A Brief Guide to Stephen King
Author(s): Paul Simpson
2014 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King's first novel Carrie in April 1974. Rescued from the rubbish by his wife Tabitha, the novel launched the Maine schoolteacher on a prolific and extraordinarily successful career. His name has become synonymous with horror and suspense through over fifty works, including The Dark Tower, a retelling of Byron's Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came. Simpson traces the writer's life from his difficult childhood - his father went out to the shops and never came back - through his initial books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman to the success of Carrie, Salem's Lot and The Shining in the 1970s, and beyond. He examines how King's writing was affected by the accident that nearly killed him in 1999 and how his battles with alcohol and addiction to medication have been reflected in his stories. The guide will also take a look at the very many adaptation's of King's work in movies, on television and radio, and in comic books.
Product Information
Contemporary master of suspense and horror
There have been surveys of Stephen King's work before but none with the same mix of concision and erudition. Covering forty years of all things Kingian from Carrie to the present day, Paul Simpson combines breadth of knowledge with passion for his subject, and his judgments are as fair as they are well argued. If you think you know about King, you will finish this book knowing more, and if you are a relative newcomer to the Maine horror maestro's writing, you will be moved by this book to read further. A Brief Guide... is both scholarly and readable, a rare combination. It is also indispensable. -- James Lovegrove, author of the New York Times-bestselling Pantheon series he clearly knows his King Psychobabble 20140306
PAUL SIMPSON has been writing professionally about horror and science fiction for the past two decades. As editor of Dreamwatch magazine and its web spin-off SciFiBulletin.com, which he still oversees from his home in a small Sussex village just north of Brighton, England, he has visited the sets of numerous TV shows, including The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Stephen King's The Dead Zone, and interviewed the stars of many of the classic Hammer Horror films.
General Fields
- :
- : Constable and Robinson
- : Robinson Publishing
- : 0.228
- : 01 March 2014
- : 197mm X 130mm X 21mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 June 2014
- : books
Special Fields
- : Paul Simpson
- : Paperback
- : Paperback
- : 614
- : 614
- : English
- : English
- : 813.54
- : 813.54
- : 304
- : 304