by Rocky Wood
Serious King students and fans will find great interest in the minor changes King made to his own mythology in these scripts. But their greatest value lies in King’s determination to see the story produced under his own terms. He initially wrote at least four drafts of the movie screenplay and followed it up with the mini-series screenplay for ABC-TV. By writing his own screenplay he avoided the pitfalls of allowing another writer to be introduced. It is amazing how often these writers are tempted to “improve” on King’s already superb tales.
The mini-series of The Stand ranks as one of the best TV and one of the superior visual adaptations of a King work and this should be credited directly to King’s teleplay.
Links From The Stand To Other King Fiction
As one of King’s major works, in which the history of our world takes a rather radical turn, an entire “Reality” is allocated to The Stand’s varying storylines. Many of the characters and places link to other King works of fiction, and the Dark Tower, Maine Street Horror, New Worlds and America Under Siege “Realities.” The links are summarized here.
Randall Flagg Eyes of the Dragon, The Dark Tower cycle, The Dark Man
Abagail Freemantle The Dark Tower IV, The Dark Tower VI
The Trashcan Man The Dark Tower III
Bobbi Anderson119The Tommyknockers
Arnette, Texas Desperation, The Monkey
Castle Rock, Maine120Bag of Bones, The Body, Creepshow, Cujo, The Dark Half, The Dead Zone, Dreamcatcher, Gerald’s Game, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Gramma, It Grows on You (Nightmares and Dreamscapes version only), The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, The Man in the Black Suit, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Needful Things, Nona (Skeleton Crew version only), Premium Harmony, Riding the Bullet, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Squad D, The Sun Dog, Uncle Otto’s Truck, Under the Dome and Untitled (The Huffman Story)
Hemingford Home, Children of the Corn (Screenplay only), It, The Last Rung on
Nebraska the Ladder
Stovington, Vermont The Shining, Everything’s Eventual
Captain Trips Night Surf, The Dark Tower IV, Golden Years, The Dark Tower VI121
The Shine122The Shining
Overlooked123The Shining
Legion124Black House, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (Revised), It Storm of the Century
Ka125The Dark Tower cycle
The Shop96 Firestarter, Golden Years, The Langoliers, The Tommyknockers
119 She is referred to but not named in the Uncut book version only. The exact quote is ‘Rimfire Christmas …written by a woman who lived up north in Haven.’
120 In the Uncut book version only
121 Mentioned only as the superflu
122 Mentioned only in the book versions. In the original Mother Abagail says, “I’ve always dreamed, and sometimes my dreams have come true. Prophecy is the gift of God and everyone has a smidge of it. My own grandmother used to call it the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shine.”
123 In the Uncut book version only. Brad Kitchner is addressing the Free Zone Committee in Chapter 58, Section 3, “We had two of the generators going yesterday, and as you know, one of them overloaded and blew its cookies. So to speak. What I mean is that it overlooked. Overloaded rather. Well … you know what I mean.”
124 Mentioned only in the book versions
125 In the Uncut book version only. When Judge Farris saw a crow tapping on his motel room window it came to him that this was “…the dark man, his soul, his ka, somehow projected into this rain-drenched grinning crow …”
The Star Invaders (1964)
King expert Tyson Blue kindly provided a copy of this story to the author, allowing this detailed description and analysis. King apparently owns the only printed copy of this 17 page, slightly less than 3000 word chapbook. Two of the other very few King outsiders to have read it since King reached the best-seller lists are Blue and Dr. Michael R. Collings.
The front cover reads, “AA GAS-LIGHT BOOK 20¢ / The STAR INVADERS / By Steve King.” A handwritten “Triad” with the “T” appearing as a triangle and capital T superimposed appears in the bottom right corner of the cover. “STAR INVADERS” appears as in a cross-word puzzle, with the word “STAR” running down the page to meet the “R” of “INVADERS” running across the page. A stylized and hand-drawn star appears to the left of the word “Star.” The inside front cover reads, “The Star Invaders, Copyright 1964 by Triad, Inc., and Gaslight Books / FIRST PRINTING / June, 1964 / To Johnny, Who wanted one like this / All characters herein are fictitious.” The chapbook which measures 8 ½ inches by 5 ½ inches was self-published by King.
The tale is clearly under the heavy, and heady, influence of King’s beloved 1950s science-fiction films and television episodes, radio drama and graphic comic books, most particularly the classic 1956 movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.
The first two King experts to reveal parts of this story were Blue and Collings. Blue presents a detailed survey of this New Worlds story in his The Unseen King126. There he revealed that the aliens, who have clawed hands, dressed in “iridescent uniforms that made them look like robots.” Collings revealed127 that each alien’s hand comprises “three curved claws.”
