Stephen King - The Stand: Complete and Uncut

Forget THE DARK TOWER. As far as I'm concerned, Stephen King's best, most epic work is THE STAND. A story that has everything, THE STAND is god versus the devil, survival horror, romance and messsianic metaphor all rolled into one big-ass book, and featuring some of King's most believable, relatable characters. On top of all of that, who can question the greatness of a book that uses a quote from Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland" to set the tone at the beginning?

This book will always hold a special place in my heart. I read it when I was a kid and it inspired, excited, and scared me. It inspired me because Stephen King is such a brilliant artist that I wanted to make an artistic contribution as significant. It excited me because the pacing creates suspense and allows you to fully invest in the characters. It's like being on a epic journey. I love this kind of story. It doesn't feel like a snippit of a life, you actually feel as though you are with the characters as they evolve. The people who take this journey are well thought out, interesting, and show humanity at its best and worst--which is always interesting. You care about what they do and what happens to them even if they are unlikable. The situation brings out people's true nature and King is very articulate in depicting the frailty of the human condition. And it scares me because the idea living through an outbreak like the one depicted here is an all too imaginable possibility. Let's face it, it could happen. There's enough dogmatism in the world to bring it about. You don't even need a laboratory accident. It's frightening. The only thing I didn't like about the book was the ending. (Spoiler Alert) Bringing the "Hand of God" into things is almost always a bad idea. It's a cop out. It's exactly what happens in real life when people can't explain something. They say, "God did it." This is the classic god of the gaps argument and it just doesn't make for interesting drama. Almost anything would have been more satisfying than bringing God into it. The Devil character was interesting. There's no reason why his adversary had to be God. But still, I love, love, love this book. It's an adventure that sure to please most thrill seekers.

Although my opinion of his work has faded like newsprint left out in the Mojave for years and read only by wayward scorpions and rattlesnakes with too much time on their hands, when Stephen King wrote The Stand he was truly the master of horror fiction… though I probably would not classify this particular novel as strictly horror. This epic is a masterful piece of sociological, speculative fiction with strong religious overtones, namely the everlasting battle between God and Evil.

I first read The Stand in the seventies, between counterculture sessions with red- and blurry-eyed friends taking a break to clear the tar from our lungs. After reading it a few times, I loaned my paperback to a friend, which—knowing my friends—guaranteed that I would never see it again. The next year, craving a good read, even one with which I was very familiar, I bought the novel in hard cover. When, in the eighties, King released an extended version of the book, I bought my third copy, which, over the years, I have read no fewer than four times.

Character-driven fiction has long been one of my loves, which explains my fondness for Steinbeck. However, King is (or rather, was) one of those rare authors who could assemble a cast of unforgettable, sympathetic characters and race them through a quagmire of twisted plots to satisfy the most strident plot-driven readers.

Surprisingly, I was very pleased with the mini-series that came out some years ago, possibly because of my fondness for Molly Ringwald, Ray Walston and Gary Sinese. The show followed the novel very closely, far more closely than do most Hollywood productions. I even managed to overlook the fact that the teleplay writer combined two of the main characters from the book into one. Of course, I expected the teleplay writer to remain faithful to the original story, considering that his name was Stephen King.

If you have only a year left before the part of your brain that can process literature rots into something gelatinous and useless, The Stand would be on my short list of recommended reads.

loved the movie..can,t wait to read the book always a big fan of stephen. king he is one of the best writer out there. i have missed he's books.do not have a lot of time to read he's books like any more but will make a temp to read this book.

The first time I read 'The Stand' I found it interesting but not really scary since it was many years after the events in the story had taken place. Kind of like what it feels to watch a horrible disaster on the other side of the world via TV news.

Then Stephen King updated 'The Stand' to the present and it became CREEPY!! His detail in how a bio weapon accidentally (or maybe not accidentally) is spread around the world annihilating a good 90% of the human race is chilling considering how easily something as the common cold is spread so quickly.

The segments telling how some people had survived the spread of 'Captain Trips,' the name given to the pandemic, die as a result of every day accidents that would easily be prevented or treated in a stable society made me think how we humans really live in cocoons of safety compared to how nature REALLY works.

