Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition

by Rocky Wood

  STEPHEN KING:

  UNCOLLECTED, UNPUBLISHED

  REVISED AND EXPANDED

  EDITION

  By

  ROCKY WOOD

  Copyright © 2010, Rocky Wood

  Dino and Chapter 71 from Sword in the Darkness, by Stephen King are copyright, Stephen King, and are printed with permission.

  Revised & Expanded Edition

  ISBN 978-1-58767-271-2

  Digital Design by DH Digital Editions

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, or his agent, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio or television.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Linking Stephen King’s Realities

  The Lost and Hidden Works

  Variations and Versions in King’s Fiction

  The Uncollected, and The Unpublished

  The Aftermath

  American Vampire

  An Evening at God’s

  Before the Play

  The Blue Air Compressor

  But Only Darkness Loves Me and I Hate Mondays

  The Cannibals

  Cat’s Eye and General

  Charlie

  Children of the Corn – Unproduced Screenplay

  Chinga and Molly

  Comb Dump

  The Crate

  Creepshow – Screenplay

  Cujo – Unproduced Screenplay

  Dave’s Rag, Jumper and Rush Call

  The Dead Zone – Unproduced Screenplay

  Desperation – Screenplay

  Dolan’s Cadillac – Unproduced Screenplay

  The Drum Stories

  For the Birds

  The Furnace

  George D. X. McArdle

  The Glass Floor

  Golden Years

  Heroes for Hope: Starring the X-Men

  I Was a Teenage Grave Robber / In a Half-World of Terror

  Jhonathan and the Witchs

  Keyholes

  The Killer

  The King Family and the Wicked Witch

  The Leprechaun

  Man with a Belly

  Maximum Overdrive

  Mobius

  Morality

  The New Lieutenant’s Rap

  The Night of the Tiger

  Night Shift – Unproduced Screenplay

  The Old Dude’s Ticker

  People, Places and Things

  Pet Sematary – Screenplay

  The Plant

  The Poems

  Dino by Stephen King

  Premium Harmony

  The Reploids

  Rose Red – Screenplay

  The Shining – Screenplays

  The Shotgunners

  Skybar

  Slade

  Sleepwalkers

  Something Wicked This Way Comes

  Sorry, Right Number – The Shooting Script

  Squad D

  The Stand – Screenplays

  The Star Invaders

  Stories from Journals

  Stories Swallowed by Monsters

  Sword in the Darkness

  Chapter 71 of Sword in the Darkness by Stephen King

  They Bite

  Throttle

  Untitled (The Huffman Story)

  Untitled Screenplay (Radio Station)

  Ur

  Weeds

  Wimsey

  Appendix: The Works of Stephen King

  Acknowledgements and About the Authors

  Introduction

  As of the end of 2010, King had published just under 200 works of fiction, many of those in a number of versions. Research indicates there are at least another 104 pieces of King’s fiction that have not been published. Of these, many unpublished works of King’s fiction may be accessed by researchers, either in King’s papers held at his alma mater, the University of Maine at Orono, or through other means.

  Additionally, most King fans are unaware that some King fiction has been published, but not collected in a mainstream King volume such as Night Shift. There are 50 “uncollected” works, some of which were only discovered in recent years. For instance, research for this very book uncovered a previously unknown poem, published a full decade ago!

  This book concentrates on these two categories – 54 unpublished1 and 50 uncollected works of fiction. These 104 novels, shorter works of fiction, screenplays and poems are combined in the 68 sub-chapters following the initial four major chapters, which cover King’s Realities, the Lost and Hidden Works, and the Variations and Versions in his fiction. A previously unpublished and lengthy chapter from a King novel, and a poem that has only appeared once before, are also included.

  The general King readership can easily access around 150 individual works of fiction, in some 40 published novels2 , with 109 shorter works compiled in his nine collections through the end of 20103 .

  It is at that point that the average reader will find it much harder to access the next level of works – those published but not appearing in a King collection, many appearing in obscure magazines, limited editions or collections. With time (and often money) these items can also be found and read.

  Next there are the three levels of unpublished works. The first circulate within the King community in photocopied or electronic form. The second level includes those in the Stephen Edwin King Papers, which have been deposited at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine in Orono. The public may read most of these papers, including some unpublished works. However, the most important, including early novel length manuscripts, require written permission from Stephen King before the staff may provide access. King kindly provided that permission to the author of this book.