Collings, writing in Castle Rock for August 1989128, says The Star Invaders “…is an account of human encounters with hostile aliens intent on taking over the Earth, a dastardly plan foiled only by the strength of character and purpose of the hero, Jed Pierce.” He delivers two quotes from the story in his article. In the first Hiken is, “subjected to the ultimate torture, to that which he fears more than anything else …”:
Lord they had locked him in a small room! It seemed even smaller than before. Jerry felt a cold sweat break out on his brow. He remembered back thirty years. He had been a kid then, a really small kid. His father had been a bear on discipline, and every time he’d done something wrong, he was locked in a closet to meditate … He had gotten to hate that closet. It was small and stuffed with clothes. The acrid smell of moth-balls made him cough, and to his terrified four-year-old mind, it always seemed that a tiger crouched in the corner.
Now, the room grows smaller and smaller, until the walls touch Hiken and he promises to tell the aliens all. After the walls are withdrawn Hiken again refuses to speak.
Quoting Collings:
In the face of this new evidence of human defiance, the alien says (“implacably,” as King specifies in the text): (the next quote is from the story) “We can lock you in again … Only this time the walls will squeeze until the blood runs from your ears and your nose and even from the little black holes in the center of your eyes. It can squeeze you into just a blob of shrieking protoplasm, if we so desire.”
After revealing the location of Jed Pierce to avoid his ultimate torture Hiken killed himself by beating “his head in on the bulkhead of the floor.”
Blue tells us more of this incident, revealing this quote from an alien as Hiken is locked in the small room, “You see, earth creature, each being has his own devils … things that have horrified him always. We shall find yours, never fear … And then Jed Pierce will be ours!” Apart from the clunky and contradictory dialogue (we’ll find your innermost fears, never fear?) this one line reveals much about King and his entire body of work. In the forty odd years since a teenage boy typed that line Stephen King has dedicated an entire career to finding our innermost fears and feeding them relentlessly into the myth pool.
Collings’ assessment in Castle Rock is that the story itself is not particularly noteworthy.
The characterization is flat, the aliens stereotypic, the story itself derivative – nothing unexpected in the writings of a 16-year-old storyteller. But, if one looks closely at the episode, especially in the light of King’s subsequent productions, something more than a story-as-story unfolds. Through the clarity of hindsight, the torture-room becomes recognizable as a prototype of Margaret White’s punishment closet in Carrie …
Of course, another terrifying closet, albeit from the
view of a little boy outside it, appears in The Monster in the Closet section of Cujo, and a similar concept is the basis for The Boogeyman; and, in our assessment, is a closer match to those closets (reflecting as they do Jerry Hiken’s childhood fears – and, perhaps, King’s).
In The Shorter Works of Stephen King Collings stated:
The story is not a culmination, but a beginning, showing King struggling with the form and structure of the short story. He succeeds in places but fails elsewhere, as when he devotes half the story to Hiken’s treachery, then barely refers to the episode in the second part. The writing is serviceable, his style based on hackneyed expressions and trite phrasing … The errors one might expect in a neophyte work appear: misspellings, faulty modification, subject-verb agreement problems, word choice. In “The Star Invaders” he attempts to write science fiction. What he produces – what rises above the stereotypic and the conventional – is horror.
Spignesi states129 the story “is rough and ends abruptly, but it clearly manifests the storytelling abilities King would soon perfect.” Collings wrote in Spignesi’s masterwork:130
“The Star Invaders” is highly abstracted; there are few specific references to people, places or things – certainly nothing to suggest King’s later “brand name” approach to creating verisimilitude. References to the nuclear reactor are equally vague, and the resolution to the story … is abrupt and unconvincing. The great strength of this story is its nascent characterisation, coupled with an occasional image that would resonate through much of King’s fiction.
Tyson Blue, in a kinder review, says the story:
…although overwritten and derivative, nevertheless makes interesting and entertaining reading, and offers a few clues to the developing talent of King … a tale with lots of fast-paced action, thrills, dangers and the blood-and-thunder that so appeals to young adolescent boys … King was giving his young audience what it wanted – lots of action and a fast-paced yarn bursting with excitement, and this was enough to overcome any shortcomings in style, plot, grammar or originality.
King has guarded the story from release for so long that there can be no other belief than that it will never be published or released in any form. Even though it is extremely unlikely readers will ever be able to examine this tale, Blue points out “…it remains a fascinating study for those who are interested in tracing the evolution of his writing and the themes with which he has worked throughout his career.” This is certainly the case – an early attempt by a young man, who in only a decade would strike out on a highly successful career, to do what he would prove to do best – tell a story.
126 The Unseen King, Tyson Blue, p.13-17
127 The Shorter Works of Stephen King, Michael Collings, p.10-12
128 Explorations of Theme, Image, and Character In the Early Works of Stephen King, Michael Collings
129 The Lost Work of Stephen King, Stephen J. Spignesi, p.20-22
130 The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia, Stephen J. Spignesi
Stories from Journals (c.1989-1991)
In November 2002 your current author traveled to Maine and spent seventeen days working through King’s papers at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library of the University of Maine at Orono. I’d taken the decision to check every page in each folder in every Box of King’s papers, on the chance that interesting materials might be found. There was also a (slim) hope of finding one original item.
