Nowadays, it’s easy to see Stephen King’s name and have a conceived notion of his legacy. He remains well into old age one of the most prolific authors of his generation, producing masterpieces that dig under people’s skin and recontextualizes fears we’ve long taken for granted. In this Short Stop series, I will explore a period before he was the icon we know and love. Even with a handful of bestsellers to his name, his status had yet to cement. That is why I’ve chosen to take a look at his first story collection, “Night Shift,” and hopefully get a glimpse into the writer taking shape, before his style was cemented into a cultural touchstone. Was he always the master of horror, or was there a simpler time when he was as messy and weird as the rest of us? All it takes is turning the page to find out.
Just when “Night Shift” looked like it was going to settle in one lane, it quickly takes a turn. The first two entries were more methodical, relying on the slow burn where details slowly unraveled and tied into this richer psychology of the protagonists. That isn’t to say that King lacks reveals throughout “Night Surf,” but he approached them with a less precious hand. Everything in this story feels more designed for the immediate, a visceral response to something that happened on another page of another book that the reader doesn’t know. The disorientation does a good job of elevating this story from its simple core into something that works as an atmospheric piece.
Before digging into the larger plot, there’s a need to focus on the central catalyst. Attitudes were likely different in 1969 when this story was published by Ubris, but it’s hard not to read into how the A6 virus can be read as offensive. As a work of fiction, it’s a perfectly fine setup in which some deadly disease has come from Southeast Asia. There’s something inherently scary about an uncontrollable foe coming from afar to attack America. However, it’s tough not to read from a more contemporary lens at this point, especially following the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019 that left millions dead from a contagious airborne virus. In short, many believe that it originated in Wuhan, China, before spreading globally.
Outside of the major health scare, there is nothing inherently wrong with a pandemic originating from an Asian country. However, as an American who was forced to hear a president spout off Anti-Chinese sentiments like “China virus,” it’s hard not to consider that maybe, from the perspective of The United States, that having these pandemic stories originate in “Southeastern Asia” might be in itself a bit too reliant on outdated stereotypes. It makes sense given that World War II brought with it Anti-Japanese sentiments, and at the time “Night Surf” was published, The Vietnam War was in full effect. It’s the equivalent of Cold War thrillers using Russians as the bad guys. It’s easy because they are shorthand for “other.”
It should be noted that this isn’t meant to place blame on King for writing a story that could be vaguely racist. Given that “Graveyard Shift” also featured fatphobic language, it is best viewed as a story reflective of a simpler time. Even the realm of horror should give it some lenience as it’s a genre founded on creative oddities, where fear stems from the unknown. With that said, nothing is directly offensive about A6 as used in the story. If anything, it’s one of those brief glimpses into a dystopian world that makes the reader wonder what led the world to end up in such disarray.
Key to the story’s success is the opening line. While King has always been a master at quickly hooking readers, his best work often evokes a full picture in brief spaces. Few lines so far have been as infectious as, “After the guy was dead and the smell of his burning flesh was off the air, we all went back down to the beach.” Before a character is introduced, there’s this alarming sense of dark comedy on display. Who is the guy? Why is he burning? What is going on at the beach? The contrast creates unease while wondering if something is more devious down by the ocean. In just one line, the sense of mortality has taken root and left unease for the survivors, making what’s to come even more unsettling.
This helps to make simple acts like the waves crashing against rocks feel more perverse. King writes these small passages with mystery and intensity so that they feel like an extension of the characters. Nothing about this landscape is wholesome. Even if the act is an isolated event, it still causes the night sky to feel dangerous, where the waves could swallow them whole and leave everybody in a worse state. Most of all, the loss of a character causes everything to feel finite. Given how many casualties have appeared in “Night Shift” so far, it’s easy to believe that the author could very well just leave nobody alive on the last page.
In keeping with other dystopian fiction, there’s an infatuation with radios. The long distance works at conveying information and providing a small sense of connection. What makes this particular introduction so endearing is what details the author has become fixated on. There seems to be a whole world of radio stations worthy of critique, where it’s easy to make fun of somebody for playing Perry Como and reading psalms from the bible. It’s details like this that give “Night Surf” peripheral value, making the audience understand the severity of A6 without truly understanding what it is. Some people turn to music for escape, while others are praying – including all of the mentions of “selah” like in a John Steinbeck novel – in hopes that everything will make sense.