As with most Stephen King novels, 'The Stand' took it's time in introducing the various characters and I felt that at some points it kind of dragged. Read it and then I dare you to skip getting a flue shot or washing your hands again....

Do you ever watch Lost and experience vivid flashbacks from Stephen King's The Stand? That's because, thematically, the show and the novel (and subsequent miniseries... who could forget Rob Lowe in the role of his tragic lifetime?) have similar foundations. The show's writers admit to having been inspired by the book, along with Carrie, and employ multilayered, character-driven plotlines, which keep audiences coming back every week with a fresh thirst for jungle island drama. OK, this is now a review for a TV show.

The Stand is about the end of the world, and everyone dies except for a few people with a resistance to an apocalyptic pandemic. The few survivors wander around in search of others, in defense of themselves, and in avoidance of Satan, who is, of course, unfortunately, a survivor as well. Rich characters (Stephen King's specialty) and intensely scary moments keep hairs raised, and except for a crappy, weird, metaphysically unimaginative ending, the book is a phenomenal page-turner, an airplane-perfect masterpiece.

"The Stand" is truly a giant experience, both in scope of character and in the wieghty implications of its themes. It is clear that Stephen King was framing a biblical story around his modern tale of a post-apocalyptic world of good and evil. In doing so, he created his magnum opus, an accomplishment that has yet to be topped by the master of the macabre. In the literary medium, King is like a modern day Alfred Hitchcock, spinning tales that are both wickedly horrifying and darkly funny.

For those who have worked their way through this big, epic 1200 page saga, or have seen the 1994 miniseries (which was quite good), the story is familiar: a plague is unleashed on the entire human population, wiping out 99% of us in a mere period of weeks. As the epidemic spreads, military forces mobilize and try to contain it by quarantining large populations of people. Society begins to break down. Criminals who were once outcasts begin to rule the streets, led by super villain Randall Flagg, one of the great bad guys of modern fiction. The images that King evokes of desolate New York streets is truly haunting. The entire scope of the story is simply overwhelming and breathtaking to take in. King is able to construct an entirely reimagined world and make us buy into its realism from beginning to end. So much is at stake, and so many great characters are spun out with a crafty brilliance by the author. I'm not exactly what you might call an avid reader. This is probably the longest book I've ever gotten through. It's also one the most memorable things I've read.

Wow, King has done it again. Thought it was a long book, and a 4 night mini series, it was well worth it. King is the master of suspense. The story has so many simularities to life. He explores the thoughts of biological warfare in this one. A controlled virus escapes a facility, infects the employees, and is spread through out the world by the trickle down effect. Then to pit the good vs evil, and only the strongest will survive into the mix, I was not dissappointed. Of course the book is always better than the movie, but in his movies he always has a cameo appearance, if you watch closely you will catch them, sometimes its quick and the stand was no different. King did have a slightly bigger part in this than most. Again, totally loved it.

The Good:

One of the masterpieces of a true story master, Stephen King wrote some of his best work in “the Stand.” This version restores 150,000 words that were originally removed before publishing. It's good to be the King, good for Stephen and good for readers.

The TV miniseries version didn't do justice to this story. It couldn't. King paints some terrifyingly sinister characters, and some dark situations. As he always does, he also paints some satisfying full dimensional heroes that leave a reader thinking “hey, I might have been able to do that.”

When you finish this read the “Dark Tower” series.

The Bad:

It ends on the last page.

Bottom Line:

Wow! A must read.

My mother is a huge fan of Stephen King and consequently has every book he has ever written, most of which are first editions. So, one weekend when I had nothing to do, she told me to read The Stand, not knowing what it was about, or that there was a movie I could just as easily watch, since she had that too, I sat down and started reading. About half way through, I can honestly say I was about as scared as I have ever been in my entire life. The Stand is a terrifyingly wonderful tale about the apocolypse, the end of the world. King has written many novels but The Stand may well be the greatest of them all. The movie does not do the novel justice and anyone who thinks they know the story and hasn't read the novel should do so as soon as they have the chance. It could well be a literary classic, and certainly one of greatest thrillers of its time.