  The third level of unpublished works cannot be accessed at all. Many of them are unknown in any detail outside King’s closest inner circle. For a detailed discussion of these, the most closeted of King’s works, see Chapter 3, The Lost and Hidden Works.

  Among the works reviewed in this book are those well known to King fans (The Glass Floor) and those previously unknown (Dino). There are poems and screenplays. Some of the screenplays are original concepts (Sleepwalkers), one adapts the work of another author (Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes) and others adapt King’s own work. Many have been produced for the screen.

  A number of novels are also reviewed, including Sword in the Darkness. There are also quite a number of incomplete works, ranging from novels (George D. X. McArdle) to screenplays (one about a haunted radio station) to short stories (Comb Dump, Keyholes).

  Research for this book resulted in the “rediscovery” of two works previously unknown in the King community. One, a screenplay intended for The X-Files and titled Molly, was kindly provided to the author by a super-collector, Chris Cavalier and is reviewed in the chapter Chinga and Molly. The second was a poem, Dino. Amazingly, this poem was published in an obscure university literary magazine in 1994 but had been missed by all King researchers before its appearance on eBay in March 2004. The story behind its rediscovery appears in The Poems chapter.

  In many ways it was the very mass of King’s output that drove the need for this book. Starting from scratch it takes months just to compile an accurate list of all King’s fiction. Even working from such a list4 it will take collectors and experts year
s to access a copy of each available work.

  In total there are at least 268 separately identifiable King story-lines, including other fictional works such as poems and screenplays. When all the differing versions, variations and titles of these works are taken into account there are about 381 different variants!

  King is famed (and sometimes brickbatted) for the sheer volume of words he produces. Many novels are in the high hundreds of pages, with three exceeding 900, epics in their own right. One mythology (The Dark Tower) is barely contained in seven novels, a novella, a raft of related tales and a series of Marvel comic extensions.

  The volume, breadth and quality of King’s work, along with its exposure through screen presentations on film and television has created enormous interest in his fiction, from simple fans of his story telling to students reading entertaining stories as they learn the art of creative writing, to researchers and academics.

  This review is not meant to be any form of biography or criticism. King’s background and life are central to his fiction, with many works being disguised autobiography, but the intention here is to provide information about King’s obscure works, not his life. There are a number of quality books and articles in the area of biography and literary criticism to which the reader may refer.

  The key to understanding the King phenomenon however, is not the vast magnitude of his output, or even its quality but, in fact, the emotional impact he has upon his readers and viewers.

  Describing the joy that Stephen King brings his “consumers” (King’s stories are consumed by the users of most major media, not just the written ones) is both simple and complex. At its core is a powerful or entertaining story, well written by a master craftsman. Surrounding the core is a series of layers that are either unique or are uniquely combined in the one entertainment phenomenon.

  King is at once an innovator while being deeply grounded in the traditions of his chosen genres as well as literature in general. He is both a 20th century man and a self-confessed “hick,” living in a semi-rural backwater state (admittedly a delightful one), eschewing the normal “rewards” of celebrity, including the obligatory lifestyle in Hollywood or New York.

  As an innovator, King was the first major author to release a significant story on the Internet (Riding the Bullet), the result of which was the near melting-down of servers worldwide. He was the also first major author to serialize a significant story on the Internet (The Plant), even using a relatively successful “honor” system for payment. He also reinvented the serial novel (The Green Mile) and has both written original works and adapted his own for the screen.

  He has an astounding ability to tell a tale, describe a scene in glorious detail and deliver a fully formed character. He takes us into the minds and motivations of characters (especially children). When he chose to do this with women (Dolores Claiborne, Rose Madder and Gerald’s Game) King proved the breadth of his skill. Even Cujo’s thought processes were laid out for the reader.

  King’s work appeals to young and old, male and female and to people of very diverse cultural backgrounds, despite the very American nature of his writing. An adult King reader, perhaps wary of some themes, can ease a younger person into the body of work through such stories as Eyes of the Dragon, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon or The Body. If horror gives you nightmares read his fantasy, if fantasy bores you there are many mainstream stories of power (The New Yorker short stories, Hearts in Atlantis). If science fiction appeals to you King even offers a number of stories in that genre, although they are often not his strongest.

  For, perhaps, reasons of snobbery, King’s prolific nature is used by some as a weapon of criticism against his overall body of work and his position in the literary firmament. Yet, one of the advantages of this great selection of tales is surely that it contains something for any reader, except perhaps those who proclaim only dense and unreadable works to be “worthy”.

