Are You Stephen King's Number One Fan? Try Our Quiz

You thought you were okay sitting on the toilet until you read Dreamcatcher. You’d happily walk past a storm drain until you read It. You’d go into a creepy boutique shop before checking Needful Things out of the library. You didn’t even mind checking into Room 217 at a hotel until you read The Shining. More than perhaps any other horror novelist, Stephen King has unnerved our collective imagination with twisted creations that stalk our everyday lives. Demonic cars, rabid dogs, alien domes, possessed caretakers, crazed fans… there’s a Stephen King monster for every day of the year, plus one extra on leap years.

With a back catalogue reaching all the way from the 1970s to now, if you stacked every novel Stephen King had ever published in a teetering pile, it would almost certainly topple over and crush you to death.

That’s before we even get to the movie and TV adaptations, which are many and memorable and forever fixed some actors (Tim Curry as Pennywise, Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes…) in those unforgettable roles. The stuff of spilled movie theater popcorn and sleepover nightmares, King’s dark imagination has found its way into great films, not-so-great films and a few extremely middling TV shows.

The question is: are you a casual King reader who doesn’t know his Salem’s Lot from his Pet Semetary, or are you his cock-a-doodie number one fan? Take our quiz to find out.

How Big a Stephen King Fan Are You?

1. Under what pen name did Stephen King publish Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork and The Running Man before it was outed as a pseudonym?

A. Richard Bachman
B. Steve Brown
C. Richard Manuel
D. George Stark

2. To date, which is the only feature film Stephen King has directed?

A. Firestarter
B. The Mist
C. Maximum Overdrive
D. The Lawnmower Man

3. What is the nickname of the strand of weaponised influenza accidentally released in 1978 novel The Stand?

A. Major Barbara
B. Big Jim
C. Captain Trips
D. Colonel Cox

4. A rabid dog terrorises two Castle Rock families in King’s 1981 psychological horror novel Cujo. What breed of dog is Cujo?

A. Rottweiler
B. Saint Bernard
C. Irish Setter
D. Alsatian

5. Which of the following twentieth century horror novels was NOT written by Stephen King?

A. The Stand
B. The Talisman
C. The Mist
D. The Rats

6. King created the towns of Derry, Castle Rock and Jerusalem’s Lot as fictional settings in which real US state?

A. Maine
B. Massachusetts
C. Maryland
D. Mississippi

7. Arnie Cunningham buys and restores an ill-fated vintage US car in 1983 novel Christine. What make and model of car was Christine?

A. Dodge Charger
B. Plymouth Fury
C. Ford Continental
D. Cadillac Calais

8. Which devoutly Christian Stephen King character has a daughter with telekinetic powers?

A. Margaret White
B. Mrs Carmody
C. Annie Wilkes
D. Mother Abigail

9. Which of King’s novel’s has the following first line: “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain”

A. Misery
B. It
C. The Talisman
D. Needful Things

10. Which evil character has appeared in multiple King novels including The Stand, The Eyes Of The Dragon and The Dark Tower series?

A. Henry Bowers
B. Kurt Barlow
C. Randall Flagg
D. Leland Gaunt

11. How was “It” finally killed in the novel of the same name?

A. Heart crushed between two hands
B. Choked on a hamburger
C. Eaten by an alien worm creature that came out of the toiler
D. Sliced in half by an alien dome

12. How did Annie Wilkes die in Misery?

A. A broken baseball bat through her eye
B. Trips over a typewriter and hits her head
C. Bludgeoned to death with her own prosthetic arm
D. Stabbed with a scalpel from a doctor’s medical bag