I agree with that. I expect we’ll see the penultimate beam breaking, with SK’s death, as our heroes stand at the base of the Tower itself. How’s that for dramatic tension? 
In addition to Ted Brautigan, I have a strong suspicion we will see Jacky Sawyer as well, possibly with Sophie and Parkus in tow, and possibly Tyler Marshall. I kinda expect to see Thomas and Dennis again, at least in passing. Dinky Evershaw is eventual as all hell, and I’d love to see him again.
The Random and the Purpose might well show up through agents. Perhaps an opopanax in the flesh.
And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we get Pennywise.
And speaking of IT . . . this might be a little out there, but
“Finli O’Tego” is an anagram of “Legion of IT.” Coincidence?
With regard to SK being a physical anchor for the Beam in the “real” world, I’m not sure what to think of that. I buy that the Beam is tied to the rose, as the rose clearly has survived and will continue to survive (one would hope) for millenia. How can the same be said for a human? The Beams were created aeons ago. If one can be anchored by a human, does it pass from generation to generation? In the “real” world where SK is dead, does Owen how anchor it? I don’t get it.
I totally cannot wait until September.
But it’s also mentioned over and over again how fragile the rose is, how easily it could be destroyed. Indeed, this is what the Tower Corporation has been trying to do for years! And I’m not certain the rose has already existed for milennia - I only remember references to it being there within the last, oh, 30 years or so.
And the Crimson King’s tried many times to destroy Stephen King in the past as well, remember?
I’m not certain how it all works out, but I’m guessing we might see something of Insomnia come into play. That some things are predestined, and perhaps someone’s/something’s predestined job is to hold up the beam for the extent of its natural life time, after which the job is passed to a new person/thing. Which means that the job of the breakers is not to break the beams themselves, but to search out who’s currently holding the job. Once that is located, other minions of the King can be sent out to kill the holder.
It rather makes more sense as to why it’s taken the breakers so long - if the holders change constantly, it’d be hard to pin them down.
And, knowing King, there’ll be some other on the side of the White, a “fixer.” The fixer finds a new holder before it’s destroyed and the job is passed on. And the agents of the random are what’s throwing a system that could be in balance over to the side of the Crimson King - they’re why four beams have fallen already.
Wild, wild guesses.
But there’s no reason to think that seizing or destroying the anchor will in itself break the beam. In fact, there’s quite a lot of evidence otherwise.
My guess is that the anchors are part of the recurring duality. There are actual beams, which exist (or at least manifest) in all worlds. There are machines/engines supporting the ends of the beams in Roland’s world which (as we learned in SoS) were built by the Old Ones to replace the mystical/magical supports when the magic failed. The anchors in the “real world,” the rose and its like somehow keep the beams anchored (well duh) to reality. Blah, blah, half-informed wild-ass speculation, blah.
Point is, there are breakers in End-World, treading on their bleeding footzies, munching on yummy twin brain matter, and working to destroy either the beams themselves or the engines maintaining them. And then there are the other servants of the Eye (like Sayre) looking to obtain and/or damage the anchors.
Either one cannot work on its own. That is, the rose can’t be whacked until the breakers in End-World have weakened the beam sufficiently, and they can’t break the beam until the rose has been whacked.
That is to say, having the rose (or SK, or any beam anchor) is necessary to the destruction of the beam, but not sufficient.
<more random babble>
Speaking of Ted’s Kids . . . would Dinky have been sent to End-World if he’d been younger when his talent was discovered? How many other older TKs might there be working for the Eye, sending Dinkymail and generally kinda doing the, you know, evil paperwork?
</>
Just to stir the pot with a wrench thrown into the works, keep in mind that time is flexible through all this, except in the “real” world - well, sorta. So who knows but what the breakers aren’t zooming around all over the past and future?
I didn’t have a problem with King writing himself into the book at all, since, for all intents and purposes, it wasn’t really him… the fact that the “King” character in the book had a psudonym of Bachman (instead of the reverse) and that he died show that. He just put a lot of his life into this “character”
It’s also interesting (to me, at least) because of the surreal quality of it. I almost half expected it to read, at some point:
Or would that be too “Neverending Story”?
