WORST FEAR

Stephen King, 77, Reveals Dementia Fears

There’s at least one thing that scares the King of Horror.

Acclaimed author Stephen King, who has written 70 books including Carrie, The Shining, It, and Misery, and whose work has spawned countless film and television adaptations, hasn’t shown much sign of slowing down in his later years.

Now 77, King still produces prolifically, having published six books since 2021. Undoubtedly, his inventive brain is his greatest asset, which likely explains the fear he has around developing dementia, which he shared in a recent interview with The Times of London.

Speaking to Will Pavia about a story he wrote about the end of the world, King explained that the story’s central conceit is that as “one man’s life comes to an end, the entire world reaches its full stop.”

“There’s a word for that and I can’t remember what it is,” King told Pavia. “It is the idea that we all contain the world and the world disappears when we disappear. There’s a word for that and I can’t f------ remember what it is.”

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Referencing Terry Pratchett, the English author who died in 2015 and who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2007, Pavia noted that someone had once said of his diagnosis that “the mind that created the Discworld in 41 novels was foundering and with it an entire magical universe was coming to an end.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” King responded. “I’m afraid of that happening to me and every time that I can’t remember a word or something, I think, ‘This is the start.’”

When asked whether he plans to continue writing, King said, “I have at least one more book that I would like to write, and beyond that, man, I’m not going to say… I’d like to go out where people say, ‘I’d like another one.’”

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He also suggested he might continue writing for his own enjoyment, even if the work he produced was not published, though he found the question of whether someone might publish those works in the future to be “creepy.”

King’s next book, a children’s book that is a retelling of Hansel & Gretel, is slated for release on Sept. 2. Four film adaptations of King’s work are in theaters this year: The Monkey, The Long Walk, The Life of Chuck and The Running Man, and his novel The Institute was turned into a TV show for MGM+ and released last month.

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