 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 |
| Followed by | Different Seasons |
Night Shift is Stephen King's first collection of short stories, [1] first published in 1978. In 1980, Night Shift won 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]
| # | Title | Originally published in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Jerusalem's Lot" | Previously unpublished |
| 2 | "Graveyard Shift" | October 1970 issue of Cavalier |
| 3 | "Night Surf" | Spring 1969 issue of Ubris |
| 4 | "I Am the Doorway" | March 1971 issue of Cavalier |
| 5 | "The Mangler" | December 1972 issue of Cavalier |
| 6 | "The Boogeyman" | March 1973 issue of Cavalier |
| 7 | "Gray Matter" | October 1973 issue of Cavalier |
| 8 | "Battleground" | September 1972 issue of Cavalier |
| 9 | "Trucks" | June 1973 issue of Cavalier |
| 10 | "Sometimes They Come Back" | March 1974 issue of Cavalier |
| 11 | "Strawberry Spring" | Fall 1968 issue of Ubris |
| 12 | "The Ledge" | July 1976 issue of Penthouse |
| 13 | "The Lawnmower Man" | May 1975 issue of Cavalier |
| 14 | "Quitters, Inc." | Previously unpublished |
| 15 | "I Know What You Need" | September 1976 issue of Cosmopolitan |
| 16 | "Children of the Corn" | March 1977 issue of Penthouse |
| 17 | "The Last Rung on the Ladder" | Previously unpublished |
| 18 | "The Man Who Loved Flowers" | August 1977 issue of Gallery |
| 19 | "One for the Road" | March/April 1977 issue of Maine |
| 20 | "The Woman in the Room" | Previously unpublished |
The book was published on the heels of The Shining (1977 Doubleday) and is King's fifth published book (including Rage , which was published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman). Nine of the twenty stories had first appeared in issues of Cavalier Magazine from 1970 to 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.
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. MacDonald writes that "Stephen King is a far, far better writer at thirty than I was at thirty, or at forty. I am entitled to hate him a little bit for this." He adds, "I will say that I do not give a diddly-whoop what Stephen King chooses as an area in which to write. The fact that he presently enjoys writing in the field of spooks and spells and slitherings in the cellar is to me the least interesting fact about the man anyone can relate", predicting that "Stephen King is not going to restrict himself to his present area of intense interest." [3]
With the publication of Night Shift and the rise in King's popularity as a best-selling author, and with the success of Brian De Palma's motion picture adaptation of Carrie (1976), student film makers began submitting requests to King to adapt stories from the collection. King formed a policy he deemed the Dollar Deal, which allowed the students the permission to make an adaptation for $1.
In the 1980s, entrepreneurial film producer Milton Subotsky purchased the rights to six of the stories in this collection 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 happened due to conflicts with the networks' Standards and Practices. [4]
The following film, television, and theatre adaptations are adapted from the stories in Night Shift:
 | |
| Author | Stephen King |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | John Glover |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short story collection |
| Publisher | Random House Audio |
| Media type | Compact Disc, Digital Audio, MP3 |
In 2000, Random House released a recorded compilation of selected stories from Night Shift, each read by John Glover. [5] The full track list of unabridged stories is as follows:
'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1976 and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.
Cat's Eye is a 1985 American anthology horror thriller film directed by Lewis Teague and written by Stephen King. It comprises three stories, "Quitters, Inc.", "The Ledge", and "General". The first two are adaptations of short stories in King's 1978 Night Shift collection, and the third is unique to the film. The three stories are connected by the presence of a traveling cat, and Drew Barrymore both of which play incidental roles in the first two and major characters in the third.
"Quitters, Inc." is a short story by Stephen King published as part of his 1978 short story collection Night Shift. Unlike most other stories in this book, "Quitters, Inc." had been previously unpublished until February 1978 under Doubleday Publishing. It was featured in Edward D. Hoch's 1979 ‘Best detective stories of the year’ collection. The plot follows Dick Morrison's discovery of the brutal enforcement methods used by Quitters, Inc., the firm which he enlists to aid him quit smoking. Like much of Stephen King's work, this short story exhibits elements of horror fiction and satire. The tale was adapted in the 1985 American anthology horror film Cat’s Eye.
