More than 30 years down the road, I still vividly remember the thrill of reading Stephen King’s “The Stand.”

I was already a fan of King by 1978, when the book came out, having read “Carrie” and “Salem’s Lot” and “The Shining.” I admired “Carrie” for the writing exercise that it was — pieced together from newspaper articles and journal entries and what-have-you — but was genuinely creeped out by “Salem’s Lot” and “The Shining.” These were the real deal: Scary tales by a talented writer. We’re not talking hack stuff here. How many of us cringed even as we eagerly anticipated what we would find behind the door to Room 237 in “The Shining?”

So I was expecting a lot from “The Stand” but not quite sure exactly what. There was that strange cover on the hardback, for instance.

But when I dug into the book, boy oh boy. King’s tale of the end of the world and the real battle that begins after was everything I wanted from a novel: Great if flawed good guys like Stu and Larry and Frannie; a frightening bad guy in Flagg who surrounded himself with bullies and hoods, just as you would expect to happen in real life; characters like Harold whose fall from grace propelled the plot to new heights even as you wanted them to be redeemed.

Somebody, somewhere, has written the definitive article or thesis on all the book’s influences on the pop culture that followed it, and I won’t attempt to do that here. But how many books and TV shows (including my beloved “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) were able to go where they went because King had gone there first?

There was a pretty good TV miniseries adaptation of “The Stand” in 1994 featuring Gary Sinise in a damn-near-perfect portrayal of Stu Redman.

So it’s with a mixture of anticipation and dread that I read Hollywood is making a big-screen version of “The Stand.” It’s comforting knowing that Steve Kloves and David Yates, who wrote and directed the most recent “Harry Potter” films, are tentatively scheduled to make the movie (or movies).

I thought Stanley Kubrick horribly bungled the movie version of “The Shining,” but Kloves and Yates just might pull this off.

And even if they don’t, as the author himself  is fond of noting, “The Stand” will still be there, on my shelf, ready for the next time I want to jump into King’s post-apocalyptic world.