
Perhaps Stephen King’s most popular book, The Stand imagines the worst: a computer error in a Defense Department lab unleashes a superflu that wipes out more than 99% of the world’s population, paving the way for an edge-of-doom clash between good and evil. “I got a chance to scrub the whole human race,” King said of the book, which was inspired by fantasy epics like The Lord of the Rings. “And man, it was fun.”