According to Stephen J. Spignesi 's 1998 book '' The Lost Work of Stephen King '' , '' The Cannibals '' ( originally titled '' Under the Dome '' ) is an unpublished unfinished 450-page handwritten novel written in 1982 , while King was filming '' Creepshow '' . This work later served as inspiration to King 's new novel '' Under the Dome '' . In 1982 , King said : " I 've got about four-hundred-and-fifty pages done and it is all about these people who are trapped in an apartment building . Worst thing I could think of . And I thought , would n't it be funny if they all ended up eating each other ? It 's very , very bizarre because it 's all on one note . And who knows whether it will be published or not ? " In Douglas E. Winter 's book '' The Art of Darkness '' , Stephen King is also quoted , talking around the time of '' Creepshow '' , about the origins of '' Under the Dome '' : " I worked on a book called '' The Cannibals '' — I had started it five years before , but it was called '' Under the Dome '' then . It did n't get finished either time . " On September 15 , 2009 , Stephen King 's official site posted a 61-page facsimile excerpt from King 's original novel '' The Cannibals '' , consisting of the first four chapters of the original typescript . A further 63 pages were posted on October 4 . The excerpts served to also document how long ago King had had the idea of being under a dome : Several Internet writers have speculated on a perceived similarity between '' Under the Dome '' and '' The Simpsons Movie '' , where , ... Springfield is isolated inside a large glass dome ... . I ca n't speak personally to this , because I have never seen the movie , and the similarity came as a complete surprise to me ... although I know , from personal experience , that the similarity will turn out to be casual . For the doubters , this excerpt from '' The Cannibals '' should demonstrate that I was thinking '' dome '' and '' isolation '' long before Homer , Marge , and their amusing brood came on the scene . " Regarding the theme of '' Under the Dome '' , King said : From the very beginning , I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological problems that we face in the world today . The fact is we all live under the dome . We have this little blue world that we 've all seen from outer space , and it appears like that 's about all there is . It 's a natural allegorical situation , without whamming the reader over the head with it . I do n't like books where everything stands for everything else . It works with '' Animal Farm '' : You can be a child and read it as a story about animals , but when you 're older , you realize it 's about communism , capitalism , fascism . That 's the genius of Orwell . But I love the idea about isolating these people , addressing the questions that we face . We 're a blue planet in a corner of the galaxy , and for all the satellites and probes and Hubble pictures , we have n't seen evidence of anyone else . There 's nothing like ours . We have to conclude we 're on our own , and we have to deal with it . We 're under the dome . All of us . Speaking to '' Time '' and '' The New York Times Book Review '' regarding the novel 's politics , King said : I was angry about incompetency . Obviously I 'm on the left of center . I did n't believe there was justification for going into the war in Iraq . And it just seemed at the time , that in the wake of 9/11 , the Bush Administration was like this angry kid walking down the street who could n't find whoever sucker punched him , and so turned around and punched the first likely suspect . Sometimes the sublimely wrong people can be in power at a time when you really need the '' right '' people . I put a lot of that into the book . But when I started I said , " I want to use the Bush – Cheney dynamic for the people who are the leaders of this town . " As a result , you have Big Jim Rennie , the villain of the piece . I got to like the other guy , Andy Sanders . He was n't actively evil , he was just incompetent — which is how I always felt about George W. Bush . I enjoyed taking the Bush – Cheney dynamic and shrinking it to the small-town level . The last administration interested me because of the aura of fundamentalist religion that surrounded it and the rather amazing incompetency of those two top guys . I thought there is something blackly humorous in it . So in a sense , '' Under the Dome '' is an apocalyptic version of '' The Peter Principle '' . The paperback edition of '' Just After Sunset '' , released on September 29 , 2009 , included an excerpt from the novel . An excerpt was published in the November 6 , 2009 issue of '' Entertainment Weekly ''
9/11
September 11 attacks
Under the Dome (novel)