I am kind of irrated, but at the same time, also intrigued by, the idea of all King’s works to be linked, whether in small detail or large, to the Dark Tower. It is interesting, watching the “Salem’s Lot” miniseries on TV and thinking, “That’s Pere Callahan: Boy is his life going to get interesting after this!” I almost wish there was a website that showed all the links, since the only other SK book I’ve read is The Green Mile. And I keep reading that the one with the most direct link is “Hearts in Atlantis”, but since I’ve only seen the movie, I can’t see how (except for the “lowmen”; however, people had been saying the connection existed before Wolves of the Calla came out).
And all along, in the back of my mind, I wonder how much King had planned and how much he’s making up as he goes along. Obviously, the Harry Potter model snitch couldn’t have been in his mind when he wrote “The Gunslinger” (although The Ball from Phantasm might have been), but if he really had a couple thousand page outline that he lost (which you’d think would have to be the most irritating thing) then I’d be really impressed if he was actually tying in his other books to the backbone of the Tower while he was writing them, instead of trying to write in all the connections afterwards.
In Hearts of Atlantis, Brautigan (sp?) goes on at length about beams and breaking and towers and such - so it’s obvious that there’s a connection. And there is a website somewhere that has a litany of references in other books - but I can’t find it. I just e-mailed a friend of mine that has it. I’ll post it when he gets back to me.
You should check out the newly revised introductions to the first four books (they came out last year the same time the newly revised *Gunslinger * came out). King explains a good deal about the writing process he’s gone through with these books. Needlesstosay, he didn’t know what was going to happen in 5, 6 and 7 until he wrote them - meaning whatever outline he had way back when was either discarded or used subconsiously.
That’s what I get for only seeing the movie. 
I just found this, which wasn’t around when I did my last search, admittedly a few years ago
Which means I’ve got at least three more book to read before September…
Great book. Can’t wait for September 21st (King’s birthday).
So are all the references to 19 dealing with Stephen King being hit by the car on the 19th?
Hehe, tried to post this last night but hit the maintenance period. Good thing I copied it to notepad…
I should’ve known this would happen. I picked up SoS and the re-done Gunslinger this weekend, rationed out my reading, but blew through the last 1/2 to 1/3rd tonight, just finished up. So I figured I could finally go through this thread without those pesky spoiler boxes taunting me.
I’m with Snickers about what happened in the coda. After the “beamquake” Roland (or one of the Manni) say that there are only two remaining beams. One is obviously anchored by the rose, since it still exists in the “key world”. I’m certain that the other is anchored by King (the character) himself. The reactions of Eddie and Roland as they near his home is very similar to Jake’s going to the Rose in Waste Lands, and they make mention of traveling along the beam as they drive up. SK himself may not be immortal, but the Dark Tower epic is/would have been. So the point wasn’t necessarily that he got killed, but that he was killed before completing the story.
Munch in addition to the “Dark Tower Connections” linked to by Skott there’s also The Stephen King Universe which covers quite a lot of the DT connections (at least up to Wizards & Glass), along with other “related realities” in his novels and stories.
I doubt Thomas and Dennis will show up directly in DT7, since Roland had a passing memory about the end of their quest for Flagg in Drawing of the Three. I think they may have come upon Flagg/Walter/Marten during the last days of Gilead. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a flashback about them, though.
And I was relieved that Oy wasn’t hit by the taxi. The only acceptable way for any of the ka-tet to die is in battle. It will still be sad (since I also believe that Eddie may be the sole survivor), but death by random chance should not be in the cards for this band.
I’m really looking forward to the final book, but also a bit saddened. I’ve been reading the Dark Tower books for most of my life (I picked up The Gunslinger from the library when I was 11 or so). I mostly stopped reading King’s new stuff somewhere around Gerald’s Game. But the Dark Tower always drew me back, including related ones like Insomnia and Black House.
