and the
Mountains word for word. King prepares the reader in the last two paragraphs for the awful fate that
awaits Jake Chambers: ‘The gunslinger begins to climb toward the dark opening from which the river
spills, the opening which leads under the mountains...and Jake, the boy, his sacrifice, follows. / They
go into the darkness together.’ The piece was also reprinted in Bev Vincent’s The Road to the Dark
Tower.
Afterword—Firestarter (1981)
This Afterword, written in Bangor, first appeared in the August 1981 Signet US paperback
edition of Firestarter and has since only appeared in those editions. It was not included in UK
paperback editions or the Plume US paperback. King largely devotes the page-and-a-half here to a
discussion of the alleged attempts by US and Soviet authorities to harness ‘wild talents’ such as
pyrokinesis (Charlie McGee’s particular skill in Firestarter). He tells us a ‘good many real-life
incidents of pyrokinesis have been reported (Charles Fort catalogues several in Lo! and The Book of
the Damned)’95 and says that while not claiming such talents exist ‘some of the cases are both eerie
and thought provoking. / If I mean to suggest anything, it is only that the world, although well-lighted
with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling
nooks and crannies.’
In a touching last half paragraph King thanks ‘my wife Tabitha, who offered her usual helpful
criticisms and suggestions; and my daughter, Naomi, who brightens up everything and who helped me
understand—as much as any man can, I guess—what it is to be young, intelligent and a girl
approaching the age of ten. She’s not Charlie, but she helped me help Charlie be herself.’
Synopsis—The Gunslinger and the Dark Man (November 1981)
The Gunslinger and the Dark Man was the fifth and final part of the original version of The
Gunslinger, published in The Magazine of Fantasy and science-fiction for November 1981. All five
pieces would be collected the following year, as the first Dark Tower novel, The Gunslinger.
This piece summarizes the action to date in the first four of these tales. It is also the first non-
fiction piece in which King states (most likely incorrectly) that the man in black had killed Jake
Chambers (for more on this debate see the sections on the Argument s to The Drawing of the Three
and The Waste Lands later in this chapter): ‘…Jake, who was somehow “killed” by the man in black
(the man in black pushed him under the wheels of a Cadillac)....’ It is also here that King states in a
non-fiction piece for a first time that Marten is John Farson (a quarter century later, this is still
subject to debate). More about both these controversial subjects as we proceed. The piece was also
reprinted in Bev Vincent’s The Road to the Dark Tower.
Afterword—Different Seasons (1982)
King wrote this fairly lengthy Afterword in Bangor on 4 January 1982. Different Seasons
collects four novellas, each placed in its ‘season’96. King opens with the interesting tale of how his
second published novel was chosen—by editor Bill Thompson (who rejected the still unpublished
Blaze97 in favor of Second Coming (released as ’Salem’s Lot)—while making the point that this choice led directly to his typecasting as a ‘horror-writer’. By the time The Shining and Firestarter
were being written King had decided that it was ‘just fine’ to be typecast along with writers who’d
given him ‘great pleasure over the years’, and a long list of those follows.
King tells us each novella was written immediately after completing a novel— The Body after
’Salem’s Lot; Apt Pupil in two weeks following The Shining; Shawshank after The Dead Zone; and
The Breathing Method following Firestarter. In a footnote King says he realized that each was
written in a different house—three in Maine, one in Boulder.
He notes that none of the stories had previously been submitted for publication, because each is
in the 25-30,000 word range, the length of the strange beast known as a ‘novella’, for which at that
time (and today) there is a limited mainstream market; he then spends some pages mourning the death
of the market that had once existed for the mainstream novella in such publications as The Saturday
Evening Post. It is amusing that King notes two magazines that were publishing long fiction at the
time— Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker —had not ‘been particularly receptive to my stuff,
which is fairly plain, not very literary and sometimes...downright clumsy.’ Ironically, a change of
editing staff (and perhaps a general reassessment of King’s work) has led to five pieces of King’s
fiction98and four of his non-fiction99 appearing in the pages of The New Yorker, the first of them only two years after this Afterword! In fact, among King’s fans these rather literary, non-horror pieces tend
to be known collectively as The New Yorker stories.
One of the most famous of King’s statements (usually repeated as criticism and out of context)
appears here, where he says of his novels: ‘Most of them have been plain fiction for plain folks, the
literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald’s.’ He claims to be able to
recognize ‘elegant prose’ but to have found it ‘difficult or impossible to write it myself’ (we must
demure).
Afterword—The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982)
In 2003 King released a revised and expanded version of the first Dark Tower novel, The
Gunslinger. His major reasons for revision were to bring the first volume of a seven-volume epic
into line with the mythology of the subsequent books; and to fix the writing problems suffered by the
young man who wrote the novel’s five parts over the period from 1970 to its initial publication as a
Limited Edition by Donald M. Grant in 1982.
