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Gargantuan Stephen King novel emerges after 25-year incubation

It took him 25 years from conception to completion, but Stephen King is finally ready to publish his hulking unwieldy boulder-like epic novel Under the Dome, described as an allegorical tale about a town in Maine that is surrounded one day by an invisible force field (hate it when that happens). From The Guardian:

Set in the town of Chester’s Mills, Maine, “on an entirely normal, beautiful fall day,” inhabitants suddenly find that the town has been sealed off by an invisible force field. “Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as ‘the dome’ comes down on it, people running errands in the neighbouring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact,” King revealed on his website. “No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when – or if – it will go away.”

The book clocks in at a wrist-straining 1,120 pages and, according to the author, deals “with some of the same issues” that his 1978 post-Apocalyptic novel The Stand did. Readers may remember that King rereleased that earlier novel in 1990 in a “Complete & Uncut” edition. One can only imagine how long Under the Dome will run should he ever decide to do the same with it.