The Stand

An extremely contagious and lethal strain of influenza, resistant to antibodies and vaccines, is developed as a biological weapon within a secret U.S. Department of Defense laboratory, and is accidentally released. The Complete and Uncut Edition includes a prologue detailing the development of the virus and the security breach that causes its release. The laboratory staff die, but security guard Charles Campion manages to escape and takes his family out of state. After a couple of days, his car crashes at a gas station in Arnette, Texas. The gas station employees and ambulance workers are infected when they take the dying Campion out of his car and to a hospital. The gas station owner infects his cousin, a highway patrolman, and the virus rapidly spreads uncontrollably from there. The United States Army attempts to isolate Arnette, going as far as to execute unarmed civilians, but the efforts are in vain – the virus, christened by journalists as the "superflu" or "Captain Trips", spreads across the country and travels beyond its borders, triggering a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions. Approximately 99.4% of the world's population is infected and killed within a month. A prism of several personal tragedies describes the collapse of society, explosions of violence, the inability of the government and martial law to stop the pandemic, and the near-extinction of humanity. Many survivors of the virus also die, unable to accept the loss of their loved ones or survive in a world where they must fend for themselves.

Stuart Redman, one of the gas station employees, proves immune to the virus. He is forcibly held in a specialized center in Stovington, Vermont, in the hope that a treatment can be made. Redman escapes after the center's staff dies; he is forced to kill one of the members in self-defense. He meets with sociology professor Glen Bateman, pregnant college student Frannie Goldsmith, and teenage outcast Harold Lauder. Larry Underwood, a disillusioned pop singer, joins the group in the wake of his mother's death. Stuart and Frannie are drawn to each other and become lovers, to Harold's disappointment and resentment. The group share a common dream in which they see a 108-year-old black woman living in Hemingford Home, Nebraska.[1] The woman, Abagail Freemantle – better known as "Mother Abagail" – becomes the group's spiritual leader. She brings the group to Boulder, Colorado, to which other survivors are attracted by her telepathic appeals. New additions to the group include Nick Andros, a deaf-mute deputy from Shoyo, Arkansas; Tom Cullen, a kind-hearted, mentally challenged man from May, Oklahoma; Nadine Cross, a teacher from New Hampshire; and Ralph Brentner, a good-natured farmer from Oklahoma. The group attempts to build a new society. They call their land the "Free Zone", organize funeral brigades and restore a supply of electricity.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Randall Flagg, a "dark man" possessing supernatural abilities, creates his own society from people called by his visions. The people worship Flagg as a messiah and joyfully submit to his fascist dictatorship, in which drug addicts are crucified. Flagg rescues potentially cannibalistic prisoner Lloyd Henreid and makes him his right-hand man. A pyromaniac nicknamed "the Trashcan Man", after destroying oil tanks in Gary, Indiana and meeting a madman named "the Kid", joins Flagg's group and becomes a weapons specialist. Flagg prepares for war with Boulder. Mother Abagail, feeling that she has become prideful due to her pleasure at being a public figure, disappears into the wilderness on a journey of spiritual reconciliation. During her absence, the Free Zone's leadership committee decides to secretly send three people to Flagg's territory to act as spies. Harold and Nadine, tempted by Flagg through their dreams, stage an attack on the committee with a bomb. The explosion kills several people, including Nick Andros, but most of the committee members avoid the explosion thanks to Mother Abagail's return. Before dying of exhaustion, Mother Abagail reports God's will – Stuart, Glen, Larry and Ralph must go to Las Vegas and destroy Flagg.

Stuart breaks his leg en route and persuades the others to go on without him, telling them that God will provide for him if that is what is meant to happen. The remaining three are soon taken prisoner by Flagg's army. When Glen refuses to grovel before Flagg, he is killed by Lloyd. Flagg gathers his entire collective to witness the execution of Ralph and Larry. Moments before they are to be killed, the Trashcan Man arrives with a retrieved nuclear warhead. Flagg conjures a magical ball of energy in an attempt to silence a dissenter, but it is transformed into a giant glowing hand — "the Hand of God" — which detonates the bomb, destroying Las Vegas and killing all of Flagg's followers, in addition to Larry and Ralph. The inhabitants of Boulder anxiously await the birth of Frannie's baby. They fear that the child may not possess an immunity to the superflu and may die, implying a permanent end to humanity. Soon after she gives birth to her son, Stuart returns to Boulder, having been rescued first by a dog, Kojak, and then by Tom, the only survivor of the three Free Zone spies. The baby, Peter, manages to fight off the superflu. Stuart and Frannie decide to leave Boulder and move to Ogunquit as society is slowly reestablished. The Complete and Uncut Edition includes an epilogue in which Flagg, having survived the nuclear explosion, wakes up somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Regaining his former strength, he begins recruiting adherents among a preliterate, dark-skinned people.

