The gunslinger - Stephen King [0]
THE GUNSLINGER
A Viking Penguin Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982, 2003 by Stephen King
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ISBN: 0-7865-3776-0
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Electronic edition: June, 2003
ALSO BY STEPHEN KING
NOVELS
Carrie
’Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
The Dead Zone
Firestarter
Cujo
Christine
Pet Sematary
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Talisman (with Peter Straub)
It
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
The Tommyknockers
THE DARK TOWER II:
The Drawing of the Three
THE DARK TOWER III:
The Waste Lands
The Dark Half
Needful Things
Gerald’s Game
Dolores Claiborne
Insomnia
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Green Mile
THE DARK TOWER IV:
Wizard and Glass
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Dreamcatcher
Black House (with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8
AS RICHARD BACHMAN
Rage
The Long Walk
Roadwork
The Running Man
Thinner
The Regulators
COLLECTIONS
Night Shift
Different Seasons
Skeleton Crew
Four Past Midnight
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Hearts in Atlantis
Everything’s Eventual
SCREENPLAYS
Creepshow
Cat’s Eye
Silver Bullet
Maximum Overdrive
Pet Sematary
Golden Years
Sleepwalkers
The Stand
The Shining
Rose Red
The Storm of the Century
NONFICTION
Danse Macabre
On Writing
To ED FERMAN,
Who took a chance on these stories, one by one.
ILLUSTRATIONS
SILENCE CAME BACK IN, FILLING JAGGED SPACES
(THE GUNSLINGER)
facing page ref-1, ref-2
THEY PAUSED . . . LOOKING UP AT THE DANGLING,
TWISTING BODY (THE WAY STATION)
facing page ref-3
HE COULD SEE HIS OWN REFLECTION . . .
(THE ORACLE AND THE MOUNTAINS)
following page ref-4
THE BOY SHRIEKED ALOUD . . .
(THE SLOW MUTANTS)
facing page ref-5
THERE THE GUNSLINGER SAT, HIS FACE TURNED UP INTO THE FADING LIGHT
(THE GUNSLINGER AND THE MAN IN BLACK)
facing page ref-6
INTRODUCTION
On Being Nineteen
(and a Few Other Things)
I
Hobbits were big when I was nineteen (a number of some import in the stories you are about to read).
There were probably half a dozen Merrys and Pippins slogging through the mud at Max Yasgur’s farm during the Great Woodstock Music Festival, twice as many Frodos, and hippie Gandalfs without number. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was madly popular in those days, and while I never made it to Woodstock (say sorry), I suppose I was at least a halfling-hippie. Enough of one, at any rate, to have read the books and fallen in love with them. The Dark Tower books, like most long fantasy tales written by men and women of my generation (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson, and The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, are just two of many), were born out of Tolkien’s.
But although I read the books in 1966 and 1967, I held off writing. I responded (and with rather touching wholeheartedness) to the sweep of Tolkien’s imagination—to the ambition of his story—but I wanted to write my own kind of story, and had I started then, I would have written his. That, as the late Tricky Dick Nixon was fond of saying, would have been wrong. Thanks to Mr. Tolkien, the twentieth century