'Under the Dome' — But Beyond the Book: A Q&A with Stephen King's Adapters

Tonight CBS drops an invisible dome over Chester's Mill, Maine, and thirteen million people are expected to watch it happen. Under the Dome — developed by comics star Brian K. Vaughan and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin — adapts Stephen King's 1,000-page pressure-cooker with one enormous asterisk: the ending, and much in between, will diverge from the book. On purpose. With King's blessing.

Vaughan's argument is practical: the novel burns through its town in a week of story time, while a returning series must sustain the siege indefinitely. 'The dome is the premise, not the plot,' he told us. 'The plot is what people become when the exits disappear.' King, who has seen his endings debated for forty years, has publicly told fans to relax and enjoy the divergence.

The novel itself — written across three decades of attempts — is late-period King at his most political: small-town authoritarianism blooming in a sealed jar, with used-car dealer Big Jim Rennie among his most chilling villains.

Update: the show ran three seasons and drifted very far from the jar indeed; the book's ending remains its own, divisive and earned. Both live on the novel's page — read first, then argue, which is the King fandom's oldest tradition.