SoS itself may not have been as enjoyable as the others (Waste Lands is still my personal favorite), but it does certainly set things up for the last book. As I have since seeing the illustration of Eddie’s dream after defeating Shardik, I want to stand at the base of the tower, in that field of roses, to see what comes next. Whether redemption, damnation, or neither waits for the ka-tet there, reaching their/our destination will hopefully be worth the wait.
One last thing: I did hear that there were many additions made to the revised Gunslinger, so I picked that up and really enjoyed it. If nothing else, the writing seems a bit more smooth, and the additional forshadowing tidbits aren’t too jarring. Does anyone know how different Drawing and Waste Lands are from the original publications?
I’ll also recommend that you pick up a new printing of one of the first four books, and read the new intro. King goes to some length to explain his use of “19”. Mostly, it’s one of those coincidental numbers in his life (the accident), but it’s also the age he started writing “The Gunslinger” - an age he felt was his ideal.
:ivylass comes rushing in:
I finished it! I finished it!
I liked it MUCH better than Wolves of the Calla. In WotC, I kept waiting for something to happen. In SoS, there was so much going on I couldn’t put it down.
I am so mad at how it ended! Susannah/Mia giving birth, Jake and Callahan about to bust into the Dixie Pig.
I did note the reference to 9/11, and I couldn’t get past that part for a minute. I guess all of us, who watched that terrible day unfold on tv, will get caught by references. Hell, I still get a twinge whenever I see an establishing shot of a tv show in NY with the Twin Towers.
And I have one huge question that no one seems to have mentioned. Calvin Tower’s friend is Aaron Deepneau.
Ed Deepnau is the maniac in Insomnia who crashed the small engine plane into the Derry Convention Center on orders of the Crimson King.
That cannot be a coincidence. When is that connection going to be made?
I’d guess in the next book.
Yeah, I know, the whole world hates a smartass. Sometimes, though, I just can’t help myself.
Not different at all. The Gunslinger is the only one he rewrote.
A couple of people asked some questions about the early publications of The Gunslinger. The 5 chapters did in fact first appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The Gunslinger - October 1978
The Way Station - April 1980
The Oracle and the Mountains - February 1981
The Slow Mutants - July 1981
The Gunslinger and The Dark Man - November 1981
The Gunslinger was first published by Donald M.Grant in 1982, with a print run of only 10,000. A second edition was also published by Grant, also with a print of 10,000.
It’s coming out the same day as NEal Stephenson’s *The System of the World *? Christ, I’m going to be a reading fool for a few days in late September!
Hey, if you didn’t say it, I was gonna.
I’m getting in here late. I just finished the book today (Well, yesterday, I guess. It’s after midnight here) after buying it July 1.
Damn, but it’s a quick read.
My take on Stevie-as-character? Better than I thought it was going to be. I was pleasantly relieved to see that the modern-day King was at least slightly critical of himself (with his comments about drinking and other things). And I was glad that the character didn’t believe EVERYTHING right away. That would have killed it for me.
Hrm…Dinky Evershaw, Jack Sawyer, Ted Brautigan, Clotho/Lachesis/Atropo (maybe?), Pennywise (wonder if any of the KIDS from It’ll be in the last book)…interesting.
Question, though: To the poster who theorized that Eddie (who’s one of my favorite SK characters ever, but not enough to unthrone Larry Underwood…hey! What about people from The Stand? Too much?) may be the only one to reach the Tower…in Insomnia (of which I must be in the minority, as I liked it), towards the end, the kid (the one that ends up saving someone else, who has an important part to play in the Tower), doesn’t the kid, Patrick, or whatever, doesn’t he tell his mother than Roland has reached the Tower?
Doesn’t mean that he survives it, but indicates that he made it that far.
Roland’s my hero, though…I love Eddie. And Oy. And Jake’s turning into a decent guy. But ol’ long, tall, and ugly himself? No contest.
Can’t wait for Book VII!