7.8 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Publication date June 21, 1985 Pages 512 Originally published 21 June 1985 Page count 512 Publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons | 3.9/5 Goodreads Language English Media type Print (Hardcover) ISBN 978-0-399-13039-7 Genre Horror fiction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nominations Locus Award for Best Collection Similar Stephen King books, Horror books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Skeleton Crew is the second collection of short fiction by Stephen King, published by Putnam in June 1985. A limited edition of a thousand copies was published by Scream/Press in October 1985 (ISBN 978-0910489126), illustrated by J. K. Potter, containing an additional short story, "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson," which had originally appeared in Rolling Stone magazine (July 19 – August 2, 1984), and was later incorporated into King's 1987 novel The Tommyknockers. The original title of this book was Night Moves.
Contents
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Overview
The collection features 22 works, which includes nineteen short stories, a novella ("The Mist"), and two poems ("Paranoid: A Chant" and "For Owen"). In addition to the introduction, in which King directly addresses his readers in his signature conversational style, Skeleton Crew features an epilogue of sorts entitled "Notes" wherein King discusses the origins of several stories in the collection. The stories are collected from science-fiction and horror anthologies (Dark Forces, Shadows, Terrors, and New Terrors), genre magazine publications (Twilight Zone, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Startling Mystery Stories, Weirdbook and Fantasy and Science Fiction), and popular magazines (Redbook, Gallery, Yankee and Playboy).
Although published in 1985, the stories collected in Skeleton Crew span seventeen years from "The Reaper's Image" (King's second professional sale when he was just eighteen years old) to "The Ballad of The Flexible Bullet" which was completed in 1983.
Skeleton Crew is critically held as showing King as a maturing writer with greater breadth and depth than his previous short works.
The collection also features some more personal works, including "For Owen", the poem he wrote for his son, and "Gramma" a horrific tale from an eleven-year-old boy's perspective that seems to recall King's own horrors living with his invalid grandmother.
Of one of the stories in the collection, King says: "As far as short stories are concerned, I like the grisly ones the best. However the story "Survivor Type" goes a little bit too far, even for me."
Film and television
"The Raft" was adapted as a segment of the 1987 New World Pictures anthology film Creepshow 2, with a script by George A. Romero, and directed by Michael Gornic.
"Word Processor of the Gods" (1984 Laurel TV, directed by Michael Gornic) was a 22-minute episode of Tales from the Darkside.
"Gramma" (1986 CBS/MGM-UA, directed by Bradford May) was a 21-minute episode of The New Twilight Zone written by Harlan Ellison.
"The Mist" was adapted into the film The Mist (2007 The Weinstein Company, written and directed by Frank Darabont), which was released on November 21, 2007.
"Gramma" is currently in pre-production under the title Mercy, which is set to star Chandler Riggs and Dylan McDermott.
"The Jaunt" will be made into a feature film by production company Plan B, with Andy Muschietti set to direct.
Dollar Baby adaptations
The following stories have been adapted as Dollar Baby short films:
Other media adaptations
The Mist was adapted into a text-based video game by Mindscape Software.
The Mist was adapted as a 90-minute full-cast audio recording in 1986 in "3-D Sound" from ZBS Productions, released by Simon & Schuster, Inc..
The collection Skeleton Crew made an appearance in a public service poster encouraging Americans to patronize their local libraries, where a series of celebrities would be seen with books. In this poster, Michael J. Fox is holding a copy of Skeleton Crew while a ghostly hand is on his shoulder. The poster reads "Michael J. Fox for America's Libraries".