Welcome back to Inconstant Reader, the feature column that explores all of Stephen King’s books — sort of! At last, I return to to series that inspired this column in the first place. Warning: this palaver contains spoilers, ya ken?
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
With these iconic words, Stephen King launches readers into The Dark Tower, his sprawling magnum opus spanning eight novels written over three decades.
Yet The Gunslinger, the first book in the series, has roots stretching even further back. While its initial publication came in 1982, and it was significantly revised in 2003, King began crafting the story as early as 1970.
The version we know today is a ‘fix-up’ novel, pieced together from five short stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: “The Gunslinger” (October 1978), “The Way Station” (April 1980), “The Oracle and the Mountains” (February 1981), “The Slow Mutants” (July 1981), and “The Gunslinger and the Dark Man” (November 1981).
Back in 2017, my friend Alex suggested we read The Dark Tower in anticipation of the film adaptation. Never ones to make things easy for ourselves, we added in books like ’Salem’s Lot, The Stand, The Talisman, and Hearts in Atlantis to make it a ‘more complete’ reading experience. Little did I know it would spark a reading run of over 80 Stephen King novels, collections, novellas, picture books, and other related works.
The world had moved on
Inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1855), this first volume of King’s saga introduces us to the titular Gunslinger: Roland of Gilead, the last of his kind in a world that is said to have “moved on.” Along his journey, Roland encounters a small desert town ruled by the fanatical preacher Sylvia Pittston, who rallies the townsfolk against him.
Roland then meets Jake Chambers, a young boy who died in his own world and has been transported to Roland’s. As the pair form a bond – and perhaps even a love – Roland still sacrifices Jake to continue his pursuit of the Man in Black. This leads to a fateful encounter in which Roland learns cryptic truths about his quest and the enigmatic Dark Tower.
While the broader series is a complex affair, filled with significant character growth for this collection of dusty travellers, what struck me most on this turn around the wheel was how streamlined it feels. There is, however, a distinctly different tone here compared to King’s later works. In a later edition, King acknowledges this as the work of a young writer, which it undoubtedly is—the gestation of this tale predates the publication of Carrie (1974). Yet what surprised me most about these early vignettes was how much of the world was already established. Admittedly, some of this stems from the 2003 revision, but even at this early stage, King is not merely telling a story—he’s crafting a world.
Resumption
Revisiting The Dark Tower carries a profound weight for Constant Readers. The series’ cyclical nature, intertwined with its broader connections across King’s works and culminating in its poignant conclusion, creates a unique resonance for those returning to Roland’s journey. When Roland lets Jake die, it serves a dual purpose. Most immediately, it signals to the reader that Roland is an anti-hero, as bound to his quest as he is driven by it. Fans might also recognise Jake’s final words before he plunges into darkness: “Go, then. There are other worlds than these.”
“Roland’s story is my Jupiter – a planet that dwarfs all the others,” King reflects in his afterword to Wizard and Glass, the fourth book in the series. “I am coming to understand that Roland’s world (or worlds) actually contains all the others of my making.”
Indeed, for King and his Constant Readers, the Tower is much more than a quest or a destination; it’s a unifying force that ties his broader metafictional universe together. And as oft-repeated refrain reminds us, “All things serve the beam.” If you’ve been following this column, you’ll know that I’ve made multiple references to connections to the Tower throughout The Stand, It and The Mist as just a handful of examples.
Man with a name
The Gunslinger is, nevertheless, a beginning—an episodic series of encounters that serves as a template for everything that follows. Roland, inspired in part by Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, is a figure defined by obsession, sacrifice, and destiny.
His relentless pursuit of the Man in Black, no matter the cost, reveals a character who is both heroic and unsettling. Willing to forsake all in service of his quest, Roland’s actions—such as allowing Jake to die—force readers to question whether they can truly trust the man they’ve been riding across the desert with.
This moral ambiguity makes the book’s final section, simply titled The Gunslinger and the Dark Man, a bold way to conclude what is effectively an introduction. It is not a climactic confrontation or redemption arc but rather a cryptic conversation between two sides of the same coin. Roland learns that the Man in Black is merely a pawn, glimpses the vast nature of the cosmos, has his fortune read using the man’s tarot deck, and, through this exchange, inexplicably ages ten years.
These themes establish the foundation for the epic journey to come—one that expands beyond Roland’s desolate world and into others. The book ends on a beach, where Roland will continue the search for the Dark Tower in the second volume of the series. It is there that he will encounter the future foretold by the Dark Man’s tarot cards: “the sailor,” “the prisoner,” “the lady of shadows,” and “death” (though not for Roland). And at the centre of it all, of course, lies the Tower.
The Waste Lands
In Roland’s world, echoes of our own are scattered like artefacts through the wilderness. The Beatles song “Hey Jude” is repeatedly heard. Brand names are signs of a civilisation similar to our own. Food and sayings are remainders of the world before it moved on. In other words, we get the impression Roland’s All-World was once like our own.
Returning to read this after about eight years, with some forty or more King works under my belt in the interim, was a bit like wandering across the Waste Lands. I can see familiar entities and names, and I know how it ends for them, but they aren’t quite the thing I remember. At least not yet.
Whether you’re beginning this journey for the first time or strapping on the Horn for another tilt at the Tower, The Gunslinger remains a pivotal moment in King’s oeuvre. It not only lays the foundation for the epic saga to come but also highlights King’s willingness to push beyond conventional genre boundaries. By the end of the decade, he had ventured into fantasy multiple times with works like The Talisman and The Eyes of the Dragon, showcasing the breadth of his storytelling ambition—a journey he would continue to expand upon and revisit for decades. After all, ka is a wheel.
When Constant Reader returns, we will begin The Drawing of the Three. You may have no idea what tooter-fish is, but you’ll know a popkin when you see it.
