Happy Birthday! Stephen King Turns 69 Years Old Today

Stephen King, one of the best-known and best-selling living authors in the English language, turns 69 years old today.

King’s works have inspired over fifty feature film adaptations, more than 25 TV shows, TV movies, or miniseries, and dozens of comics, most recently in the form of a number of miniseries set in the worlds of his series The Dark Tower and his novel The Stand, both of which came from Marvel Comics.

King’s career started in the early ’70s, when he used to submit short stories to magazines like Cavalier. In 1974, his first novel — Carrie — was published, and by 1977, that book had been adapted into a hit movie, and King was a best-seller twice over (for Carrie and his second novel, Salem’s Lot) and was nearing completion of his third novel, The Shining.

The Shining would also go on to be a huge success in Hollywood, and after the back to back successes of those books and films, King could more or less write his own ticket. Some critics have argued that King could stand to have an editor with a stronger hand, a criticism that started in 1978 with the publication of The Stand, one of the longest fiction novels to make its way to the best-seller list that decade — although that 823-page first printing had nothing on the over 1,100-page “complete and uncut” edition released in 1990.

Soon, King had put together a string of hit novels that made him a household name — for their film and TV adaptations as much as for the books themselves. Projects like Cujo, Pet Sematary, Stand By Me, Firestarter, Children of the Corn and The Dead Zone had already been made by the end of the ’80s. While The Shining remains a modern horror classic and Stand By Me a fan-favorite, it wasn’t really until the ’90s that his work started to earn broad critical success in Hollywood with The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Misery.

More recently, King adaptations have been having a harder time at the box office, with Children of the Corn sequels and Carrie remakes bombing, but high-profile adaptations of It (previously adapted as a TV miniseries) and The Dark Tower (widely regarded as King’s magnum opus) are expected to reverse that fortune. Meanwhile, TV series like Under the Dome and 11/17/63 have confirmed that flops like Cell aren’t all he’s got going on at present.

After becoming a household name, King’s stock as a writer rose, as well. While he’s always done populist writing that tends not to ingrtiate authors with critics, the breadth of his oeuvre as well as things like experimenting in comics and webcomics, serializing novels, and releasing essays as Kindle Singles have helped keep him in the public eye and turned more criitcs to his side all the time.

In addition to the upcoming film adaptations (and Blu-ray reissues of Cat’s Eye, Salem’s Lot and It, out today!), King is currently working on End of Watch, the third part of a trilogy that started with Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers.

In addition to his writing and film work, King is known for his political activism and charitable contributions — he gives about $4 million to public libraries every year.