The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand (2025) isn’t a sequel; it’s a hefty companion volume to King’s apocalyptic classic. I had a lot of fun with it, and I cheerfully recommend it to those who love The Stand.
There are 34 stories here, set concurrently with the events of The Stand or afterward. The contributing authors include a few names you are likely to recognize from genre fiction, including Joe R. Lansdale and Chuck Wendig. (Brian Keene actually chimes in with the anthology’s afterward.)
One of the things that I liked most about the book was the multitude of viewpoints, which really flesh out The Stand’s global catastrophe. The reader is introduced to all manner of individuals who witness this world’s pandemic, the ensuing dreams, and the longstanding consequences of Captain Trips and the showdown in Las Vegas.
It’s a diverse group — from cops (both good and bad), to children orphaned by disease, to astronauts aboard the space shuttle, to exotic animals trying to escape their zoo enclosures. (Catriona Ward’s brutal, beautiful “The African Painted Dog” might be my favorite in the bunch.) We even follow the ordeal of people who were never immune to Captain Trips, but who survive in hidden seclusion. The survivors we meet are in such far-flung places as Puerto Rico, Britain, Pakistan … and even other universes.
The anthology suffers once or twice when its entries stray a bit too far logically from the main narrative of The Stand. The stories I enjoyed a little less were those that felt like conventional horror stories shoehorned into our familiar, favorite end of the world.
This book often reminded me of Max Brooks’ World War Z (2006), which depicted a global zombie holocaust through the eyes of a wide variety of survivors around the world. I mean this as a favorable comparison, because I also loved Brooks’ opus.
Most of the stories have no impact on the events of The Stand. But a few do. And if you loved King’s plague-ravaged universe, it’s fascinating to see what was going on “in the background” while the major events unfolded in the original story. Some of the authors took just a single line or minor location from the novel and created an entire tangential story around it.
The authors even continue King’s tradition of linking his books and stories. There are references to a number of past tales: at least two stories from Night Shift; the The Dark Tower series; and possibly Hearts in Atlantis and The Eyes of the Dragon. (I’m sure there were a few that I missed.) This connectivity makes more sense than you’d think, considering the inclusion of a certain plot device — but I will avoid spoilers by saying no more about it.
If you are a King fan, this is really a good read. Grab it if you can.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 