  Apart from creating his own mythologies, King has never been afraid to dive into the roots of horror and fantasy fiction to deliver vampires, werewolves, haunted houses and to otherwise add to the well-trodden themes of the genres. Equally, he has been willing to merge other mythologies into his work (Oz in The Dark Tower cycle, for example) or to add to those created by others. For instance, he has created Sherlock Holmes, Cthulhu Mythos and (unpublished) Wimsey stories.

  King ranges easily from the unique story (The Green Mile) to the effective reworking of an older theme (‘Salem’s Lot) and back to his own more original late 20th century technophobia (Trucks). In fact, in October 2005 King said, “I just like telling stories. And if there’s one message that comes up again and again, it’s ‘Love conquers Fear.’ And if there’s one concern that comes up again and again, it’s ‘Don’t trust the technology – it may not be your friend.’”5

  Horror literature is replete with haunted houses but King gave us not only the world’s most famous haunted hotel, a haunted car, a haunted hospital and even a haunted laundry machine! Within hotels we have suffered haunted rooms (1408) and even the most effective haunted bathtub imaginable.

  Of course, King is vitally at home with F-E-A-R, both the real and the imaginary. The sheer brilliance of Autopsy Room Four is not that it could happen (and it could) but the terrible fear the reader has of imagining him or herself in that very situation. Could you retain your sanity looking at the deadlights? Would you want to be a young child home alone with Gramma? Certain scenes in ‘Salem’s Lot are among the most terrifying in fiction and Paul Sheldon’s realization in Misery that Annie Wilkes intends to hobble him is one of the scariest King has ever put to paper. On a simpler scale, little Tad Trenton’s all too familiar fear in The Monster in the Closet scenes of Cujo recalls our own childhood with intense accuracy. Another little boy was left catatonic as a result of his visit to Room 217 – many readers found the description of that encounter almost unbearable.

  If there is a core theme in King’s Work, it is that of Good versus Evil, the Dark Side (or “the Red”) versus the White. Sometimes this is portrayed in religious terms (The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, Desperation) but often more simply as that of good men and women (Roland and his ka-tet) standing against the powers of evil, often unsuccessfully. All too often, as in the “real” world, good men die, good women are beaten down and good causes lost. King does not resile from the truth of a story where it is clear that there is no happy ending.

  King says this about the matter in An Evening with Stephen King6 :

  In Cujo and Storm of the Century … I tried to express the belief that sometimes good people do not win. Sometimes good people die. Sometimes good people are corrupted … Last but not least I have expressed in several books my belief in some insensate force – not necessarily God – I’m not sure I believe in that in a personal way, but in the sort of way that William Wordsworth talked about and then later in his prose, John Steinbeck, when they talked about an oversoul. In my books, I’ve called that “the coming of the white.

  And this, in Straight Up Midnight: An Introductory Note, in Four Past Midnight:

  I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love; I still believe that connections between people can be made … I still believe, I suppose, in the coming of the White and in finding a place to make a stand … and defending that place to the death. They are old-fashioned concerns and beliefs, but I would be a liar if I did not admit I still own them. And that they still own me.

  Yet, the everyman individual often rises up in a King story and ultimately wins, often at great cost. As an example, Johnny Smith with his oh-so anonymous surname is able to defeat a potential megalomaniac but loses his life in The Dead Zone. Stu Redman, the only survivor of four men sent to confront Flagg also carries a splendidly resonant surname. John Coffey was unable to save two little girls but did save a small mouse and a woman’s life before being cruelly taken from this world (King acknowledges in On Writing the deliberate choice of John’s initials, “after the most famous
innocent man of all time”). LT deWitt, Martha Rosewall and Darlene Pullen somehow won little victories of their own. Dolores Claiborne, Rose McClendon and Jessie Burlingame were all able to battle and defeat spousal or sexual abuse. The Losers’ Club stood against Pennywise twice; and Gary Jones was able to defeat an alien invasion through the powers of his mind.

  It is often when describing basic human horrors that King is at his most effective. Whether it is spousal abuse (Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne); blackmail (Apt Pupil); sexual predation (Gerald’s Game); suicide and despair (All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, The Last Rung on the Ladder); false imprisonment (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption); or approaching death (The Woman in the Room), King brings the depravity of certain events and the very human responses to them directly home.