The Dark Tower is a series of eight novels, one novella, and a children's book written by American author Stephen King.

The series was chiefly inspired by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, the full text of which was included in the final volume's appendix.

In the preface to the revised 2003 edition of The Gunslinger, King also identifies The Lord of the Rings, Arthurian legend, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as inspirations.

King's style of location names in the series, such as Mid-World, and his development of a unique language (High Speech), are also influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien's work.

Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical.

Mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion.

The worlds of The Dark Tower are in part composed of locations, characters, events and other various elements from many of King's novels and short stories.

In addition, King uses the term Ka, which is the approximate equivalent of destiny, or fate, in the fictional language High Speech (and similarly, Ka-tet, a group of people bound together by fate/destiny).

The term also appears in King's short story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats", in which Ted describes its meaning to Bobby.

While the series was declared finished with the publication of the seventh volume in 2004, Stephen King described in an interview in March 2009 an idea for a new short story he'd recently had: "And then I thought, 'Well, why don't I find three more like this and do a book that would be almost like modern fairy tales?'

The book, titled The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole, was announced on Stephen King's official site on March 10, 2011, and was published on April 24, 2012.

The illustrators who worked on each book are: Bill Sheehan of The Washington Post called the series "a humane, visionary epic and a true magnum opus" that stands as an "imposing example of pure storytelling," "filled with brilliantly rendered set pieces... cataclysmic encounters and moments of desolating tragedy.

"[16] Michael Berry of the San Francisco Chronicle, however, called the series' early installments "highfalutin hodgepodge" but the ending "a valediction" that "more than delivers on what has been promised.

December 7, 2009 saw the release of a spin-off online game titled Discordia,[19] available to play free of charge on the official Stephen King website.

The game is a continuation of the original Dark Tower story, following the war between the Tet Corporation and Sombra/NCP in New York, and it has been supervised by both Stephen King and Robin Furth.

From the website: "Exploring the behind-the-scenes conflict between the two companies, Discordia introduces long-time Dark Tower fans to new characters and numerous mechanical/magical items developed by Mid-World's Old Ones.

[20] The film is directed by Nikolaj Arcel,[21] and stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, cast respectively as Roland Deschain and Walter O'Dim.

[28] In a 2017 interview with Collider, Stephen King expressed hope for a sequel film in addition to the upcoming television series, suggesting that it should be R-rated, with Roland wearing a hat, and that it would include the "lobstrosities" from The Drawing of the Three.

[29] In an interview with ComingSoon.net, Nikolaj Arcel confirmed that The Drawing of the Three would form the basis for the sequel, and that yet-to-be-cast actors who will play Eddie and Susannah Dean would appear alongside Elba, McConaughey, Taylor, and Haley reprising their roles as Roland, Walter, Jake and Sayre respectively.

[30] In February 2018, Amazon bought the rights to The Dark Tower books for a series adaptation, though it was not made clear at first if anyone from the film would be involved.

[31] It was later confirmed that the series would serve as a reboot, with Sam Strike and Jasper Pääkkönen being cast as Roland Deschain and The Man in Black, respectively.

[34] In December 2022, director Mike Flanagan announced that he had acquired the rights to develop a television series based on the books and has plans for a multi-season release.

The audio book in English published by Hodder & Stoughton features voices of George Guidall and Frank Muller[37] and has neither music nor sound effects.

George Guidall was also called upon to re-record The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, the first book in the series, in 2003, as the author made significant changes to that story to better match what came later.