Original artwork, not a still
The Gunslinger ‧ 1982
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
One plain sentence sets up a whole saga as a chase: one man fleeing, one man following, nothing explained. The sentence has the dust and inevitability of a Western, and it launched a quest that runs through seven more books. Fans treat it as the series' calling card, and the way it frames everything as pursuit is why the story can wander through worlds and still feel like one line.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for The GunslingerShow the scene
The opening sentence of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, first book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It began as the first line of a novella, "The Gunslinger", printed in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in October 1978. King published four more related stories in the same magazine, and in 1982 Donald M. Grant collected all five as a novel, with the novella as its first chapter, slightly revised. The gunslinger of the sentence is Roland Deschain, and the book follows his pursuit of the man in black across the desert.
Sources (3)
- Wikiquote: The Dark Tower (series)Vol. I, The Gunslinger, opening textReference checked
- Wikipedia: The Gunslinger (novella)leadReference checked
- Wikipedia: The Dark Tower: The Gunslingerlead, infobox and plot summaryReference checked
Context reviewed
