One of the fringe benefits of co-hosting The Kingcast on FANGORIA’s Podcast Network is that from time to time, I get to stumble upon some big Stephen King news. If you haven’t listened to it yet, well… First of all, shame on you. Go right to your podcatcher of choice and subscribe to begin your atonement. But the show has a pretty fun structure where a special guest comes on for every episode and talks about their favorite King thing, book, movie, or sometimes both.
Our latest episode, out now, welcomes noted comic book writer and genre novelist Benjamin Percy (The Dead Lands, The Wilding, and Red Moon to name a few) onto the show to talk about Cycle of the Werewolf and Silver Bullet as well as his newest project, which is a pretty cool-sounding experiment called “The End Times.”
“The End Times” is the name of a post-apocalyptic newspaper and is being written as such, with a new edition coming out every month starting this November and going into late 2026.
“The point of this is not that the world is ending,” Percy revealed on The Kingcast. “The world has ended and it’s rebuilding.”
The editor-in-chief of “The End Times” is a woman who stumbles across a printing press a decade after a virus killed all but a tiny sliver of humanity and decides that survivors still need the news.
“She starts posting (the newspaper) in the central square,” he continues, “and then it gains more and more popularity and it starts to become a situation that I describe as a blend of Station Eleven and Our Town as different people’s voices start to fill the paper.”
One of those voices will be written by Stephen King himself, which Percy revealed on The Kingcast.
“I’m not going to give too much away, but let’s just say some of what I already have in my inbox involves scarecrows with large button eyes and dead rats and bodies dangling from the rafters of barns. You know, the Stephen King special.”
King will be writing not as himself, but as a fictional character living in this post-apocalyptic world. This isn’t the first time King has written under a different name and Percy slyly hinted that we might be seeing some “Bachman in the byline” for King’s contributions.
Two versions of “The End Times” were made available to pre-order by Bad Hand Books. One is an actual, physical newspaper printing that would be delivered to your mailbox once a month. That is sadly already sold out as they only offered a limited run of 500 subscriptions, but the digital version can be pre-ordered for $15.
This will still be in newspaper format, it’ll just be delivered to your inbox instead of your mailbox. Those who subscribe to the digital version of “The End Times” will get a 15% discount on the eventual physical release that compiles all 12 months of newspaper releases sometime after “The End Times” finishes its run.
King is no stranger to playful releases, having released The Green Mile in six small novellas month to month in 1996. He was also an early adopter of digital reading, most notably releasing the original short story Ur exclusively on the then brand new Kindle.
As an added bit of good karma, Percy and Bad Hand Books will donate $1 per subscription over the initial 500 subscribers to the ACLU, so your money is doing some good while you read about the goings on in this fictional (for now) apocalyptic society.
If you want to know more, give a listen to Percy’s appearance on The Kingcast hosted by yours truly and pop culture journalist Anthony Breznican, available wherever you get your podcasts via The FANGORIA Podcast Network.
