The Stand- Possibly, the best book ever written.

Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:10 pm by Killa

Any Stephen King fans out there? I'm sure their are. However, if you're just looking for a good book, even if you don't like Stephen King that much, then you owe it to yourself to check out The Stand. This book is hailed by many, myself included, to be one of the finest works of literature ever written. (Get the cut edition, because the uncut is almost twelve hundred pages and some parts are BORING. I litteraly skipped about two hundred pages when I read the uncut.) I guess the cut edition is about 700 pages, and I would say it would keep you busy for a while, but I'd be lying. This book is so awesome, that you will not want to put it down until you're finished, and you'll almost hate to finish that book, it's that good. (For those of you who didn't understand that, you'll almost be dissapointed that the book is over and their's nothing else. It's one of those books you'll wish could go on forever.)

The book was written in the late seventies ('78 I belive) but takes place in 1990. (When it was written it took place in the future, now it takes place sixteen years in the past.) After a freak accident in a secret government biological weapon research facility somewhere in the Mojave Desert, the deadly superflu gets out (also known as Captian Trips) and begins to take it's first victims. Eventually, over 99% of the world's population is dead. Those that are still alive in America (the book hints about similar situations in other countries, but nothing is confirmend) begin to start up two main socities in Boulder, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada. This is when the story's main villan, Randall Flagg begins making his apperance. (Fans of the Dark Tower series and other of his works will probably recognize Flagg.) The desperate survivors have to choose sides (or are chosen) to follow a 104 year old woman known as Mother Abbigale to Boulder, while some follow Flagg in Vegas. (Basically, Boulder= good, Vegas= bad.) Mother Abbigale is seen by some as a messanger of God, while others see Flagg as either a servant of Satan or as Satan himself (this is hinted by his supernatual, almost Satanic powers.) Those who are in Boulder know that eventually, the final conflict between good and evil will come. While Boulder struggles just to get the power back on, on the other side of the Rockies, Flagg has F14s ready to go and bomb the living hell out of Boulder. I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, you'll just have to read the thing. I guarentee, you won't regret it. If you're easily offended, then you might want to use caution because this book has some language that well, let's just say you won't find it in the Garden of Eden.

For those of you who've read the book, and those of you who haven't but are going to, and those of you who read my fanfic The Holocaust (when I get it up) will notice some similarities. But I guarentee you, they're not the same. Sure, they both center around a deadly desease (and not like Neuro's Genocide either) but the plots are going to play out completly differently. Some events in my story will be similar to The Stand, but as I already said, it's nowhere near the same story.

Simply put, you need to read this book. And when you finish it, I'd recommend The Tommyknockers. I haven't finished reading that one yet, and the first hundred pages or so are unbelivably boring, but after about page 110 it starts getting good.

EDIT: Okay, don't read The Tommyknockers. That book sucks. After page 110 it got good for about fifteen pages, then I just finally gave up on it.

So, you wanna read John Edward's book? Select your language: English, Bull****ish, Crapanese, French.

Edited by - Killa on 1/21/2006 7:02:51 PM

Thu Jan 05, 2006 6:34 pm by richard s

i read that book years ago wanna good read clive barker the books of blood vol 1 thru 3 and brian lumbly wrote the necrosocope series is that cleaner for you.

(\__/)
(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your
(" )_(" ) signature to help him gain world domination.

Edited by - richard w. sabatino on 1/6/2006 6:45:43 PM

Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:05 am by Tawakalna

I'm glad you used the word *possibly* in your title, Killa. I did enjoy the book when it came out but imho it was the start of the downturn of King's writing talent, cumbersome, pretentious, overlong, simplistic dualist mysticism intended for popular appeal. The TV film was very poor.

That's not to say the book doesn't have merit. The description of the devastation caused by Captain Trips are truly horrific*, still showing King can turn out good work when he can be bothered, the Disease Control Centre where Stu is locked up becomes reminiscent of the last days in Hitler's Bunker in it's nightmarish surreality, and the occupation of Boulder and the effort to rebuild civilisation is also very well done, despite King's blatant overuse of oversentimental mawkish patriotism. sadly King turns to a lot of his other stock plot devices, the whole Las Vegas thing is way overdone, the mysticism of Mother Wotserface and her ghost to do God's work is just preposterous, and there are way too many characters.

