Author - Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

Richard Bachman's
author photo. Photo credit: Claudia Inez
Bachman (Fictional, real photographer
unknown) |
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Richard Bachman is a pseudonym used by
horror fiction author Stephen
King.
Bibliography of Richard Bachman
If a title is linked click
on the link to read the first edition pointsof issue and
other fun facts for that book.
Title
|
Year
|
Genre
|
Length
|
Notes
|
Rage
|
1977
|
Horror
|
211pp
|
First book published by
Stephen King
under the
pseudonym Richard
Bachman
|
The narrator, Charlie
Decker, a high school senior, details how
he had long been fighting his growing
rage against the authority figures which
populate his world. He finally snapped
and hit one of his teachers with a heavy
wrench he had taken to carrying in his
pocket; after much wrangling and
discussion, the incident was dropped and
he was allowed to return to
school. This book has gone out of
print at Stephen King's request as a
direct result of the Columbine High
School
shooting.
|
The Long
Walk
|
1979
|
Horror
|
384pp
|
Second book published
by Stephen King
under the
pseudonym Richard
Bachman
|
One hundred teenage
boys (picked at random from a large pool
of applicants) are chosen to participate
in an annual walking contest called "The
Long Walk". Each walker must maintain a
constant speed of no less than four miles
an hour or risk being shot by soldiers
monitoring the
event.
|
Roadwork
|
1981
|
Horror
|
307pp
|
Third book published by
Stephen King
under the
pseudonym Richard
Bachman
|
The story takes place
in an unnamed city in the 1970s. Barton
George Dawes, grieving over the death of
his son and the disintegration of his
marriage, is driven off the deep end when
he finds that both his home and his
business are going to be condemned and
demolished to make way for the
construction of a new interstate
highway.
|
The Running
Man
|
1982
|
Horror,
science-fiction
|
214pp
|
Fourth book published
by Stephen King under the pseudonym
Richard
Bachman
|
Ben Richards needs
money to get medicine for his gravely ill
daughter Cathy. Not wanting his wife
Sheila to continue prostitution to pay
the bills, Richards turns to the Games
Federation. After rigorous testing, both
physical and mental, Richards is selected
for the most popular game, The Running
Man.
|
Thinner
|
1984
|
Horror
|
309pp
|
Fifth book published by
Stephen King
under the
pseudonym Richard
Bachman
|
An
obese lawyer named William "Billy"
Halleck who has just been through an
agonizing court case in which he was
charged with vehicular manslaughter after
receiving a handjob from his wife Heidi
while driving, causing him to run over an
old woman who was part of a group of
traveling Gypsies. Halleck is acquitted
thanks to the judge, who happens to be a
close friend of Billy's. As Halleck
leaves the courthouse, the old woman's
ancient father strokes his cheeks and
whispers one word to him:
"Thinner."
|
The
Regulators
|
1996
|
Horror
|
512pp
|
Sixth book published by
Stephen King under the pseudonym
Richard
Bachman
|
An
evil creature called Tak uses the
imagination of an autistic boy to shift a
residential street in small-town Ohio
into a world so bizarre and brutal that
only a child could think it
up.
|
Blaze
|
2007
|
Horror
|
pp
|
Seventh book published
by Stephen King under the pseudonym
Richard
Bachman
|
Once upon a time, a
fellow named Richard Bachman wrote
Blaze
on an
Olivetti typewriter, then turned the
machine over to Stephen King, who used it
to write Carrie
. Bachman
died in 1985 ("cancer of the pseudonym"),
but this last gripping Bachman novel
resurfaced after being hidden away for
decades -- an unforgettable crime story
tinged with sadness and
suspense.
Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.,
was always a small-time delinquent. None
too bright either, thanks to the beatings
he got as a kid. Then Blaze met George
Rackley, a seasoned pro with a hundred
cons and one big idea. The kidnapping
should go off without a hitch, with
George as the brains behind their
dangerous scheme. But there's only one
problem: by the time the deal goes down,
Blaze's partner in crime is dead. Or is
he?
Includes a previously
uncollected story, "Memory" -- the
riveting opening to Stephen King's new
Scribner hardcover novel,
Duma
Key.
|
Origin of Richard
Bachman
At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view
among publishers was such that an author was limited to a book
every year at the utmost; any more, it was felt, was not
acceptable to the public. King therefore wanted to write under
another name in order to double his production. He convinced
his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a
pseudonym. The originally selected pseudonym was Gus Pillsbury
(King's maternal grandfather); but at the last moment King
changed it to "Richard Bachman" in tribute to crime author
Donald E. Westlake's long-running pseudonym Richard Stark. The
name Stark was used in King's novel The Dark Half, a
novel about an author with a pseudonym. The surname was in
honour of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King
was listening to at the time.[1]
Identification that Bachman was
King
King dedicated Bachman's early books — Rage
(1977), The Long Walk (1979), Road Work (1981),
and The Running Man (1982) — to people close to him, and
worked in obscure references to his own identity. These clues,
not to mention the similarity between the two authors' literary
styles, aroused the suspicions of horror fans and retailers.
