First edition cover
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Author | Stephen King |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Horror |
Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date
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February 1978 |
Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
Pages | 336 |
ISBN |
Night Shift is the first collection of short stories by Stephen King, first published in 1978. In 1980, Night Shift received the Balrog Award for Best Collection, and in 1979 it was nominated as best collection for the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award. Many of King's most famous short stories were included in this collection.
The book was published on the heels of The Shining (1977 Doubleday) and was King's fifth published book (including Rage, which was published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman). Nine of the twenty short stories in the book had first appeared in various issues of Cavalier Magazine from 1970–1975; 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.
With the publication of Night Shift and the rise in King's popularity as a best-selling author, also with the success of Brian De Palma's motion picture adaptation of Carrie (1976), student film and theatre makers began to submit requests to King to make adaptations of the stories that appeared in the collection. King formed a policy he deemed the Dollar Deal, which allowed the students the permission to make an adaptation for the consideration of just $1.
In the 1980s, entrepreneurial film producer Milton Subotsky purchased the rights to six of the stories in this collection with the intention 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 came to fruition due to conflicts with the networks' Standards and Practices.