King did all his best work well before the Stand, I've always been fond of his short stories, but since TS he just writes for the money; or should I say he puts his name on the cover and som eone else ghostwrites from plot outlines he's had lying around for years. Sorry I thought the TommyKnockers stank, but at least it wasn't as bad as IT. I admire King a lot but he hasn't turned out a decent book in years. However he did write the storyline for Half-Life and that was pretty impressive of itself.

Look at a story like Christine; compact, taut, gripping, concentrates on main characters, develops them very well - not my favourite King work (that would be Toys) but it's a perfect example of his craft at its best. Compare that with long-winded rambling like the Stand, full of unecessary scenes and detail, why at times it's more like a travel guide across the US than a horror/sci-fi novel. It's comparable in it's clumsy pretentiousness to Costner's *The Postman* film, too self-consciously trying to mythologise moral values particular to America, too preachy. As you yourself admit, it's too boring, too often.

Toys however remains one of my favourite short-stories ever; now that's writing. Back then SK was trying to build up his reputation, now he doesn't care. A potboiler for the airport departure lounges every couple of years, bank the cheques, job done.

Mind you, if I was around 15 again, I'd prob like the Stand; I came to it too late and I'd already become too critical and destructuralist to get any lasting pleasure out of it.

(* although not particularly original - similar territory had been covered in Terry Nation's "Survivors" set in the Uk, but without the mysticism, long-winded descriptions of landscape, and preachy morality.)

Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:57 pm by Killa

Taw, did you read the The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition? That is the one where I skipped almost two hundred pages because that is the one that is boring about a quarter of the time.

I've read the cut edition, and I have to say it only took me about four days because I didn't put it down.

Now, I'm too lazy to argue with you Taw, and their's really nothing to argue. I liked it, you didn't like it, that's your opinion. I think it's one of the best books ever written, you may not think so.

And Richard, if you don't mind do you think you could clean up that post so I can understand it? I'm too tired right now to try to decipher that, even though I'm pretty sure I could.

Fri Jan 06, 2006 4:20 pm by Tawakalna

i didn't say I didn't like it, parts of it i thought were great. i just didn't think it was on any kind of par with his earlier work. And yes it was the original edition, my then girlfriend gave it me as a present. took me just over a week to read. I was annoyed that after such an effort to read the dam thing, it had a very unsatisfactory mawkish life-affirming ending. It really turned me off Stephen King, my opinion of him has never recovered.

it's not really a question of value judgements and like or dislike, you can critique a work of fiction (like any other art form) regardless of whether you like it or not. i just think that King went for magnum opus effect rather than style or content, and the novel is full of superfluous elements that take up far too much room. Hence why there's an abridged version, presumably. I recall that one of the main talking points at the time of publication was the heftiness of the tome and the length of time required to read the thing! At that time there was a vogue for very long novels, overlong even, in the horror/fantasy/sf genres, and maybe SK was cashing in on that.

Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:05 pm by Killa

Magnum Opus, I have no idea what that means.

I haven't read very many of King's other works, and I don't think any of the ones I have read were written before The Stand. Maybe you didn't Taw, but I sure as hell wished that the book could have gone on forever. I thought it was so good that I almost hated to finish it.

Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:24 am by Tawakalna

Magnum Opus is Latin for *Great Work*

well Killa I owe you an apology; The Stand was published in 1978, 5 years before Christine, which blows my argument out of the water completely! I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong, and thats pretty dam wrong, i built up a whole structure of fallacious criticism on nothing, y'see that's karma for me shooting Accushot down in flames the other day <hangs towel in shame> It even precedes The Dead Zone, Cujo, Firestarter, and the Night Shift stories I'm so fond of! The only major works that predate TS are Carrie (1974) Salem's Lot (75) and The Shining (77)

bah, foiled again! Still, I vastly prefer Carrie and The Shinning to The Stand (i'm going to shut up now)

oh just one other thing; to help you with your fanfic, read Survivors or if poss, get it and watch it on DVD - it's much a grittier and realistic depiction of people trying to get by after a plague has wiped out most of the world's population, although being set in Britain it's scope is correspondingly a lot less, and there's nowt supernatural about it (except maybe in Genesis of a Hero, the last part) or patriotic either. Nobody gets up and sings the National Anthem in Survivors.

