Domes, Bubbles, and Apocalypses: How “When The Trees All Burned” Fits Into Pop Culture
“Just ‘cause we’re stuck in a bubble doesn’t mean we can’t cause trouble.”
Let's talk about domes, shall we?
I’ll admit it right here—I’m a massive Stephen King fan. Unlike many horror aficionados, I didn’t discover him until adulthood. My teenage years were spent with Leonard Cohen’s poetry and Anne Rice novels. But when I finally found King, I was captivated by his unmatched world-building and fearless willingness to try anything, no matter how weird. That’s what makes him so brilliant—his creative fearlessness.
So when people ask if my upcoming novel When The Trees All Burned was inspired by King’s “propulsively intriguing” (USA TODAY) Under the Dome, I can’t exactly feign innocence.
Of course it was! Well, partly.
The truth is, domes have been a staple in pop culture since... well, forever. They’re these perfect little metaphors for isolation, protection, control, and salvation all wrapped up in one convenient transparent package. Like a literary snow globe, except we writers get to decide the weather inside, the inhabitants, and whether anyone gets to leave alive.
King’s Dome vs. My Dome (A Tale of Two Bubbles)
King’s dome in Chester’s Mill appears suddenly and mysteriously, trapping unwilling residents inside and creating a pressure cooker for human darkness to boil over. It’s a masterclass in examining the worst of humanity when the lid is sealed tight.
My dome? It’s almost the opposite.
Rajiv Montgomery Noah’s Eden is built deliberately as salvation from an impending apocalypse. It’s not meant to trap people against their will but to save a select, algorithm-chosen few. If King’s dome is a prison, mine is more like... well, it’s right there in the name: Eden. A sanctuary from the fire raining down outside.
While King focuses on the microcosm of one town’s descent into chaos, I wanted to pan out to see global destruction through multiple viewpoints. My story isn’t about what happens when good people are trapped—it’s about what happens when the world ends and only a few people get tickets to the afterparty.
From Pauly Shore to John Travolta: The Dome Family Tree
Look, I’ll confess that somewhere in my subconscious, Pauly Shore’s Bio-Dome might have planted a seed. I know, I know—not exactly high literature. But that ridiculous comedy about two slackers accidentally sealed inside an environmental experiment does touch on similar themes of closed ecosystems and survival. If you squint really hard. And maybe have had too much sugar.
Then there’s The Boy in the Plastic Bubble with young John Travolta living in isolation because of his compromised immune system. While my dome spans acres and houses 200 people, there’s a shared exploration of what happens when safety requires separation from the world. Travolta risks his life for connection; my characters are torn between salvation and the loved ones they’ve left behind.
The Truman Show gave us another kind of dome—one where the central character doesn’t even know he’s living in a constructed reality. While Rajiv’s chosen ones are fully aware of their containment, both stories examine the ethics of one person deciding the fate of others.
And who could forget The Hunger Games with its deadly arena enclosed in a dome-like forcefield? Collins used her dome as an arena for entertainment and control. I use mine as the last hope for humanity. Different approaches, same architectural preference.
Writers: Professional Borrowers
Here’s a truth about writers that I’ve come to accept: we’re all just magpies, collecting shiny bits from everything we consume and reworking them into our own nests. Shakespeare did it. King does it. And yes, I do it too.
The dome is a perfect example of this literary recycling program. It works because it’s flexible enough to serve different narrative purposes while maintaining its powerful symbolic resonance.
In When The Trees All Burned, I wanted to play with the tension between salvation and loss, between chosen and left behind. The dome allowed me to literally draw that line—inside versus outside, saved versus doomed. But I also wanted to question whether those distinctions are as clear-cut as they seem.
So... Is It Just Another Dome Story?
Well, yes and no. Yes, it features a dome. No, it’s not just about the dome.
It’s about faith and skepticism. It’s about who we become when faced with extinction. It’s about the lies we tell ourselves to justify survival. It’s about prophets and profits and whether anyone really listens until it’s too late.
The dome is just the snow globe I chose to shake up.
In the end, perhaps what matters isn’t that I borrowed the dome concept, but what I chose to put inside it—and what I chose to burn outside of it.
And if nothing else, my dome story has no Pauly Shore in it. You’re welcome, literature.
When The Trees All Burned comes out on April 1. But don’t wait until then to find out if you’d make the cut in a global apocalypse! Head over to the Algorithm Quiz to discover if you’re dome-worthy.
Much like Elaine Benes had to determine if her dates were “sponge-worthy” when her preferred contraceptive went off the market, Rajiv had to be selective about who earned sanctuary in his bubble. The difference? Elaine only had a box of 60 sponges. Rajiv had space for 200 souls.
I promise the soundtrack to my apocalypse isn’t the slap bass of a Seinfeld episode transition (though I’d argue that would make the end of the world strangely hilarious). And while there’s no “close talker” guarding Eden’s gate or anyone yelling “No dome for you!”, eagle-eyed readers might spot a Jerry reference or two hidden in the narrative. What can I say? A global apocalypse is a lot like a Seinfeld episode—it’s really about nothing... except in this case, “nothing” is what's left of civilization as we know it. (Spoiler? Maybe, but let’s be honest, I’m marketing this as a book about the end of the world, so what did you think was going to happen?)
Are YOU dome-worthy? There's only one way to find out! Take the quiz today. “Winners” will even get an opportunity to add a fun little inside-joke gift to their book order. Unlike Rajiv’s actual dome, everyone’s invited to participate—no advanced algorithms required.
And for those who do make it to the end of Book 1, remember Pauly Shore’s prophetic words from Bio-Dome: “Just ‘cause we’re stuck in a bubble doesn’t mean we can’t cause trouble.” Let’s just say that in Book 2, Eden might discover that salvation and harmony aren’t necessarily the same thing...
