SOURCE: "Stephen King: Surviving the Ride," in Fantasy Review, January, 1986, pp. 6-8.

In the following essay, Barker discusses King's success with, and commitment to, the horror genre.

First, a confession: I have no thesis. I come to these pages without an overview to propound; only with a substantial enthusiasm for the work of Stephen King and a potpourri of thoughts on fear, fiction, dreams and geographies which may bear some tenuous relation to each other and to King's fiction.

Theoretical thinking was never a great passion of mine, but ghost-trains are. And it's with a ghost-train I begin.

It's called—ambitiously enough—L'Apocalypse. To judge from the size of the exterior, the ride it houses is an epic; the vast, three-tiered facade dwarfs the punks who mill around outside, staring up with a mixture of trepidation and appetite at the hoardings, and wondering if they have the nerve...