Edited by - Tawakalna on 1/7/2006 8:19:23 AM

Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:27 am by Killa

Lol.

I do commend you for having the guts to admit that you were wrong (most people don't do that.) I'll check out Survivors.

I've already seen the movie The Shining, so I probably will never read the book. Even if they're a little different, I still know the plot so I'd probably be bored.

But as far as Stephen King himself goes, I think he's a very talented author. Some people say they will never read a SK book because of the language, but I really like his writing style. The way he writes is a pretty accurate description of the way I talk in real life (just minus the GDs.) If you paid enough attention to my story, you'd probably find that my writing style is a little bit like King's.

Anyway, my point is that if (this isn't directed at you Taw) you haven't read this book, then at least give it a shot.

The Uncut edition start off very slow and boring (the first couple of pages are really good, they explain how the superflu gets out but after that it jumps to the main characters, and it gets boring.) It's almost like the Lord of the Rings books, the first hundred or so pages were so boring I almost couldn't stand to read it, but after about page 130 in TS, it starts picking up pace.

Mon Jan 09, 2006 11:07 am by The Evil Thing

I hate to muscle in on your little argument here

but:

however he did write the storyline for Half-Life and that was pretty impressive of itself

I take a slight issue with that because he didn't write the storyline for HL. It was written by Marc Laidlaw (working as a resident writer at Valve Software). That isn't to say the story wasn't influenced by SK. Supposedly, by his novella "The Mist".

However, on a less nitpicky note, I too like King. Though I agree with Taw predominately, all the patriotic claptrap just bounces off because constant exposure to thinly-veiled pro-war propaganda blasting merrily away from the tele-box has rendered me somewhat immue. The Stand is probably one of the few books by King I haven't read, because I make a point of not reading books that weigh more than my right hand.

Edited by - The Evil Thing on 1/9/2006 11:06:53 AM

Mon Jan 09, 2006 2:41 pm by Killa

When I first got The Stand and saw how big it was, I didn't ever think I would read the whole thing, maninly because it weighs as much as my leg. (I litteraly knocked my cusion unconsious with the Uncut edition, which is almost twelve hundred pages.... well, 1153 to be exact.) I've lived in America as long as I can remember so I didn't exactly catch on to the patriotic stuff you guys keep mentioning. My uncle said he'd never read that book because some of the characters in that book talk like Eric Cartman.

Fri Jan 20, 2006 4:51 am by Tawakalna

do you ever get the feeling that some days it isn't worth opening your big fat trap? yeah , he didn't write the script for HL, it was inspired by The Mist, as was (apparently) Silent HIll. Have I got anything right in this thread? oh i give up, I'll stick to whining about teenagers instead...

Edited by - Tawakalna on 1/20/2006 8:59:34 AM

Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:00 pm by Killa

You'd better not be talking about me Taw.

**Finds katana**

Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:23 am by The Evil Thing

While you may not be factually correct in respects

, Taw, you still made some intelligent critique of King's novel. Don't do yourself down too hard because it is easy to get mixed up. I thought EVE was based on a novel by Ian Banks

Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:29 am by Tawakalna

no Killa I was talking about myself

Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:19 pm by Killa

Okay Taw, just had to make sure.

**Puts away Katana and Shurikens.**

EDIT: Can someone besides Taw tell me if they thought if The Dark Half was any good? (Taw thought my favorite book was slightly above mediocre so I'm not sure if I'm willing to trust him though. Oh, and yes Taw, those HP recovery disks actually worked. )

Edited by - Killa on 1/21/2006 1:20:18 PM

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