Stephen Uncollected, Unpublished is the most comprehensive review of the Stephen King works you've never read, including coverage of nearly one hundred unpublished and uncollected works of fiction--novels, short stories, screenplays, and poems!Best of all, it features the first book publication of two lost works written by King, including an entire chapter from King's unpublished 1970 novel Sword in the Darkness that has never been published anywhere in the world!
I wish I could give 4, or even 5 stars, because so much work obviously went into this book. I absolutely loved finding the few titles I had not only not read, but never even knew existed. I was excited, but also a little upset. I had no idea I had missed so many! How is that possible?! I digress...
Much like the author! Wood goes on and on about every title, which would be okay with me, the ultimate King stalker fan, but then he goes on to repeat. And repeat. And repeat. It's as if Wood thought we would read only a chapter here and there, not the book cover to cover. I don't need a re-cap every time a piece of work is mentioned. The re-caps felt a lot like "Last week on..." that you fast forward through when you are binge watching on Netflix.
Five stars for research, one star for the obvious lack of editing and re-writing, for an average of three.
This is an amazing and exhaustive non-fiction guide to the works by Stephen King which have not been collected, and those known pieces that have not been published. There are a LOT! This book is almost 500 pages. Stephen King has so many well-known books and short stories that it is kind of a shock how many released stories that have never been featured in his collections exist, and still more how many stories, novels, and screenplays have been finished but never released or never finished. This was really well researched, with minimal editorializing. Sometimes, I didn't agree with the author's opinions on some of the work, but that was fine because those kind of opinions were kept to a scholarly minimum.
A fine resource for those curious about the uncollected or unreleased work of Stephen King, ranging from his high school newspaper days (and even before!) to about 2010. Highly recommended.
It is clear that Rocky Wood is a master of Stephen King. He knows more about the published work and the connection between them than probably anyone else.
My issue here is that this book doesn't know what it wants to be. It is presented a narrative description of each of the unpublished or uncollected works of King. Each chapter covers one work detailing where it is available, and what is is about. These descriptions of the plot are difficult to read. I could never place a finger on it, but the descriptions are boring and confusing. Information is repeated frequently and the text does not flow. For instance, ever time a tale is part of the Castle Rock mythos, Wood list all the other works that are in the mythos...every time. That means that that paragraph is in the book probably twenty times. I feel the material would have been better presented in a format similar to the "Stephen King Encyclopia" using entries for People and Places along with brief plot descriptions.
The chapter from "Sword in the Darkness" is a highlight but that is also one of the most confusing summaries of the book.
The other flaw with this book is Cemetery Dance's ebook. They should pull this ebook and try again. Words are misspelled, sections are repeated, chapters are repeated it is a mess.
Woods research is impressive and evident, too bad his writing style and the eBook translation ruined it.
Un ottimo testo da consultazione secondo me, ma non da leggere come un vero e proprio libro. Gli elenchi e le liste molto lunghe a lungo andare smorzano il ritmo e l'entusiasmo per la lettura. E' comunque un libro particolare, ricco di dettagli su ogni cosa che King abbia mai scritto, e vengono trattate soprattutto quelle opere conosciute solo a chi gli è più vicino. Sconsiglio la lettura a chi non abbia letto tutti i libri dello Zio, in quanto ci sono molti spoiler, soprattutto sulla fine di molti dei suoi personaggi più amati. Penso che lo utilizzerò di più affiancandolo ai testi citati ogni volta che ne avrò l'occasione.
Has interesting information, but is very redundant in places. At least one part of the book is riddled with typos. Maybe the updated version is cleaner.
An exhaustive and interesting accounting King’s work. Wood seems to know more than anyone, other than King, about his work. This had duplicate and repetitive chapters which was annoying.
Fans of Stephen King know that his story collections (Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, etc.) aren't comprehensive and a number of his shorter works have never been published outside of magazines or anthologies. This is certainly a topic that deserves some coverage. Unfortunately the amount of coverage it deserves is a Wikipedia page, not a full blown book. Roughly half the entries in here aren't stories but rather screenplays, and while a few of those (King's adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes, frex) have never been produced, most of them have and can easily be purchased on DVD or Blu-ray. Do the screenplays for Creepshow or The Stand really deserve a place here? Or what about "stories" that were excerpts from soon-to-be-published novels? Sure, some of the tweaks King later made are interesting, but I don't see much point in knowing that one chapter of IT appeared in a magazine as a promotion for the novel.
Overall this is a book for OCD King fans and Wikipedia editors searching for reliable sources.
A treasure trove of material written at various times in King's life. His Constant Readers will recognize some short stories which have been changed or made into novels. There are pieces he wrote while only a teen. A must for any SK fan.