The parts that made up the novel were first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and science-
fiction during 1978, 1980 and 1981. There are notable differences between the original publications
in the magazine and the subsequent Limited Edition published by Grant (1982), and republished as a
mass-market version by NAL (1988). The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King documents
at least 93 changes from the short stories to the original novel. While some changes were apparently
to improve the writing or to fix errors, others are substantive. Compare for instance Roland saying, ‘I
trained David. I friended him,’ in The Slow Mutants to ‘I never trained David. I friended him’, in the
original novel.
So, there are actually three versions of The Gunslinger—the combination of the five short
stories, the ‘original’ novel and the ‘revised and expanded’ novel!
When the burgeoning King community became aware of this novel after its publication as a
Limited in 1982 (only a little over 20,000 copies were released) there was considerable controversy,
with average readers complaining about their lack of access to this ‘new’ novel. To quell the reaction
King allowed the first trade publication of the novel in the US (September 1988); the British
Commonwealth (June 1989); and the UK (December 1989).
The Afterword, written in Bangor, represents the first time King directly related his intent with
the Dark Tower Cycle to his Readers. At this point in his career King was projecting a very lengthy
series of books—‘my brief synopsis of the action to follow [ The Gunslinger] suggests a length
approaching 3000 pages, perhaps more.’ In fact, counting the pages in the Grant first editions, there
are over 3500 in total, so King wasn’t far from the mark. Then again, this particular author is rarely
accused of the sin of brevity. This Afterword, for obvious reasons, did not appear in the Revised and
Expanded Edition.
King takes the reader back to 1970, and the genesis of the entire Dark Tower Cycle, by
describing reams of unusually colored and sized paper that turned up at the University of Maine
library ‘totally unexplained and unaccounted for.’ Tabitha Spruce (soon to be Tabitha King) took
home a robin’s egg blue ream; her boyfriend of the time the ‘Roadrunner yellow’ ream; and King got
the ‘bright green’ lot.
He tells of his contemplation of the possibilities for these five hundred blank pages and
continues, ‘I was living in a scuzzy riverside cabin...and I was living all by myself—the first third of
the foregoing tale was written in a ghastly, unbroken silence... Those two factors, the challenge of that
blank green paper, and the utter silence...were more responsible than anything else for the opening lay
o f The Dark Tower.’ In fact, this is exactly what the reader perceives in the opening section, also
titled The Gunslinger: a vast, silent space, yellow-green in a hideous form of near-dead geography.
The author also reveals for the first time a major inspiration for the Cycle: the ‘third element
was a poem I’d been assigned two years earlier, in a sophomore course covering the earlier romantic
poets...Most of the other poems had fallen out of my consciousness...but that one, gorgeous and rich
and inexplicable, remained...and it remains still. That poem was “Childe Roland”, by Robert
Browning. ’100
King says during the spring semester of 1970 he felt the time had arrived to become more
serious with his writing ambitions, ‘a sense that it was time to stop goofing around with a pick and
shovel and get behind the controls of one big great God a’mighty steamshovel, a sense that it was time
to try and dig something big out of the sand....’ He would deliver a much more sophisticated
alternative in On Writing, decades later: ‘Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing
world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the
ground intact as possible...short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of
excavation remain basically the same. No matter how good you are, no matter how much experience
you have, it’s probably impossible to get the entire fossil out of the ground without a few breaks and
losses. To get even most of it, the shovel must give way to more delicate tools: airhose, palm-pick,
perhaps even a toothbrush. Plot is a far bigger tool, the writer’s jackhammer. You can liberate a
fossil from hard ground with a jackhammer, no argument there, but you know as well as I do that the
jackhammer is going to break almost as much stuff as it liberates. It’s clumsy, mechanical,
anticreative.’
Coming back to the spring of 1970 King writes simply of the evening he began the tale that is
now recognized as his magnum opus, ‘And so, one night in March of 1970, I found myself sitting at
my old office-model Underwood with the chipped “m” and the flying capital “O” and writing the
words that begin this story: The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.’
These are perhaps now the most famous words of all the millions King has written. The final words
of the Cycle are also: ‘ The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.’ Just
below those words, in The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower King writes: ‘June 19, 1970—April 7,
2004 / I tell God thankya. ’ (Note that by 2004 King was saying he began the Cycle not ‘one night in
March of 1970’ but June 19, 1970.) Interestingly, the night before King had been arrested near the
University Motor Inn in Orono and charged with intoxication. Released on $60 bail he was ordered to
court the next morning but received a continuance until June 30, at which time he was found not
guilty101. Somehow, despite the inevitable stress of the arrest and outstanding charge, King was able
to begin perhaps his greatest work!
