This is a list of short fiction by Stephen King. This includes short stories, novelettes, and novellas, as well as poems. It is arranged chronologically by first publication. Major revisions of previously published pieces are also noted. Stephen King is sometimes erroneously credited with "nearly 400 short stories" (or a similarly large number). However, all the known published pieces of short fiction are tabulated below. In all, 185 works are listed. Most of these pieces have been collected in King's five short story collections: Night Shift (1978), Skeleton Crew (1985), Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993), Everything's Eventual (2002), and Just After Sunset (2008); and in King's four novella collections: Different Seasons (1982), Four Past Midnight (1990), Hearts in Atlantis (1999), and Full Dark, No Stars (2010). Some of these pieces, however, remain uncollected.
Famous quotes containing the words stephen, king, short and/or fiction:
“I forsak the, Kyng Herowdes, and thi werkes alle;
Ther is a chyld in Bedlem born is beter than we alle.’”
—Unknown. St. Stephen and King Herod (l. 6–8)
“When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be,
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)