Although, I have to admit: Stephen King’s The Stand has a lot to answer for. More accurately, the expanded version does. The problem was not so much in the fact that King’s book about medieval Christianity (I’ve seen him cop to that, in those words) set in a post-apocalyptic America was reissued with all the previously-cut bits put back in. It’s that the book sold like even more hotcakes afterward, convincing the world that expanded versions of previous best-sellers were just what American literature needed. Alas, this was not true.
Still, the book itself is fantastic. In both versions. And, I suppose, in both meanings of the word.
And so, adieu to Lords and Ladies.
I’ll leave this here, for obvious reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxiUnFNU7vA
I’m not a fan of the expanded version, mainly because King tried to move the dates a decade into the future since the original future version was set in 1980 which was well past by the time that the expanded version was issued. So you get stuff set in 1990 but with a very 70s vibe, which just kept throwing me out of the story. He should have just treated The Stand as an alternate universe (which he ended up doing in the Dark Tower series) and left it set when it was.