Unpublished and uncollected works by Stephen King

According to books by Tyson Blue (The Unseen King), Stephen J. Spignesi (The Lost Work of Stephen King), and Rocky Wood et al. (Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished), there are numerous unpublished works by Stephen King that have come to light throughout King's career, including novels and short stories, most of which remain unfinished. Most are stored among Stephen King's papers in the special collections of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, some of which are freely accessible to the library's visitors, while others require permission from King to read. Additionally, there are a number of uncollected short stories published throughout King's long career in various anthologies and periodicals that have never been published in a King collection.

Unpublished works

(Partial list)

• 1959 Charlie (unpublished short story)

• 1960 People, Places and Things (unpublished short story collection)

People, Places and Things is a self-published magazine sized collection of short stories written in 1960 together with his friend Chris Chesley and published using their own press. It comprises a mere 18 stapeled together pages. Copies were sold to school friends for about $0.10 to $0.25 each. The original collection consists of 8 short stories by Stephen King, nine by Chris Chesley, and one co-production; according to King only one copy of about ten is left – he owns it himself. The Stories:

• I'm falling
• The Dimension Warp
• The Hotel at the End of the Road - Two gangsters, Tommy Riviera and Kelso Black, find rescue in an old hotel whose ominous proprietor doesn't want money. He wants the men themselves – as part of his private museum of the dead.
• I've got to get away - It's like waking up, but the dreamer remembers nothing, not even his name. Shocked, he realizes that he's working at a conveyor belt and knows only one thing: He's got to get away. But he is immediately arrested by guards who reprogram him – for the dreamer is nothing but a faulty robot who seems to lapse into humanhood from time to time.
• The Thing at the Bottom of the Well - A small boy enjoys torturing animals: He tears out the wings of flies, kills worms or mistreats a dog with needles. One day, he is lured to a well by a strange voice and climbs down mesmerized. When his body is found, his arms are severed from the body and there are needles in his eyes.
• The Stranger - A thief and murderer is waylaid by the Reaper himself.
• The Cursed Expedition - Two astronauts land on Venus, finding an Earth-like atmosphere and believing to have found Eden. There is delicious fruit, the temperature is perfect. But when one of the crew is found dead, the survivor is too late in realizing that the planet itself – or at least its surface – is alive, finally swallowing him and his rocket.
• The Other Side of the Fog - A mysterious fog serves as a door between dimensions. Pete Jacobs involuntarily travels into the future (the year 2007) and eventually to a world inhabited by dinosaurs. Helpless, he wanders from one dimension to the next, searching for his own.
• Never Look Behind You - The short story written together with his friend tells about a mysterious woman killing in a most peculiar way.

• 1963 The Aftermath (unpublished novella)

The Aftermath is an unpublished novella. The 76 page (200 pages by today's standards), 50,000 word manuscript describes life after a nuclear war suggesting the Armageddon was August 14, 1967; it was written at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at the same time he was beginning Getting It On (later to become Rage). It is currently stored among Stephen King's papers in the special collections of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine.

• 1964 The Star Invaders (unpublished novel)

• 1970 Sword in the Darkness (unpublished novel)

Sword in the Darkness is the title of an unpublished novel. It is the longest of King's unpublished works, at approximately 485 pages (150,000 words) in length. Upon its completion in April 1970, it was rejected by twelve publishers. King has said that he now considers it unpublishable and intends for it never to be released to the public. The book's plot includes a character dealing with the suicide of his pregnant sister and the death of his mother from a brain tumor, and another character, a black activist lawyer, who incites a riot after speaking at a local high school. In 2006, a lengthy excerpt from the book was published in Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished, by Rocky Wood et al. (Cemetery Dance Publications, March 2006). The excerpt related the back-story of one character, a teacher named Edie Rowsmith. It is effectively a stand-alone horror-story in the style of the early Stephen King.

• 1974 The House on Value Street (unpublished and unfinished)

The House on Value Street is the title of an unpublished novel. In his 1981 treatise on the horror genre, Danse Macabre, King describes his attempts to write a fictionalized novel about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army. King talks about attempting multiple drafts from various angles, before deciding he could not finish the novel to his satisfaction. King does not describe the plot in any detail, except that the fictionalized SLA's headquarters would be in the eponymous house on Value Street.

In Danse Macabre, while examining how the seeds of effective horror fiction may be found in the cultural climate and political current events, King credits his failure to complete House on Value Street as the genesis of his apocalyptic best-seller The Stand. As King tells it, he began free-associating on his SLA research, and typed the sentence "Donald DeFreeze is a dark man." This first evocation of his recurring villain Randall Flagg, and the societal malaise at the center of Value Street gave King his core ideas to begin The Stand.

• 1976 Welcome to Clearwater (unpublished and unfinished)
• 1976 The Corner (unpublished and unfinished)
• 1977 Wimsey (unpublished and unfinished)
• 1983 The Leprechaun (unpublished and unfinished)
• 1983 The Cannibals (aka Under the Dome) (unpublished and unfinished) *Under the Dome published in 11/09*
• 1984 Keyholes (unpublished and unfinished)
• Hatchet Head (Date unspecified)
• Comb Dump (unpublished and unfinished)
• The Doors (unpublished, possibly unfinished)
• George D.X. McArdle (unpublished and unfinished)
• On the Island (unpublished and unfinished)

Uncollected works

Short stories

(Partial list)

The following may have been published in magazines but not in book form:

• 1965 I Was a Teenage Grave Robber
• 1965 Code Name: Mouse Trap
• 1966 The 43rd Dream
• 1967 The Glass Floor
• 1970 A Possible Fairy Tale
• 1970 Slade
• 1971 The Old Dude's Ticker
• 1974 The Float - original version of The Raft - (revised 2010)
• 1976 Weeds
• 1977 Before the Play – uncollected original prologue to The Shining
• 1977 The King Family and the Wicked Witch
• 1978 Squad D
• 1978 Man with a Belly
• 1978 The Night of the Tiger
• 1979 The Crate
• 1971 The Blue Air Compressor (revised 1981)
• 1985 The Reploids
• 1986 For the Birds
• 1994 The Killer
• 1994 Jhonathan and the Witches
• 2009 Ur
• 2009 Throttle with Joe Hill
• 2009 Premium Harmony
• 2010 Under The Weather
• 2011 Mile 81
• 2011 The Little Green God of Agony
• 2011 The Dune
• 2012 In the Tall Grass with Joe Hill
• 2012 A Face in the Crowd with Stewart O'Nan

Poems

• 1968 Harrison State Park '68
• 1969 The Dark Man
• 1970 Donovan's Brain
• 1970 She Has Gone To Sleep While
• 1971 Silence
• 1971 Woman With Child
• 1972 In the Key Chords of Dawn
• 1972 The Hardcase Speaks
• 1988 Dino
• 2009 Mostly Old Men
• 2009 The Bone Church
• 2010 Tommy

References

• Beahm, George. Stephen King from A to Z – An Encyclopedia of his Life and Work. Kansas City, 1998.
• Blue, Tyson (1989). The Unseen King. Borgo Press. ISBN 1-55742-073-4.
• Spignesi, Stephen (1998). The Lost Work of Stephen King. Birch Lane Press. ISBN 1-55972-469-2.
• Wood, Rocky (2005). Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished. Cemetery Dance Publications. ISBN 1-58767-130-1.

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