Dark Tower Tours

Stephen King's magnum opus The Dark Tower is a difficult set of books to pin down and describe: A sprawling western, a science fiction laced fantasy, an epic tale on par with The Lord Of The Rings... all of these descriptions fit.

The story centers around Roland, the last of the gunslingers (think Jedi Knights) struggling to save all of Mid-World. The world has moved on, and Roland knows to save it he must reach The Dark Tower, a central nexus point that connects ALL worlds and ALL whens. To do this, he must have help, and draws to him three companions from our world. Together, they form a Ka-Tet (wondering where my blog name came from, Constant Reader? Wonder no more!) a group more powerful than friends, closer than family.

At the start of the fourth novel, the Ka-Tet has just survived a ride on a homicidal monorail and crashed at the last stop of... Topeka. It's not totally the Topeka, KS of our world, but it's the Topeka, KS of a parallel world, one what was devastated by the super-flu known as Captain Tripps from another of King's epics, The Stand.

Now I imagine that folks who live in New York or L.A. get this all the time. The "oh look, that was filmed just around the corner from where I live" syndrome. But friends let me tell you, it just doesn't happen here in Topeka KS all that often. I mean, our claim to fame is THE WIZARD OF OZ and let's face it, that's just about played out. When I read that I had goose flesh crawling up and down my arms. So I decided to share the experience. My hope is that my fellow Topekans will see these photos and think it's cool that Mr. Stephen King took care to get most of the details right, (we'll of course, forgive any literary changes!) and my Dark Tower aficionados who DON'T live nearby (you know who you are) will be able to look through these and think "yep, just how I pictured it in my head."

This link is to my Flicker photo gallery: Dark Tower Tour. The accompanying picture descriptions come directly from the fourth book, Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. I recommend watching in full screen, setting the options to show info, and move slow...