In Danse Macabre, King writes about the origins of The Stand at some length. One source was Patty Hearst's case. The original idea was to create a novel about the episode because "it seemed that only a novel might really succeed in explaining all the contradictions".

The author also mentions George R. Stewart's novel Earth Abides, which describes the odyssey of one of the last human survivors after the population is nearly annihilated by a plague, as one of the main inspirations:

With my Patty Hearst book, I never found the right way in... and during that entire six-week period, something else was nagging very quietly at the back of my mind. It was a news story I had read about an accidental CBW spill in Utah. (...) This article called up memories of a novel called Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart.

(...) and one day while sitting at my typewriter, (...) I wrote—just to write something: The world comes to an end but everybody in the SLA is somehow immune. Snake bit them. I looked at that for a while and then typed: No more gas shortages. That was sort of cheerful, in a horrible sort of way. [2]

The Stand was also planned by King as an epic The Lord of the Rings–type story in a contemporary American setting:

For a long time—ten years, at least—I had wanted to write a fantasy epic like The Lord of the Rings, only with an American setting. I just couldn't figure out how to do it. Then . . . after my wife and kids and I moved to Boulder, Colorado, I saw a 60 Minutes segment on CBW (chemical-biological warfare). I never forgot the gruesome footage of the test mice shuddering, convulsing, and dying, all in twenty seconds or less. That got me remembering a chemical spill in Utah, that killed a bunch of sheep (these were canisters on their way to some burial ground; they fell off the truck and ruptured). I remembered a news reporter saying, 'If the winds had been blowing the other way, there was Salt Lake City.' This incident later served as the basis of a movie called Rage, starring George C. Scott, but before it was released, I was deep into The Stand, finally writing my American fantasy epic, set in a plague-decimated USA. Only instead of a hobbit, my hero was a Texan named Stu Redman, and instead of a Dark Lord, my villain was a ruthless drifter and supernatural madman named Randall Flagg. The land of Mordor ('where the shadows lie,' according to Tolkien) was played by Las Vegas.[3]

While writing The Stand, King nearly stopped because of writer's block.[4] Eventually, he reached the conclusion that the heroes were becoming too complacent, and were beginning to repeat all the same mistakes of their old society. In an attempt to resolve this, he added the part of the storyline where Harold and Nadine construct a bomb, which explodes in a Free Zone committee meeting, killing Nick Andros, Chad Norris, and Susan Stern. Later, Mother Abagail explains on her deathbed that God permitted the bombing because He was dissatisfied with the heroes' focus on petty politics, and not on the ultimate quest of destroying Flagg. When telling this story, King sardonically observed that the bomb saved the book, and that he only had to kill half of the core cast to do this.

The novel was originally published in 1978 in hardcover, with a setting date of 1980, in abridged form. The first paperback release in 1980 changed the setting date to 1985. The novel marks the first appearance of Randall Flagg, King's recurring antagonist, whom King would bring back many times in his later writings.

The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition

The Complete and Uncut Edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Cover artist	John Cayea
Country	US
Language	English
Genre	Postapocalyptic
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	May 1990
Media type	Print
Pages	1,152
ISBN	978-0-385-19957-5

In 1990, an unabridged edition of The Stand was published, billed as The Complete and Uncut Edition. Published in hardcover by Doubleday in May 1990, this became the longest book published by King at 1,152 pages. When the novel was originally published in 1978, Doubleday warned King that the book's size would make it too expensive for the market to bear.[5] As a result, he cut about 400 pages (around 150,000 words) from the original manuscript. This edition reinstates most of the deleted pages (as selected by King), as well as updates the setting from the 1980s to the 1990s. This new edition features a new preface by King, and illustrations by Bernie Wrightson. Additionally, Doubleday published a deluxe edition of The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition, limited to 1,250 numbered copies and 52 lettered copies. This edition, known as the "Coffin Box" edition due to the book being housed in a wooden case, was signed by King and Wrightson.[6][7][8]

The Stand was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1979, and was adapted into both a television miniseries for ABC and a graphic novel published by Marvel Comics.[9][10] In 2003, the novel was listed at number 53 on the BBC's The Big Read poll.[11]

• The Stand title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Bookpoi—How to identify first edition copies of The Stand by Stephen King.