The Stand

An extremely contagious and lethal strain of influenza is developed as a biological weapon in a secret U.S. Department of Defense laboratory in northern California. It is estimated to be 99.4% fatal. The Complete and Uncut Edition includes a prologue detailing the development of the virus and the security breach that causes its accidental release. Security guard Charles Campion manages to escape before the facility is locked down and takes his family out of the state.

After a couple of days, his car crashes at a gas station in Arnette, Texas. Bystanders and ambulance workers become infected by the dying Campion and his dead wife and child. The United States Army attempts to isolate Arnette, going so far as to execute civilians attempting to flee, but in vain; the virus, christened the "superflu" or "Captain Trips", spreads across the country. The government then has its agents (unknowingly) release the virus in the USSR, its satellite states and China to guarantee their destruction as well.

When martial law fails to contain the virus, a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions kills nearly the entire world population within a month. The military collapses due to mass desertions and mutinies, and society soon follows with the near-extinction of humanity. Some of the few who are immune also die, unable either to accept the loss of their loved ones or to survive in a world where they must fend for themselves.

Stuart "Stu" Redman, one of the Arnette residents who encountered Campion, proves immune to the virus. The CDC forcibly holds him in a research center in Stovington, Vermont, in the hope that a treatment can be found. Stu escapes after the staff become infected, killing one man in self-defense. He meets sociology professor Glen Bateman and his dog Kojak, pregnant college student Frances "Frannie" Goldsmith, and overweight teenage nerd Harold Lauder. Stuart and Frannie are drawn to each other and eventually fall in love, then enter a marital relationship. This enrages Harold, who grew up with Frannie and has an unhealthy obsession with her; he then schemes to harm the couple out of romantic jealousy.

Most of the survivors experience essentially the same two dreams. In one, a friendly 108-year-old black woman living in Hemingford Home, Nebraska, "Mother Abagail" Freemantle, invites them to her farm.[3] They also dream of a terrifying "dark man" who calls himself Randall Flagg, among other things. People seek out one or the other. Stu and his group eventually meet Mother Abagail, who is convinced God has chosen her to do His will.

The group travels to Boulder, Colorado, along with other survivors. These include Larry Underwood, a disillusioned pop singer; Nick Andros, a deaf-mute drifter; Tom Cullen, a kind-hearted, mentally disabled man; Nadine Cross, a teacher in her 30s who is still a virgin; and Ralph Brentner, a good-natured farmer. As survivors continue to trickle in, the group starts organizing the hundreds of residents. They establish their community as the "Boulder Free Zone", a democratic city-state modeled after the United States' former ideals.

Meanwhile, Randall Flagg, who possesses supernatural abilities, creates his own totalitarian society in Las Vegas with psychopaths as his lieutenants. His people worship (and fear) him as a messiah and submit to his iron-fisted dictatorship. He has drug addicts and others who incur his displeasure crucified. Flagg rescues Lloyd Henreid, a mass murderer, from his prison cell and makes him his right-hand man.

A pyromaniac nicknamed "The Trashcan Man" blows up oil tanks in Gary, Indiana, and travels to Las Vegas with a homicidal madman named "The Kid". After Flagg sends a pack of wolves to kill The Kid because he intended to kill Flagg and take over, The Trashcan Man makes his way to Las Vegas, from which he is sent to find stockpiles of weapons for Flagg, as Flagg prepares for war with the Free Zone. However, Flagg's people soon grow weary of his dictatorship, and many secretly try to leave.

Mother Abagail, believing that she has sinned by being proud, goes into the wilderness on a spiritual journey without consulting anyone. In her absence, the Free Zone's leadership committee decides to secretly send three people to spy on Flagg, but Flagg already knows who two of them are. One, Judge Farris, dies in a shootout with Flagg's men, and the other, Dayna Jurgens, is captured, but manages to kill herself to avoid revealing who the third spy (Tom Cullen) is.

Harold and Nadine secretly give their allegiance to Flagg, who in fact wants Nadine to be his wife and the mother of his child. Harold plants a bomb in the house where the committee is to meet. The explosion kills seven or eight people, including Nick Andros and Susan Stern, but the other committee members are saved by the commotion caused by Mother Abagail's unexpected return and Frannie's too-late warning. Before dying, the extremely emaciated Mother Abagail reports God's will: Stu, Glen, Larry, and Ralph (all of the surviving committee members except for the pregnant Frannie) must go to Las Vegas on foot to confront Flagg. She also states that only three of them will get there.

Harold and Nadine also set out for Las Vegas, but Harold suffers a broken leg in a motorcycle accident (caused by Flagg to eliminate Harold) on the way, and Nadine leaves him to die. After enduring several days and nights of his broken leg slowly becoming infected and gangrenous, Harold regrets his malicious behavior, accepts that he will soon die and commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. Nadine, going on alone, finds Flagg in the desert near Las Vegas and he impregnates her; the horrifying experience (his face changes into that of a demon) causes her to lose her mind. Flagg brings her back to Las Vegas as his bride, but she manages to goad him into killing her and their unborn child.

Stu breaks his leg en route to Las Vegas and persuades the others to go on without him. The remaining three are quickly taken prisoner. Glen refuses to grovel before Flagg, and when he taunts Flagg, Lloyd kills him under Flagg's orders. Flagg gathers his people to witness Larry and Ralph's executions. Moments before they are about to be torn apart via dismemberment, the Trashcan Man drags in a nuclear warhead (an atonement attempt for blowing up Flagg's entire experienced pilot crew), and the "Hand of God" detonates the bomb, destroying Las Vegas, as well as Larry and Ralph.

The inhabitants of Boulder anxiously await the birth of Frannie's baby. They fear that the child will succumb to the superflu. Soon after her son is born, Stu returns, having been rescued by Tom. The baby contracts the superflu, but manages to recover. Once Frannie is again pregnant, she and Stu decide to leave Boulder and move back to Frannie's hometown of Ogunquit, Maine, therefore founding an eastern settlement, and raise their children in peace.

The Complete and Uncut Edition includes an epilogue in which Flagg wakes up with memory loss on a beach. From the jungle emerge a dozen dark-skinned men with spears who eventually bow down and worship him.

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.[4]

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.[5]

While writing The Stand, King nearly stopped because of writer's block.[6] 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.

According to King, Blue Öyster Cult's 1976 song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" has also served as one source of inspiration for the novel.[7]

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 several times in his later writings.

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.[8]

As a result, he cut about 400 pages (around 150,000 words) from the original manuscript. This edition reinstates most of the deletions (as selected by King) and updates the setting from the 1980s to the 1990s. This new edition features a new preface by King and illustrations by Bernie Wrightson. 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.[9][10][11]

The Stand received critical acclaim; it 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.[12][13] In 2003, the novel was listed at number 53 on the BBC's The Big Read poll.[14]

In more recent years, The Stand was criticized for including the Magical Negro stereotype within its plot, as Mother Abagail described as a character whose sole purpose was to help the white protagonists.[15][16]

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