"The Jaunt" | |
---|---|
Short story by Stephen King | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Horror, Science fiction, Short story |
Publication | |
Published in | The Twilight Zone Magazine (June 1981) Skeleton Crew |
Publication type | Periodical |
Media type | Print (Magazine, Hardback & Paperback) |
Publication date | 1981 |
"The Jaunt" is a horror short story by Stephen King first published in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981, and collected in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew . [1] The story takes place early in the 24th century, when the technology for teleportation, referred to as "Jaunting", is commonplace, allowing for instantaneous transportation across enormous distances, even to other planets in the Solar System. The term "Jaunting" is stated within the short story to be an homage to The Stars My Destination , a science fiction novel by Alfred Bester. [2]
In the distant future, humans have developed a form of instantaneous teleportation called "the Jaunt", enabling colonization of the Solar System. Mark Oates and his family are preparing to travel to Mars for a two-year business trip. As the Jaunting service prepares the other passengers, Mark entertains his two children by recounting a semi-apocryphal tale of the discovery and history of the Jaunt. He explains how in 1987 a scientist named Victor Carune inadvertently discovered the ability to Jaunt after years of research when he accidentally teleported two of his own fingers. Although the procedure functioned perfectly when he tested inorganic objects, Carune discovered a side-effect on the mice sent through his two portals. The mice would either die instantly or behave erratically before dying moments later. He eventually discovered that beings of higher neural activity, such as animals and humans, could only survive the Jaunt while unconscious. Mark explains that this is why all people must undergo general anaesthesia before Jaunting.
Mark spares his children a gruesome account of the first conscious human to experience the Jaunt, a condemned death-row murderer named Rudy Foggia who had been promised a full pardon upon taking part in the experiment. After six other inmates were Jaunted under the effects of anesthesia, Foggia emerged insane, screaming that the Jaunt was an "eternity" before dying of a heart attack. Mark also omits mention of the 30 people who have Jaunted while conscious, voluntarily or otherwise. Each time, they either died instantly or emerged insane. Scientists had come to conclude that while Jaunting is physically carried out almost instantly, to a conscious mind it lasts an indeterminately long amount of time, perhaps millions of years, leading to a conscious person simply being left alone with their thoughts in an endless field of white. However, Mark attempts to present this fact in a gentle way as to not frighten his children or his wife as, unlike him, they are Jaunting for the first time.
After Mark finishes his story, the family is subjected to sleeping gas and Jaunted to Mars. Upon awakening, Mark is horrified to find that his son Ricky deliberately held his breath while being administered the anesthesia to experience the Jaunt while conscious and has been rendered completely insane. Ricky shrieks that Mark has no comprehension of how long he had been there, screaming “Longer than you think! Longer than you think!” and begins gouging his own eyes out as he is wheeled away from his terrified family by several attendants.
In 2015, it was announced that the story was set for a film adaptation by Andy Muschietti before he opted to realise King's It instead. [3]
As of January 2021, the story is due to be made into a television series for MRC by Fear The Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson. [4]
An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities. A related term is ultrawave.
Superluminal communication is a hypothetical process in which information is conveyed at faster-than-light speeds. The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment.
Skeleton Crew is a collection of short fiction by American writer Stephen King, published by Putnam in June 1985. A limited edition of a thousand copies was published by Scream/Press in October 1985 (ISBN 978-0910489126), illustrated by J. K. Potter, containing an additional short story, "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson", which had originally appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, and was later incorporated into King's 1987 novel The Tommyknockers. The original title of this book was Night Moves.
Four Past Midnight is a collection of novellas written by Stephen King in 1988 and 1989 and published in August 1990. It is his second book of this type, the first one being Different Seasons. The collection won the Bram Stoker Award in 1990 for Best Collection and was nominated for a Locus Award in 1991. In the introduction, King says that, while a collection of four novellas like Different Seasons, this book is more strictly horror with elements of the supernatural.
'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1976 and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.
The Tomorrow People is a British children's science fiction television series created by Roger Price. Produced by Thames Television for the ITV Network, the series first ran from 30 April 1973 to 19 February 1979.
