Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition
Page 5
The America Under Siege rReality works are linked by their common location in our world’s version of the United States (or with US citizens as characters) and in our “normal” timeline. When a story deviates into a timeline in which the world as we know it fundamentally changes (for instance, The Stand or The End of the Whole Mess) it is classified in a more relevant Reality.
Many America Under Siege Rreality stories are very much from the mainstream (All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, Rest Stop or That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French) and include many of King’s rare but powerful crime genre stories.
New York, a large and often faceless city is cover for mayhem (The Ten O’Clock People, Lunch at the Gotham Café), mystery (The Breathing Method, The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands), murder (The Man Who Loved Flowers, The Plant, Sneakers), penance (Blind Willie) and, rarely, positive results (Dedication).
Large cities such as Boston (Cell), Los Angeles (The Talisman), Las Vegas (Dolan’s Cadillac), Seattle (Rose Red) and even imaginary urban areas such as Harding (The Running Man and Sword in the Darkness) play host to King stories.
But it is small-towns and semi-rural locations that most quickly come to mind when considering King’s assault on America through supernatural means (Children of the Corn) or the simple horrors of everyday life (All That You Love Will Be Carried Away). Isolated towns and residences such as Gatlin, deep in the cornfields of Nebraska and close to Hemingford Home; or Travis, Indiana (Sleepwalkers) serve as wonderful backdrops for the doings of supernatural creatures (Black House) or the very human horrors that occur at the Wilkes’ farm (Misery).
It is not possible to sit easy while thinking of Junction City, Iowa (The Library Policeman and future home of Needful Things’ Leland Gaunt); or of Desperation, Nevada. Children should avoid Oatley, New York (The Talisman), although Arcadia Beach, New Hampshire might serve for a summer holiday. If seeking to attend a concert one should cross Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon (You Know They’ve Got a Hell of a Band) from any list; and the flashing lights from a particular shed in Statler, Pennsylvania should also be avoided (From a Buick 8).
Thinking of a quiet retirement? Then avoid French Landing, Wisconsin (Black House). Wanting to live safe from The Shop? Forget Lakeland, Ohio (Firestarter) or Falco Plains, New York (Golden Years). Want to avoid killer cars? Then Libertyville, Pennsylvania (Christine) is not for you.
One town, however, appears to have fewer dangers. King has claimed more than once, in response to the consistently inane question of where he gets his ideas that they come from a shop in Utica. Utica appears often and was the crossover point for Clyde Umney (Umney’s Last Case). Bobbi Anderson (The Tommyknockers) grew up there and Alan Pangborn, later Sheriff of Castle Rock, was once a policeman in the town.
Sometimes it is not towns but other locations that are best avoided. For instance, Cold Mountain Penitentiary (The Green Mile) and the Overlook Hotel (The Shining) have ended many a life.
The following is a full list of the works defined as part of the America Under Siege Reality. It includes unpublished works.
1408
1922
All That You Love Will Be Carried Away
American Vampire
Apt Pupil
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet
Battleground
Before the Play
Big Driver
Big Wheels
Black House
Blind Willie
Blockade Billy
The Boogeyman
The Breathing Method
Brooklyn August
Cain Rose Up
The Cannibals
The Cat from Hell
Cat’s Eye
Chattery Teeth
Children of the Corn and its Unproduced Screenplay
Christine
Code Name: Mousetrap
The Crate
The Dark Man
The Dead Zone and its Unproduced Screenplay
The Death of Jack Hamilton
Dedication (Both Versions)
Desperation and its Unproduced Screenplay
Dino
Dolan’s Cadillac and its Unproduced Screenplay
Donovan’s Brain
The Evaluation
Everything’s Eventual
Fair Extension
Father’s Day
Firestarter
From a Buick 8
The Furnace
General
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
George D. X. McArdle
The Glass Floor
Golden Years
A Good Marriage
The Green Mile
The Hardcase Speaks
Harrison State Park ‘68
Harvey’s Dream
Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling
Here There Be Tygers
The Hotel at the End of the Road
The House on Maple Street
I Hate Mondays
I Was a Teenage Grave-Robber (aka, In a Half-World of Terror)
In the Deathroom
Jumper
Keyholes
L.T.’s Theory of Pets
The Last Rung on the Ladder
The Lawnmower Man
The Ledge
The Library Policeman
Lisey and the Madman
Low Men in Yellow Coats
Luckey Quarter
Lunch at the Gotham Café
The Man Who Loved Flowers
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
Man with a Belly
The Mangler
Memory
Misery
Mobius
Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)
Mostly Old Men
The Moving Finger
My Pretty Pony
Never Look Behind You
The New Lieutenant’s Rap
The Night Flier
The Night of the Tiger
The Old Dude’s Ticker
Paranoid: A Chant
The Plant
Popsy
The Pulse
Quitter’s, Inc.
The Raft
The Reaper’s Image
The Regulators
The Reploids
Rest Stop
Roadwork
Rose Madder
Rose Red
The Running Man
Rush Call
The Shining (All Versions)
The Shotgunners
Silence
Skybar
Slade
Sleepwalkers
Sneakers
Something to Tide You Over
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Sometimes They Come Back
Sorry, Right Number
Stationary Bike
The Stranger
Strawberry Spring (Night Shift version)
Suffer the Little Children (Cavalier version)
Survivor Type
Sword in the Darkness
The Ten O’Clock People
That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French
They Bite
They’re Creeping Up On You
The Thing at the Bottom of the Well
The Things They Left Behind
Thinner
Trucks
Umney’s Last Case
Untitled (Chip Coombs)
Untitled (She Has Gone to Sleep While …)
The Wedding Gig
Weeds
Why We’re In Vietnam
You Know They Got a Hell of a Band
New Worlds
From time to time King has taken readers on trips to New Worlds of Science Fiction or Fantasy. Sometimes these rides are ultimately uplifting, but some are terminal. As a result certain stories are classified as being part of the New Worlds Reality, in whole or part.
