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Different Turns of The Wheel: Three Variations of The Stand by Stephen King

The first Stephen King book I read was The Stand, the Complete and Uncut Edition. It's an excellent starting place if you've never read any of his work. This article will contain possible spoilers for The Stand and the Dark Tower series.

The second Stephen King novel I read was Under The Dome. This one had a similar feel to The Stand that I really enjoyed. One day as I'm walking to my regular reading spot, I noticed a vending machine with Payday candy bars. I had never eaten a Payday before, but I had just finished reading The Stand a couple days before. That particular candy played a major role in the plot of the book and I though it was would be neat to try one. If I remember correctly I even used the empty wrapper as a bookmark for reading Under The Dome.

Paydays are just peanuts held together by caramel. I liked it enough to get another one the next time I walked past the same vending machine. As I was sitting in my reading spot, reading Under the Dome, and eating my Payday it hit me that the candy bar was not like it was described in the book.

The Stand follows a big cast of characters, two of whom set off as traveling companions early on in the book. Harold Lauder, a sixteen-year-old kid who has a crush on Frannie Goldsmith. Fran is a twenty-one-year-old girl who keeps a private diary as she and Harold travel together. Harold eats Paydays along the way and when their traveling party gets bigger he becomes jealous of Fran's new freind Stu.

Lives are changed and the outcome of the story is determined in a brief moment when fran realizes that Harold read a particular entry in her diary because of a chocolate smudge on the page. The chocolate implied to be from Harold's candy bars. The problem was that King, like me prior to that week, had allegedly never had a Payday and assumed that they were covered in chocolate like many other candy bars. As I mentioned above, however, they are just peanuts and caramel.

The Stand was published in 1978 by American publishing company, DoubleDay. King's original manuscript, if published as it was, would have been about 1,152 pages. DoubleDay told King the size of the book would have made it expensive to bind and the retail cost would be significantly higher. King removed approximately 400 pages from the manuscript and the first printed edition was only 823 pages. In this edition, the events of the book take place in 1980.

The first paperback edition of The Stand saw a few changes, such as the year being moved to 1985, as well as Harold's candy bar of choice being changed to a Milky Way. Someone noticed the lack of chocolate on a Payday and apparently suggested that it be changed to a Milky Way in this later pressing.

In 1990, King released the Complete and Uncut Edition of The Stand, which saw the return of the original 1,152 page count (with some edits), another jump in time with updated cultural references to match, and the Payday was reinstated as Harold's favorite candy. By this time, Payday had come out with a chocolate covered version of their classic candy bar and it was that one that the novel was now referring to.

That's the version of events as I understand them. But there is always the possibilty that these descrepancies are the byproduct of there simply being other worlds than these. Candy bars from another turn of the wheel.

Collected Differences Between Editions (by Year):

1980	1985	1990
Payday	Milky Way	Payday
Opening Chapter	Opening Chapter	Charlie Campion escapes the outbreak area with his family.
		"Who Made Who"
		Trashcan Man and The Kid
		Short chapters that follow short lived characters.