Three of his six novels were adapted into major films: The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

[3] He developed a rheumatic heart condition,[9] so his parents placed him in the Stanford Children's Convalescent home[10][11][12] (and given heavy doses of phenobarbital), for a year, during which time they returned to Kentucky, where the Tevis family had been given an early land grant in Madison County.

"The Big Hustle," his pool hall story for Collier's (August 5, 1955), was illustrated by Denver Gillen.

It was followed by short stories in The American Magazine, Bluebook, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Galaxy Science Fiction, Playboy, Redbook and The Saturday Evening Post.

One of the many other things it is, in Tevis's own words, is "a very disguised autobiography," the tale of his removal as a child from San Francisco, "the city of light," to rural Kentucky, and of the childhood illness that long confined him to bed, leaving him, once recovered, weak, fragile, and apart.

It is, finally, one of the most heartbreaking books I know, a threnody on great ambition and terrible failure, and an evocation of man's absolute, unabridgeable aloneness.

[20]During his time teaching at Ohio University, Tevis became aware that the level of literacy among students was falling at an alarming rate.

That observation gave him the idea for Mockingbird (1980), set in a grim and decaying New York City in the 25th century.

During one of his last televised interviews, he revealed that PBS once planned a production of Mockingbird as a follow-up to their 1979 film of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.

Tevis also wrote The Steps of the Sun (1983), The Queen's Gambit (1983), and The Color of Money (1984), a sequel to The Hustler.

[22] Tevis was a frequent smoker, gambler and alcoholic, and his works often included these vices as central themes.

[23] Tevis took some of the money he earned from the movie rights to The Hustler and moved his family to Mexico, where he later claimed that he "stayed drunk for eight months.

[17] Tevis spent his last years in New York City as a full-time writer,[22] where he died of lung cancer in 1984.