Once these New Worlds are exposed there is often no return (for example Trooper Ennis Rafferty of From a Buick 8; or Norman Daniels, who got too close a look at
Rose Madder’s land). Sometimes characters return but with more than they bargained for (I Am the Doorway, Mobius or The Jaunt). Others are saved from a messy end (Beachworld) and others are not (Beachworld again, or Charlie).
In some cases our world takes a permanent turn for the worse, through scientific arrogance (The End of the Whole Mess); or nuclear war (The Aftermath). If The Stand mythology did not have its own, separate Reality, those stories would qualify for the New Worlds Reality.
In yet other cases parallel dimensions or realities impinge upon ours. We know from the Dark Tower Reality that there are places where the walls between realities are “thin,” and this is proven to be the case in a section of London (Crouch End) and on Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio (The Regulators). Kingdom Hospital is set in a reality close to but not, our own (in that reality the New England Robins, not the Boston Red Sox, lost a World Series on an error!)
Some alternate worlds appear charming but danger can present itself. Eyes of the Dragon is set in Delain, interestingly the same town from which James and John Norman (The Little Sisters of Eluria) hailed. Flagg was rumored to come from Garlan (Eyes of the Dragon). In The Dark Tower cycle John Farson began his evil ways in that very same Mid-World kingdom. The Old Star can be seen from Delain as well as from Roland’s world. It remains uncertain as to whether these lands are fully part of The Dark Tower Reality, or are simply linked.
The same uncertainty presents itself in relation to The Territories (The Talisman and Black House), an agrarian monarchy that uses magic as a replacement for science. Jack Sawyer discovered The Territories, a world achingly close to ours, when not yet a teenager and set out across it, and America, on a great quest. He returned there, near death, as a middle-aged man. It is to be hoped that King and Peter Straub will complete a trilogy of Sawyer stories as the last would likely be set, as Straub has indicated, in the Territories, with its twinners and wondrous creatures.
The following is a full list of the works defined as part of the New Worlds Reality. The list includes unpublished material.
The Aftermath
An Evening at God’s
Beachworld
The Beggar and the Diamond
Black House
Blockade Billy
Cell
Charlie
Crouch End
The Cursed Expedition
The End of the Whole Mess
Eyes of the Dragon
For Owen
For the Birds
The 43rd Dream
Heroes for Hope: Starring the X-Men
Home Delivery
I Am the Doorway
I’ve Got to Get Away
The Jaunt
Jerusalem’s Lot
Jhonathan and the Witchs
The Killer
Kingdom Hospital
Maximum Overdrive
The Mist
Mobius
Muffe
The Other Side of the Fog
The Pulse
The Star Invaders
The Talisman
The Word Processor
Word Processor of the Gods
You Know They Got a Hell of a Band
Unclassified
It is impossible to classify four works, two poems and two stories set in England (a sort of England Under Siege Reality). The English stories are The Doctor’s Case, in which Dr. Holmes solves a murder; and Wimsey, the beginning of an aborted detective novel (see the chapter later in this book).
The two poems, In the Key-Chords of Dawn and Woman With Child also defy the classification system. They are also discussed in “The Poems” chapter.
Conclusion
Perhaps the most important conclusion to be had from this discussion is that it is possible to link all the Realities!
For instance, The Stand is linked by Hemingford Home, Nebraska to Children of the Corn and It (America Under Siege stories); and through Flagg to both the Dark Tower and New Worlds. The Stand also has strong links to Maine towns that also feature in the Maine Street Horror tales.
A number of geographical locations (both real and imaginary) stand astride a number of Realities, for instance Topeka in The Stand Reality appears in New Worlds via The Running Man and in The Dark Tower Reality via The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. Stovington, Vermont appears in America Under Siege’s The Shining, and in The Stand Reality. Indeed, there are hundreds of such links.
Characters also cross Realities. A certain Randall Flagg is the primary candidate, appearing in the Dark Tower, New Worlds (Eyes of the Dragon) and The Stand Realities. Father/Pere Callahan has transited from Maine Street Horror to The Dark Tower; and Ted Brautigan has managed appearances in both the Dark Tower and America Under Siege Realities. Jack Sawyer, who once lived in the America Under Siege Reality and was but a visitor to the New World of the Territories, is now a permanent resident there.
If it is possible that all Worlds are contained within an atom in a blade of purple grass, as has been posited in the Dark Tower Reality; then it is equally possible for all these Realities to be contained in the mind of a single writer.
The wonders that remain are the as yet untold tales that will flow from the pen/keyboard of the White King.
Appendix: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1855)
By Robert Browning (1812-1889)
I
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the workings of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
II
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ‘gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.
III
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed, neither pride
Now hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.
IV
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
V
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bit the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (“since all is o’er,” he saith
“And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;”)
VI
When some discuss if near the other graves
be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among “The Band” to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed
Their steps – that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now – should I be fit?
VIII
So, quiet as despair I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he po
inted. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
IX
For mark! No sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backwards a last view
O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round;
Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.
I might go on, naught else remained to do.
X
So on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers – as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind with none to awe,
You’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.
XI
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See
Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly,
“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
‘Tis the Last Judgement’s fire must cure this place
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”
XII
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.
XIII
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupified, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!
XIV
Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.