Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (7 page)

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 It includes unpublished works.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).