His thoughts never left Roland’s world in the twelve years between that 1970 evening and the
publication of The Gunslinger as a novel: ‘I came back to the gunslinger’s world when ’Salem’s Lot
was going badly...and wrote of the boy Jake’s sad ending not long after I had seen another boy, Danny
Torrance escape another bad place in The Shining. In fact the only time when my thoughts did not turn
at least occasionally to the gunslinger’s dry and yet somehow gorgeous world (at least it has always
seemed gorgeous to me) was when I was inhabiting another that seemed every bit as real—the post-
apocalypse world of The Stand.’
King also reveals here the genesis of the term he would also use in the next four volumes of the
Cycle—‘I believe that I probably owe readers who have come this far with me some sort of synopsis
(“the argument”, those great old romantic poets would have called it)....’ before noting he is not sure
where the tale is going. But, ‘I know from Roland’s vision near the end that his world is indeed
moving on because Roland’s universe exists within a single molecule of a weed dying in some
cosmic vacant lot....’ and reveals that segments of the second novel had already been written. He also
says he knows virtually nothing of Roland’s past—noting matters of which we would learn a lot more
(Susan Delgado) and those about which we are still fundamentally in the dark.
The piece concludes with a promise, one Roland could not (yet) keep more than two decades
later: ‘I do know this: at some point, at some magic time, there will be a purple evening (an evening
made for romance!) when Roland will come to his dark tower, and approach it, winding his
horn...and if I should ever get there, you’ll be the first to know.’
Author’s Note—Christine (1983)
In this two paragraph note King says, ‘Lyric quotes in this book are assigned to the singer (or
singers, or group) most commonly associated with them.’ He says this ‘may offend the purist’ but
argues, ‘In the world of popular song, it is as the Rolling Stones say: the singer, not the song.’ He also
credits those who assisted to get legal permissions to quote the lyrics, including Dave Marsh (later
both were members of the Rock Bottom Remainders); and ‘James Feury, a.k.a. “Mighty John
Marshall”, who rocks my little town on WACZ’ (see Visit With an Endangered Species in our
Opinion—Radio, Music, Film and Television chapter).
Untitled (1983)
This is a short untitled author’s note to The Return of Timmy Baterman, a story excerpted from
Pet Sematary, due out that Fall. It appeared in the program for the Satyricon II/DeepSouthCon XXI
conventions—the Satyricon II Program Book—a trade paperback released in June 1983. There are
very minor variations between the short story version and the novel.
King says, ‘Most excerpts from novels don’t make much sense, but I think this one stands pretty
much on its own’ and goes on to set the scene, including the chilling comment that ‘the story of Timmy
Baterman’ is Jud Crandall’s attempt to dissuade Louis Creed from attempting to bring his dead son
back to life (remember, at this point readers had yet to see Pet Sematary).
Author’s Note—Pet Sematary (1983)
This very short note to King’s powerful novel of grief thanks Russ Dorr (previously
acknowledged in The Stand, and later in Misery) for providing medical background; and Steve
Wentworth for ‘information on American funeral and burial customs and some insight into the nature
of grief.’ Both men were from Bridgton, the Kings’ hometown for a short period in the 1970s (King
would write an Introduction for the novel in 2000, this is covered below).
Cat From Hell (1984)
This is one of only two King non-fiction pieces known to have been published in a foreign
language before they were in English (the other appeared in le nouvel Observateur in French, see
Title unknown (November 1994) in our Miscellany chapter).
King wrote this introduction for his story The Cat From Hell for its appearance in an anthology,
Top Horror, edited by Josh Pachter and published in West Germany by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag. It
was reprinted in Castle Rock: The Stephen King Newsletter for June 1985 and this is by far the
easiest access point for English-speaking fans.
In six paragraphs King explains the origin of The Cat From Hell, as a competition in Cavalier, a
men’s magazine that carried a lot of his early fiction: ‘At any rate, that was the only time I ever wrote
a story to order—and from a photograph, at that. Whew! That was one scary house-cat!’ The tale has
not been included in any King collection. Full details about The Cat From Hell and the various
anthologies to include it appear in Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished. 102
Afterword—Cycle of the Werewolf (1985)
King’s short Afterword to Cycle of the Werewolf, written on 4 August 1983, is intended to
protect him against accusations of not understanding the cycles of the moon. He writes, ‘I have taken a
great many liberties with the lunar cycle—usually to take advantage of days (Valentine’s, July 4th,
etc.) which “mark” certain months in our minds. To those readers who feel that I didn’t know any
better, I assert that I did...but the temptation was simply too great to resist.’
The 1985 trade paperback edition of this werewolf-stalking small-town novella was the first to
carry the Afterword, which did not appear in the original Limited Edition of the book, released by
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