King steadfastly denied any connection to Bachman and, to throw
fans off the trail, dedicated Bachman's 1984 novel
Thinner to "Claudia Inez Bachman", supposedly Bachman's
wife. There was also a phony author photo of Bachman on the
dustjacket, credited to Claudia. He also has one of the
characters describe how the strange happenings are like a
"Stephen King" novel in the book.
Thinner was Bachman's first title to be published in
hardback. It sold 28,000 copies before it became widely known
that the author was really Stephen King, whereupon sales went
up tenfold. The link became undeniable when a persistent
bookstore clerk couldn't believe that Bachman and King were not
one and the same, and eventually located publisher's records at
the Library of Congress naming King as the author of one of
Bachman's novels. This led to a press release heralding
Bachman's "death" — supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym, a
rare form of schizonomia". At the time of the announcement in
1985, King was working on Misery, which he had planned
to release as a Bachman book.
Bachman continues
The Bachman story didn't end with Thinner. In 1996,
Bachman's The Regulators came out, with the publishers
claiming the book's manuscript was found among Bachman's
leftover papers by his widow. Still, it was obvious from the
book's packaging and marketing campaign that it was really
written by King. There was a picture of a young King on the
inside back cover, and the "also by this author" page listed
not only works Bachman was credited with writing, but also
works he wrote "as Stephen King". The Regulators was
released the same day as the King novel Desperation, and
the two novels featured many of the same characters; the two
book covers were designed to be placed together to form a
single picture.
Around the time of The Regulators' release, King said
that there may be another Bachman novel left to be "found".
Recently, King has stated that another Bachman book had been
found, with the announcement soon afterwards that his
unpublished novel Blaze was being rewritten, edited, and
updated for a possible release. In February 2007 he confirmed
that Scribner would be publishing this book in June 2007.
King has taken full ownership of the Bachman name on
numerous occasions, as with the republication of the first four
Bachman titles as The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by
Stephen King in 1985. The introduction, titled "Why I Was
Bachman", details the whole Bachman/King story.
King used the "relationship" between him and Bachman as a
concept in his 1989 book The Dark Half, a story in which
a writer's darker pseudonym takes on a life of its own. King
dedicated The Dark Half to "the deceased Richard
Bachman". Originally there were plans to make the book a
collaboration between the two, although this was later
scrapped.
Richard Bachman appeared in King's Dark Tower series,
albeit indirectly. In the fifth book, Wolves of the
Calla, the sinister children's book Charlie the Choo
Choo is revealed to be written by "Claudia y Inez Bachman".
The spelling discrepancy of the added 'y' was later explained
as a deus ex machina on the part of "The White" (a force of
good throughout King's Tower series) to bring the total
number of letters in her name to nineteen, a number prominent
in King's series.
The original editions of the first four Bachman books are
now among the world's most sought after original paperback
novels, with resale prices in the hundreds of dollars.
In 1987, Bachman's The Running Man inspired the
Arnold Schwarzenegger film of the same name.
Regarding The Running Man being strikingly similar to
"The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley,written so much
earlier, Martin Olson says: "Bob Sheckley told me he was
surprised at Running Man because it was so close to The Prize
of Peril. Sheckley said King was apparently a fan of his, so I
asked Bob how he handled it. He said he wrote out a list of all
the similarities between the two stories and then called King
on the phone. He said King was surprised and said he didn't
remember reading The Prize of Peril. Sheckley really had
nowhere to go after that and the conversation was over.
Sheckley didn't characterize King as a thief or as not a nice
guy, but he told me King probably read it and forgot about it,
and then was too embarrassed because he'd accidentally stolen
from Sheckley, a writer he liked... But regardless of whether
King read The Prize of Peril and forgot or whatever, Sheckley
wasn't resentful of King and just shrugged it off.
After the Columbine High School massacre, King announced
that he would allow Rage
to go out of print, fearing that it might inspire similar
tragedies. Bachman's other novels are now available in separate
volumes, although
Rage is available in The Bachman Books, which
is still in print in the United Kingdom.
Other known pseudonyms of Stephen
King
King wrote a short story, "The Fifth Quarter", under the
pseudonym John Swithen; it was reprinted in King's collection
Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993 under his own
name.
References
- King, Stephen. Stephen King FAQ:
"Why did you write books as Richard Bachman?".
StephenKing.com. Retrieved on December 13, 2006.
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