In fact I discovered, or perhaps rediscovered is the better term, ten stories that were previously unknown to the King community. The most interesting aspect of these discoveries was that the manuscripts had been lurking in dark boxes at the Fogler for years (like a certain creature in a “Crate”) waiting for daylight to expose them to the world. While a few were in the “Restricted” boxes that cannot be accessed without King’s written permission, others were in public access boxes.
It is well known that King keeps individual Journals in which he writes thoughts and stories, some containing up to ten different pieces to a book. Four incomplete stories were found in King’s handwriting in just such a Journal. By strange coincidence it was in the very last Box I checked, and on my last possible research day. This public access box was number 2702 but, for security reasons, the Journal has since moved to a Restricted Box, 1010.
After reconfirming the authenticity of the Journal with King’s office I was able to announce the existence of the stories to the world early in 2003. Using King’s titles in the Journal they have been dubbed Muffe, The Evaluation, Movie Show and Chip Coombs.
One of the more interesting aspects of this Journal is how clean and clear King’s writing is in his first handwritten draft. Not only is the handwriting neat and legible but the story seems to flow off King’s pen and on to the page. There are virtually no corrections or scratching outs and yet it would be easy to see these first drafts published as they stand. Obviously King goes through various drafts, rewrites and editing before publishing short stories or novels but one wonders how many other modern authors could deliver such quality work in a first, handwritten draft?
Other story snippets in the Journal include Library Policeman, Langoliers, Head Down, Sleepwalkers, The Waste Lands (and its Introduction), Needful Things (and notes for it), Chattery Teeth and Insomnia. This dates the writing to the years 1989, 1990 and 1991 at the latest.
In 2009 King allowed the publication of a different two page snippet of Muffe, in Bev Vincent’s book The Stephen King Illustrated Companion. The snippet comes from a different journal, although that journal also includes snippets from Needful Things and Insomnia, so is likely to have been written during the same 1989-1991 time period.
Muffe
This is a part manuscript only. There is one section of nine single pages which remains unpublished, the notation in King’s handwriting reads “More Muffe,” as this was apparently a continuation of the story. A second section, published in The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, covers a slightly later period in the same tale.
In the first fragment a man is trapped in a cage. Children were pelting Muffe of the Finger Kingdoms with clods of earth and rocks. His crime had apparently been one of laughing at the Palace of the Great One, Lord Vaggar. Vaggar’s right hand man approached and stopped the children from pelting the prisoner and at that point the fragment ends.
In the second section Muffe is no longer caged and is talking to Vaggar’s right-hand man, now named as Mustus, initially about Clarissa. Muffe and the “barbarian” begin to feel each other out in conversation. Mustus tells him that very evening Vaggar would visit with him to learn more about his lands but if he wanted to stay alive he should give Vaggar what he wants.
It seems these fragment were to be part of a fantasy. The town in which Muffe was trapped is called T’Kett and was apparently the capital of the Northern World, as it contained the Palace of the Great One, which is described as “crude and multi-colored.” We discover that the “Great One” is Lord Vaggar, who is also known as the “Ruler of the Northern World and Absolute Emperor of the Far Places” and “Master Vaggar.”
We are told little else about T’Kett, other than that Muffe’s cage was in the Central Square and that the Marketplace was closed, as “this was the day the barbarians worshipped their pagan gods.”
We are led to presume that Muffe is from another “country” in that he is also known as “Muffe of the Finger Kingdoms” and was a member of the Northern Expeditionary Force. Young, he had apparently been imprisoned for laughing at the imperiously named Palace of the Great One after being accused of doing so by Lord Vaggar’s daughter. While imprisoned he was nicknamed “The Laughing Man.”
Lord Vaggar’s daughter Clarissa was fourteen, tall and ugly. She and her friends pelted Muffe. Vaggar’s right-hand man, who stopped the pelting and appears fond of Clarissa, was also his heir apparent. He was very tall, clean-shaven, had long hair, a battle-scarred face and ice-blue eyes.
There are no indications of a timelin
e to this story or a location but the reader gets the immediate impression of lonely wind-blown steppes and the sort of fairly temporary towns occupied by the Mongol hordes during their long Westward expansion from Asia into Europe. Equally, certain scenes from the epic movie trilogy Lord of the Rings would not be out of place in the reader’s mind. In Vincent’s book it is claimed the story has “the feel of the Dark Tower,” although that was not my impression when reading either of the pieces.
This partial story is a New Worlds tale and it is not linked to any other King fiction. Other than The Dark Tower cycle and Eyes of the Dragon King has published relatively little in the “Fantasy” genre. There is too little of the storyline to make much of an assessment. Is Muffe the agent of Vaggar’s enemy? What information does Vaggar seek that might threaten Muffe’s life if he does not reveal it? We will probably never know!