The conversations may not forward the plot in any conventional sense, but it works to create a contemporary context. These are young people, likely in the age range of Ubris’ readers, who enjoy rock music of the day and drinking with friends. This isn’t some archaic take on the world falling apart, but something rooted in the late 60s. They wander around trying to make sense of this newfangled world while realizing the irony that their fates may be worse than death.
Direct conversation about A6 doesn’t happen until the final third of the short story. At that point, it’s revealed to be a deadly flu that has wiped out the entire population. The only reason they are believed to be alive is because of how they reacted to a previous strain of the virus called A2. It allegedly made them immune to the deadlier form, making it easy to navigate a world overrun with the disease.
To return to the question asked in the first line, the guy who was burning was infected with A6. Despite any empathy, they decide to burn his body to help avoid spreading. It’s a gruesome moment and one that makes things all too grim and real. How does one push aside one's own humanity for the sake of maintaining one's own health? This may be an extreme example, but it speaks more to an existential fear, which is likely to break even the toughest constitution. Either they will give in and doom humanity, or slowly desensitize themselves to the violence until they have the mindset of a serial killer.
The beauty of “Night Surf” is how King forces the audience to consider the perspective of people who may be closer to villains. With the A2 incident as a guidepost, it’s suggested that the extinction event happened years ago, and there’s been a need to adapt. It’s unpleasant, but there has to be some way forward. As a story without any real dramatic stakes, it lingers from moment to moment while anticipating that something crucial will happen soon. It doesn’t. The indirectness builds a sense of loneliness and the rebooted nature of these characters into hardened figures who lost their innocence long ago. It’s somber in the best ways possible.
If there’s a turning event, it’s that one of the central characters believes they have contracted A6. Whereas it’s easy to murder strangers, the idea of having to kill one of your remaining companions is even a bigger dilemma. Is surviving worth it if you’re alone, lacking any person to talk to except the radio? Another emotional tool with the A2 story is a connection to a before times, which was more beautiful. They are so far gone from this that it raises the quandary of whether the Earth is worth inhabiting. The story ends with a big reveal of what A6 and how, just before that, they had been enjoying pizza.
For what it lacks in plot twists, “Night Surf” more than makes up for with its powerful sense of character and location. It’s stripping away the methodical and asking the reader how they would survive in such an uncompromising world, where everything changes and leaves no other options but to do things you’d otherwise wouldn’t otherwise do. It’s a loss of innocence that drives this into desperation, and that’s what makes the story work. It feels so rooted in contemporary trends that it avoids feeling too novel. Could it be a metaphor for The Vietnam War? Given that news reporters were said to have been showing the carnage on TV, it’s easy to see the hopelessness being distilled into something more palatable thanks to its fictional fantasy.
Another thing to consider with this story is that Stephen King fans have long pondered if it’s the rough draft for what would become “The Stand.” Given that said novel was published in 1978, a near decade after “Night Surf,” it does feel like a potential proof of concept. The tone and plot may be significantly different, but there’s still a focus on survival that drives both. If nothing else, it feels like a better extension than “Jerusalem’s Lot” did, if just because it feels like a rudimentary cut of a bigger idea, where it’s more about themes than plot that could go in multiple directions. It also doesn’t feel nearly as novel, with a premise so small that it has no time for overcomplicated structure or set-up and execution type of slow burns.
There was also an edited version of the story that appeared in Cavalier in 1974. It should also be noted that “Night Surf” was adapted into a short film by Peter Sullivan in 2002. It was part of a program that King had started called Dollar Babies, which were works that he had written that he would put up for sale to be adapted into unlicensed films. There were limited stipulations, mostly that King would get to see the work at some point. The program would disband in 2023, with the final works coming out the following year. Given that more stories from “Night Shift” will appear in the Dollar Baby category, it will be covered in more detail later on.
For now, it’s exciting to see the versatility of Stephen King on full display. Even if none of the early stories have yet to be personal favorites, they capture a writer eager to play with form and take narrative risks. He’s willing to push into the morbid and find ways to connect it to something recognizable and real. “Night Surf” probably feels recognizable having read it after a global pandemic. Even if the outcomes are much different, the fear and study of mortality were central to worldviews at the time. This isn’t one of the most gotcha stories that he’s written, but it still has a world full of great small details that make it feel like more than a pastiche. This is King’s world, or at least a small corner. It’s always fun to stop by and see what’s happening inside his head.
Coming Up Next: “I Am the Doorway”
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