Anything going on here??

[kcs_hiker]

let's get something going

Cell reminds me of The Stand

here's why

yes?? No??
what say you?

 

[HoopyFrood]

I'm always glad to see people reviving the King section -- makes me sad to see it get all dusty and unused...

I know what I'm like when I get onto the topic of King, so I won't be able to give a proper post at the moment, but I'll be sure to come back and discuss this (and other King things, I should hope) very soon.

 

[HoopyFrood]

OK, I'll have a bit of a go replying to this now, although it won't be as in-depth as I'd like to be! And before I really get going, I've only read half of The Stand, so I'll only be able to comment on that bit!

I agree that of all King's books, these two probably do seem to have the most in common with one another. Your reasons for their being similar are true, but it also seems a little vague, if I may be so bold. Quite frankly, I think any post-apocalyptic story would take a similar vein -- the thing about apocalyptic happenings is that lots of people are likely to die, and not just during the event but afterwards as well, as people try to cope with such a upheaval of their very way of life.

As to the groups going off into good and bad -- well, in The Stand you have Flagg and Mother Abagail to thank for that, with each 'calling', as it were, those suited to either side. Again, I think this would be something that would happen during such large scale events (not the calling, of course, but the grouping). You would have people who would probably group together, trying to salvage what they can, help one another, etc, and then they'd be those that would use the chance to rob, steal and generally take advantage of and revel in the the chaos already caused. As for Cell, the groupings are different because the bad guys are different. They group because they act like a flock, a form of telepathy bringing them together. And the good guys group together because, well, probably, 1.) so they're not alone, 2.) in order to have a better chance against the phone crazies, and 3.) in order to do their own flocking towards a place away from the Pulse.

As I've said, I haven't read The Stand in its entirety, so I don't know how it ends, but it's up for deliberation whether Cell actually does end happily for all. For a start, you can hardly believe that they will live "happily ever after" after such a large scale catastrophe has happened; life has been disrupted like never seen before, many people are dead, even more have had their brains effectively wiped. And on a smaller scale, there's Clay and his son. We can have hope that his son will be "cured", as it were...but there's always the chance that he won't.

And just time for a final note -- I really enjoyed Cell. I think it was a fantastic return to King's rather gory, action-packed and generally very entertaining writing. They're wasn't anything particularly deep in this novel, but a group of people striving to survive a harrowing event. Rolled along at a great pace, I loved the phone crazies, and overall was a great read for me, at least.

Those are just some of my thoughts, anyway! One day I'll finish The Stand. I will.

 

[kcs_hiker]

OK, I'll have a bit of a go replying to this now, although it won't be as in-depth as I'd like to be! And before I really get going, I've only read half of The Stand, so I'll only be able to comment on that bit!

I agree that of all King's books, these two probably do seem to have the most in common with one another. Your reasons for their being similar are true, but it also seems a little vague, if I may be so bold. Quite frankly, I think any post-apocalyptic story would take a similar vein -- the thing about apocalyptic happenings is that lots of people are likely to die, and not just during the event but afterwards as well, as people try to cope with such a upheaval of their very way of life.

As to the groups going off into good and bad -- well, in The Stand you have Flagg and Mother Abagail to thank for that, with each 'calling', as it were, those suited to either side. Again, I think this would be something that would happen during such large scale events (not the calling, of course, but the grouping). You would have people who would probably group together, trying to salvage what they can, help one another, etc, and then they'd be those that would use the chance to rob, steal and generally take advantage of and revel in the the chaos already caused. As for Cell, the groupings are different because the bad guys are different. They group because they act like a flock, a form of telepathy bringing them together. And the good guys group together because, well, probably, 1.) so they're not alone, 2.) in order to have a better chance against the phone crazies, and 3.) in order to do their own flocking towards a place away from the Pulse.

As I've said, I haven't read The Stand in its entirety, so I don't know how it ends, but it's up for deliberation whether Cell actually does end happily for all. For a start, you can hardly believe that they will live "happily ever after" after such a large scale catastrophe has happened; life has been disrupted like never seen before, many people are dead, even more have had their brains effectively wiped. And on a smaller scale, there's Clay and his son. We can have hope that his son will be "cured", as it were...but there's always the chance that he won't.

And just time for a final note -- I really enjoyed Cell. I think it was a fantastic return to King's rather gory, action-packed and generally very entertaining writing. They're wasn't anything particularly deep in this novel, but a group of people striving to survive a harrowing event. Rolled along at a great pace, I loved the phone crazies, and overall was a great read for me, at least.

Those are just some of my thoughts, anyway! One day I'll finish The Stand. I will.

I don't disagree with anything said here

I tend to knee-jerk react when I read King... you know LIKE IT it DIDN'T LIKE IT

Cell left way to many loose ends to suit me. We never did find out what caused the thing in the first place. Maybe he's setting up for a sequel... although that's not really his style.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Cell is an odd King book. It feels shorter in many ways than it should be ; this is a worldwide disaster that has occurred , and we are only ever shown one small portion of the whole picture . Now we know that King is hardly adverse to creating telephone-book sized novels , so why he has chosen not to this time is a bit of a mystery.

In fact the world of Cell seems eerily familiar to on which the Gunslinger may well have passed through ; or may still do in a novel at some point in the future....?

 

[HoopyFrood]

Well, we know that Roland and his friends definitely passed through the world which was ravaged by the Super flu in The Stand

Perhaps, after writing his telephone book-sized novel about one apocalyptic setting in The Stand that shifted through a whole cast of characters and showed the wide scale devastation caused, in Cell he decided to put the blinkers on and concentrate only on a small group. I think it makes it a little more intense to follow just a handful of characters as they battle to survive. And perhaps people would have really been quick to write Cell off as merely a copy of The Stand if he'd followed the same formula and shown the disaster worldwide.

As to the loose ends and not finding out about the Pulse in Cell -- I admit this is slightly frustrating, we do like some conclusion in novels. But I didn't mind all that much because, as I'm currently ranting about in a journal for my creative writing class, I think one thing that King does well, despite writing about supernatural, horrifying, inexplicable events, he's very good at the verisimilitude; and how likely is it that our small group of survivors, while battling just to stay alive, really, should stumble across the source of the Pulse? I think, without some huge coincidence, it wouldn't have really been feasible. I don't think any of the characters in Cell were out to save the world (granted, they took out a large group of the phone crazies, but they were an immediate danger); indeed, for Clay, the driving force seems to be finding and saving his son.

 

[Wiggum]

There is the obvious central similarity between the two books, but they're completely different in tone, antagonists, and pace.

For me, Cell was the second act in a book where we didn't get act one or act three, which put me off of it. I think I described it as the meat in the From a Buick 8 and Dreamcatcher sandwich of bad.

Probably a little harsh (not on From a Buick 8, because to this day that is the most horrid piece of tripe to come from King's very talented fingers).

But to compare Cell to The Stand, outside of the most base similarities, only serves to do The Stand a great diservice.