''Different Seasons'' (1982) is a collection of four

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

s with a more dramatic bent, rather than the

horror fiction Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J ...

for which King is famous.The New York Times
/ref> The four novellas are tied together via subtleties that relate to each of the four

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

s. The collection is notable for having nearly all of its novellas turned into

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

films, one of which, ''

The Shawshank Redemption ''The Shawshank Redemption'' is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella ''Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption''. It tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), w ...

'', was nominated for the 1994

Academy Award for Best Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category ...

Novellas

Title

At the ending of the book, there is also a brief afterword, which King wrote on January 4, 1982. In it, he explains why he had not previously submitted the novellas (each written at a different time) for publication. Early in his career, his agents and editors expressed concern that he would be "written off" as someone who only wrote horror. However, his horror novels turned out to be quite popular and made him much in demand as a novelist. Conversely, the novellas, which did not deal (primarily) with the supernatural, were very difficult to publish as there was not a mass market for "straight" fiction stories in the 25,000- to 35,000-word format. Thus, King and his editor conceived the idea of publishing the novellas together as "something different", hence the title of the book.

References

1982 short story collections American short story collections Books with cover art by Kinuko Y. Craft Short story collections by Stephen King Viking Press books {{1980s-story-collection-stub

Novellas

Title

See also

References