The Lawnmower Man is a 1992 science fiction horror film directed by Brett Leonard, written by Leonard and Gimel Everett, and starring Jeff Fahey as Jobe Smith, an intellectually disabled gardener, and Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Lawrence "Larry" Angelo, a scientist who decides to experiment on him in an effort to give him greater intelligence. The experiments give Jobe superhuman abilities, but also increase his aggression, turning him into a man obsessed with evolving into a digital being.
"The Mangler" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the December 1972 issue of Cavalier magazine, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
"Trucks" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the June 1973 issue of Cavalier magazine, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
"Sometimes They Come Back" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the March 1974 issue of Cavalier and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
"The Last Rung on the Ladder" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
"The Boogeyman" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the March 1973 issue of the magazine Cavalier and later included in King's 1978 collection, Night Shift.
"The Woman in the Room" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in King's 1978 collection Night Shift. It was adapted as a short film of the same name in 1983, directed by Frank Darabont at the beginning of his career.
The Dollar Baby was an arrangement in which American author Stephen King would grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers or theater producers to adapt one of his short stories for $1. King retains the rights to his work, but as he began to experience commercial success, he decided to use the Dollar Baby to help the next generation of creatives. The term may be used to refer to both the adaptation itself and the person adapting it; for example, "The Sun Dog" was made as a Dollar Baby and filmmaker Matt Flesher became a Dollar Baby upon adapting it.
"The Lawnmower Man" is a short story by American writer Stephen King, first published in the May 1975 issue of Cavalier and later included in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
Sometimes They Come Back is a 1991 American made-for-television horror film based on the 1974 short story of the same name by Stephen King. Originally optioned as a segment of the 1985 feature film Stephen King's Cat's Eye, it was developed into a separate feature by producer Dino De Laurentiis.
Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American horror film written and directed by Stephen King. The film stars Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington, and Yeardley Smith. The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King's short story "Trucks", which was included in the author's first collection of short stories, Night Shift, and follows the events after all machines become sentient when Earth crosses the tail of a comet, initiating a world-wide killing spree.
Milton Subotsky was an American film and television writer and producer. In 1964, he founded Amicus Productions with Max J. Rosenberg. Amicus means "friend" in Latin. The partnership produced low-budget science fiction and horror films in the United Kingdom.
Graveyard Shift is a 1990 American horror film directed by Ralph S. Singleton, written by John Esposito, starring David Andrews, Stephen Macht, Kelly Wolf, and Brad Dourif, and based on the 1970 short story of the same name by Stephen King which was first published in the October 1970 issue of Cavalier magazine, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift. The film was released in October 1990.
"Children of the Corn" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the March 1977 issue of Penthouse, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift. The story is about a couple who end up in an abandoned Nebraska town that is inhabited by a cult of murderous children who worship a demon that lives in the local cornfields. The story has been adapted into several films, spawning a horror feature film franchise of the same name beginning in 1984. In 2009, the story was included in the book Stephen King Goes to the Movies.
The Mangler 2 is a 2002 Canadian horror film and a direct-to-video sequel to the 1995 theatrical release The Mangler, which was based on a 1972 short story of the same name by Stephen King. It stars Lance Henriksen and Chelse Swain. While the original was about a demon-possessed industrial laundry-machine, this film places the demon in a private school's computer network, where it manifests as a destructive computer virus with some of the same abilities as a ouija board.
The Boogeyman is a 2023 American supernatural horror film directed by Rob Savage from a screenplay by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman and a screen story by Beck and Woods. Based on the 1973 short story of the same name by Stephen King, the film follows a family that becomes haunted by the Boogeyman after a troubled man visits and inadvertently brings the creature to them. The ensemble cast includes Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair, and David Dastmalchian.
