I took a little break from Stephen King to read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Battle between the old gods and the new gods with the main character, Shadow, stuck in the middle. My husband and I had opposite reactions to this book. We both agree it’s well written and researched. I liked the story. He did not. I guess we can’t agree all the time. Oh and it’s also a good comp for my god book that is currently just a thought, but I plan to work on after the Arn stories have wormed their way out of my head.
I started reading Night Shift a couple of days ago. It’s a collection of Stephen King’s early short stories. Most of the stories were published before Carrie in different magazines. I say this because I’m only three stories in and each one has a reference or a similar concept to a later book.
Jerusalem’s Lot, for example, is the first story and the tie in to ‘Salem’s Lot is obvious from the name alone. Indeed, the story is a prequel to ‘Salem’s Lot set in the 1800s. The story comes complete with nosferatu and in a very Stephen King fashion (someone said this is taken from H.P. Lovecraft, but since I haven’t delved into his work, I have no idea) there is a monster under a town (reminiscent of IT and Insomnia).
The next story, Graveyard Shift, also has a monster underground along with workplace angst. The workers manage to do what everyone wants to do if they have a bad boss and feed him to the monster.
Finally, in Night Surf, a group of teenagers are in the middle of the final days of the Captain Trips infection. The same infection killing everyone in the beginning of The Stand.
As I mentioned, most of the stories were written before Carrie was published. The hints at future stories make me wonder at the planning King was doing for his future works. Did the short stories come first and then he built from those? Was he already working on the novels and wrote the short stories as chapters or alongside the main stories? Or was there a master plan for his work and these were some of the off shoots? I have no idea, but I wouldn’t mind asking him if I got the chance. I imagine he’s been asked before.
Anyway, I felt compelled to write this because I was seeing all these connections to future King books. I’ll get back to it and see how the foreshadowing continues.
S. E. Baran 