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It’s about a mysterious cowboy hero who pursues a “man in black” across a desert reminiscent of New Mexico or Utah. Take “The Gunslinger,” from 1982, which is one of King’s best novels. It might be more accurate to see him as the main channel through which the entire mid-century genre universe flows into the present. “Horror,” in short, is far too narrow a term for what King does. Often, too, some elements of the Western, or of Elmore Leonard-esque crime fiction, are mixed in.

If there were a Stephen King Plot Generator somewhere out there on the Web, it would work, most of the time, by mashing up ideas from all of what used to be called speculative fiction-including sci-fi, horror, fantasy, historical (and alternate-history) fiction, superhero comic books, post-apocalyptic tales, and so on-before dropping the results into small-town Maine. “Doctor Sleep” underscores an interesting fact about King: he’s not really, or not exclusively, a horror writer. In a chatty author’s note, King more or less admits that he didn’t try to make “Doctor Sleep” as terrifying as “The Shining”: “Nothing can live up to the memory of a good scare,” he writes, “especially if administered to one who is young and impressionable.” Instead, he says, he set out to tell “a kick-ass story.” He succeeded. In place of its predecessor’s unsettling familial violence, “Doctor Sleep” has thrilling gunfights, absurd satanic rituals, and wildly entertaining telepathic showdowns. A grownup Dan Torrance-the little boy from “The Shining”-must help a young girl fight off these vampires, who have sensed her psychic abilities from afar and have chosen her as their meal of the week.

It’s about a wandering band of psychic vampires who stalk clairvoyant children, kill them, and then inhale their “steam,” or psychic energy, for food.

But “Doctor Sleep,” which feels less like a sequel and more like a spinoff, is unapologetically fun, free-wheeling, and bizarre.

“The Shining” is introspective, austere, and unsettlingly plausible, which is why it comes to mind whenever you visit a creepy hotel, play croquet, or see an angry dad with his kid. I thought of that experience last week while reading “Doctor Sleep,” Stephen King’s new sequel to “The Shining.” King’s new novel might have come straight out of that basement library.