The Stars My Destination is a science fiction novel by American writer Alfred Bester. Its first publication was in book form in June 1956 in the United Kingdom, where it was titled Tiger! Tiger!, named after William Blake's 1794 poem "The Tyger", the first verse of which is printed as the first page of the novel. The book remains widely known under that title in the markets in which this edition was circulated. It was subsequently serialized in the American Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in four parts, beginning in October 1956. A working title was Hell's My Destination; the book was also associated with the name The Burning Spear. It would prove to be Bester's last novel for 19 years.
"The Dying Night" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the July 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and was reprinted in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), Asimov's Mysteries (1968), and The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973). "The Dying Night" is Asimov's third Wendell Urth story.
"All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" is a short story by Stephen King. It was originally published in the January 29, 2001 issue of The New Yorker magazine. In 2002, it was included in King's collection Everything's Eventual.
"Lunch at the Gotham Café" is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King. It originally appeared in the 1995 anthology Dark Love. It won the 1995 Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction. In 1997, it was published in the limited-edition collection Six Stories. In 2002, it was included in King's collection Everything's Eventual, with a scene from the story featured on the cover of the collection's first edition dust jacket.
Manifold: Space is a science fiction book by British author Stephen Baxter, first published in the United Kingdom in 2000, then released in the United States in 2001. It is the second book of the Manifold series and examines another possible solution to the Fermi paradox. Although it is in no sense a sequel to the first book it contains a number of the same characters, notably protagonist Reid Malenfant, and similar artefacts. The Manifold series contains four books, Manifold: Time, Manifold: Space, Manifold: Origin, and Phase Space.
L. T.'s Theory of Pets is a horror short story by American writer Stephen King. It was originally published in the 1997 limited-edition collection Six Stories. In 2001, it was released as an audiobook with the recording of King reading the story live at Royal Festival Hall in London. In 2002, it was collected in King's collection Everything's Eventual.
"Here There Be Tygers" is a short horror story by Stephen King. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King's Skeleton Crew in 1985.
The fictional portrayal of the Solar System has often included planets, moons, and other celestial objects which do not actually exist. Some of these objects were, at one time, seriously considered as hypothetical planets which were either thought to have been observed, or were hypothesized to be orbiting the Sun in order to explain certain celestial phenomena. Often such objects continued to be used in literature long after the hypotheses upon which they were based had been abandoned.
The Venus Equilateral series is a set of 13 science fiction short stories by American writer George O. Smith, concerning the Venus Equilateral Relay Station, an interplanetary communications hub located at the L4 Lagrangian point of the Sun-Venus system. Most of the stories were first published in Astounding Science Fiction between 1942 and 1945.
Invaders from Mars is a 1986 American science fiction horror film, directed by Tobe Hooper from a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. It is a remake of the 1953 film of the same name, and is a reworking of that film's screenplay by Richard Blake from an original story by John Tucker Battle. Its production was instigated by Wade Williams, millionaire exhibitor, science fiction film fan and sometime writer-producer-director, who had reissued the original film in 1978 after purchasing the copyright to the property. Elaborate creature and visual effects were supplied by Stan Winston and John Dykstra.
Edward Joseph Gorman Jr. was an American writer and short fiction anthologist. He published in almost every genre, but is best known for his work in the crime, mystery, western, and horror fields. His non-fiction work has been published in such publications as The New York Times and Redbook.
"Vault of the Beast" is a short story by Canadian writer A. E. van Vogt, published in the August 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
Teleportation is the theoretical transfer of matter and/or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction and fantasy literature, film, video games, and television. In some situations, teleporting is presented as time traveling across space.
The Martian is a 2011 science fiction debut novel written by Andy Weir. The book was originally self-published on Weir's blog, in a serialized format. In 2014, the book was re-released after Crown Publishing Group purchased the exclusive publishing rights. The story follows an American astronaut, Mark Watney, as he becomes stranded alone on Mars in 2035 and must improvise in order to survive.