Beachworld

Short story by Stephen King

"Beachworld"
Short story by Stephen King
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror, Science fiction, Short story
Publication
Published in	Weird Tales (1st release), Skeleton Crew
Publication type	Magazine
Media type	Print (Periodical)
Publication date	1984

Beachworld is a short science fiction story by Stephen King, first published in Weird Tales in 1984, and collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew.^[1]

Plot summary

8,000 years in the future, two crewmembers, Rand and Shapiro, survive the crash-landing of their spacecraft on an uncharted planet made up entirely of sand. Rand becomes hypnotized by the endless dunes and refuses to either move from the very spot he's standing on or drink water. Shapiro also feels drawn to the dunes but, unlike Rand, finds this hypnosis frightening and is relieved to go inside their shipwreck, where the dunes are out of sight. At one point he sees, or imagines, how the unnamed world once hosted civilized intelligent life, but over time the cities, bodies of water, and ultimately everything on the planet was overtaken and buried by the sand.

When another spacecraft arrives in response to Shapiro's distress beacon, the crew initially treat his account with skepticism. Rand fights them off, drawing strength from his eroded sanity. The captain sends out an android to force Rand to leave, but it quickly breaks down as sand gets into it. The sand also rises up to stop a tranquilizer dart a crewman fires at Rand. As the black glass burned into the sand by the ship's thrusters on landing steadily crumbles, the captain finally heeds Shapiro's demands to leave. The ship lifts off, narrowly managing to reach escape velocity as a giant hand-shaped wave of sand tries to bring it down. Rand stares up at the ship as it disappears and begins to pile handfuls of sand into his mouth.

Adaptations

A live action version of Beachworld was released in 2015.

A Dollar Baby version of Beachworld from OneNinth & Pointed Pictures premiered online in 2021 as part of the Stephen King Rules Dollar Baby Film Festival.^[2]

References

^ Wiater, etc; Stanley Wiater; Christopher Golden; Hank Wagner (2006). The Complete Stephen King Universe: A Guide to the Worlds of Stephen King. Macmillan. p. 479. ISBN 0-312-32490-1.
^ Haysom, Sam (8 April 2021). "25 Stephen King short films are being shown at this virtual festival. Some have never been released". Mashable. Retrieved 2021-04-27.

External links

Beachworld title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

The Mist
"Here There Be Tygers"
"The Monkey"
"Cain Rose Up"
"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut"
"The Jaunt"
"The Wedding Gig"
"Paranoid: A Chant"
"The Raft"
"Word Processor of the Gods"
"The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands"
"Beachworld"
"The Reaper's Image"
"Nona"
"For Owen"
"Survivor Type"
"Uncle Otto's Truck"
"Morning Deliveries (Milkman No. 1)"
"Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman No. 2)"
"Gramma"
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet
"The Reach"

Stephen King

Novels

Carrie (1974)
'Salem's Lot (1975)
The Shining (1977)
The Stand (1978)
The Dead Zone (1979)
Firestarter (1980)
Cujo (1981)
Christine (1983)
Pet Sematary (1983)
Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)
The Talisman (1984)
It (1986)
The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)
Misery (1987)
The Tommyknockers (1987)
The Dark Half (1989)
Needful Things (1991)
Gerald's Game (1992)
Dolores Claiborne (1992)
Insomnia (1994)
Rose Madder (1995)
The Green Mile (1996)
Desperation (1996)
Bag of Bones (1998)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)
The Plant (2000; unfinished)
Dreamcatcher (2001)
Black House (2001)
From a Buick 8 (2002)
The Colorado Kid (2005)
Cell (2006)
Lisey's Story (2006)
Duma Key (2008)
Under the Dome (2009)
11/22/63 (2011)
Joyland (2013)
Doctor Sleep (2013)
Mr. Mercedes (2014)
Revival (2014)
Finders Keepers (2015)
End of Watch (2016)
Gwendy's Button Box (2017)
Sleeping Beauties (2017)
The Outsider (2018)
Elevation (2018)
The Institute (2019)
Later (2021)
Billy Summers (2021)
Gwendy's Final Task (2022)
Fairy Tale (2022)
Holly (2023)

The Dark Tower series	The Gunslinger (1982) The Drawing of the Three (1987) The Waste Lands (1991) Wizard and Glass (1997) Wolves of the Calla (2003) Song of Susannah (2004) The Dark Tower (2004) The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)
Richard Bachman novels	Rage (1977) The Long Walk (1979) Roadwork (1981) The Running Man (1982) Thinner (1984) The Bachman Books (1985) The Regulators (1996) Blaze (2007)