Night Shift (short story collection)

Night Shift

First edition cover
Author Stephen King
Country United States
Language English
Genre Horror
Publisher Doubleday
Publication date
 February 1978
Media type Print (hardcover)
Pages 336
ISBN 978-0-385-12991-6

Night Shift is the first collection of short stories by Stephen King,[1] first published in 1978. In 1980, Night Shift received the Balrog Award for Best Collection, and in 1979 it was nominated as best collection for the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award.[2] Many of King's most famous short stories were included in this collection.

Stories collected

Title Originally published in
Jerusalem's Lot Previously unpublished
Graveyard Shift October 1970 issue of Cavalier
Night Surf Spring 1969 issue of Ubris
I Am the Doorway March 1971 issue of Cavalier
The Mangler December 1972 issue of Cavalier
The Boogeyman March 1973 issue of Cavalier
Gray Matter October 1973 issue of Cavalier
Battleground September 1972 issue of Cavalier
Trucks June 1973 issue of Cavalier
Sometimes They Come Back March 1974 issue of Cavalier
Strawberry Spring Fall 1968 issue of Ubris
The Ledge July 1976 issue of Penthouse
The Lawnmower Man May 1975 issue of Cavalier
Quitters, Inc. Previously unpublished
I Know What You Need September 1976 issue of Cosmopolitan
Children of the Corn March 1977 issue of Penthouse
The Last Rung on the Ladder Previously unpublished
The Man Who Loved Flowers August 1977 issue of Gallery
One for the Road March/April 1977 issue of Maine
The Woman in the Room Previously unpublished

Details

The book was published on the heels of The Shining (1977 Doubleday) and was King's fifth published book (including Rage, which was published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman). Nine of the twenty short stories in the book had first appeared in various issues of Cavalier Magazine from 1970–1975; others were originally published in Penthouse, Cosmopolitan, Gallery, Ubris, and Maine Magazine. The stories "Jerusalem's Lot", "Quitters Inc.", "The Last Rung on the Ladder", and "The Woman in the Room" appeared for the first time in this collection.

Foreword and introduction

Night Shift is the first book for which King wrote a foreword. The introduction was written by one of King's favorite authors, John D. MacDonald.

Film, television or theatrical adaptations

With the publication of Night Shift and the rise in King's popularity as a best-selling author, also with the success of Brian De Palma's motion picture adaptation of Carrie (1976), student film and theatre makers began to submit requests to King to make adaptations of the stories that appeared in the collection. King formed a policy he deemed the Dollar Deal, which allowed the students the permission to make an adaptation for the consideration of just $1.

In the 1980s, entrepreneurial film producer Milton Subotsky purchased the rights to six of the stories in this collection with the intention to produce feature films and a television anthology based on multiple stories. Although Subotsky was involved with several King adaptations (Cat's Eye, Maximum Overdrive, Sometimes They Come Back, The Lawnmower Man) the television series never came to fruition due to conflicts with the networks' Standards and Practices.[3]

The following is a list of film, television or theatre adaptations made from the stories collected in Night Shift:

Feature film adaptations

Television adaptations

Dollar baby adaptations (shorts)

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Graveyard Shift". The New York Times.
  2. ↑ "Night Shift". Isfdb.org.
  3. ↑ Perakos, Peter S. "Stephen King on Carrie, The Shining, etc." published in Cinefantastique Magazine Vol 1 No 8 Winter 1978. Reprinted in "Feast of Fear" Underwood & Miller, Carroll and Graf 1989 pp. 70
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