The Jaunt

Last updated
"The Jaunt"
Short story by Stephen King
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s) Horror, science fiction, Short story
Publication
Published in The Twilight Zone Magazine (June 1981)
Skeleton Crew
Publication type Periodical
Media typePrint (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]

Contents

Plot

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.

Television adaptation

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]

See also

Related Research Articles

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.

<i>Skeleton Crew</i> (short story collection) 1985 short story collection by Stephen King

Skeleton Crew is a short story collection 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.

<i>Four Past Midnight</i> Collection of novellas by Stephen King

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Williamson</span> American science fiction writer (1908–2006)

John Stewart Williamson, who wrote as Jack Williamson, was an American science fiction writer, one of several called the "Dean of Science Fiction". He is also credited with one of the first uses of the term genetic engineering. Early in his career he sometimes used the pseudonyms Will Stewart and Nils O. Sonderlund.

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.

<i>The Stars My Destination</i> 1956 science fiction novel by Alfred Bester

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.

<i>Space</i> (Baxter novel) 2000 novel by Stephen Baxter

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asteroids in fiction</span>

Asteroids have appeared in fiction since at least the late 1800s, the first one—Ceres—having been discovered in 1801. They were initially only used infrequently as writers preferred the planets as settings. The once-popular Phaëton hypothesis, which states that the asteroid belt consists of the remnants of the former fifth planet that existed in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter before somehow being destroyed, has been a recurring theme with various explanations for the planet's destruction proposed. This hypothetical former planet is in science fiction often called "Bodia" in reference to Johann Elert Bode, for whom the since-discredited Titius–Bode law that predicts the planet's existence is named.

"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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fictional planets of the Solar System</span>

Fictional planets of the Solar System have been depicted since the 1700s—often but not always corresponding to hypothetical planets that have at one point or another been seriously proposed by real-world astronomers, though commonly persisting in fiction long after the underlying scientific theories have been refuted. Vulcan was a planet hypothesized to exist inside the orbit of Mercury between 1859 and 1915 to explain anomalies in Mercury's orbit until Einstein's theory of general relativity resolved the matter; it continued to appear in fiction as late as the 1960s. Counter-Earth—a planet diametrically opposite Earth in its orbit around the Sun—was originally proposed by the ancient Greek philosopher Philolaus in the fifth century BCE, and has appeared in fiction since at least the late 1800s. It is sometimes depicted as very similar to Earth and other times very different, often used as a vehicle for satire, and frequently inhabited by counterparts of the people of Earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extrasolar planets in fiction</span>

Planets outside of the Solar System have appeared in fiction since at least the 1850s, long before the first real ones were discovered in the 1990s. Most of these fictional planets do not differ significantly from the Earth, and serve only as settings for the narrative. The majority host native lifeforms, sometimes with humans integrated into the ecosystems. Fictional planets that are not Earth-like vary in many different ways. They may have significantly stronger or weaker gravity on their surfaces, or have a particularly hot or cold climate. Both desert planets and ocean planets appear, as do planets with unusual chemical conditions. Various peculiar planetary shapes have been depicted, including flattened, cubic, and toroidal. Some fictional planets exist in multiple-star systems where the orbital mechanics can lead to exotic day–night or seasonal cycles, while others do not orbit any star at all. More fancifully, planets are occasionally portrayed as having sentience, though this is less common than stars receiving the same treatment or a planet's lifeforms having a collective consciousness.

<i>Venus Equilateral</i> 1942-45 science fiction collection by George O. Smith

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.

<i>Invaders from Mars</i> (1986 film) 1986 film by Tobe Hooper

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comets in fiction</span>

Comets have appeared in works of fiction since at least the 1830s. They primarily appear in science fiction as literal objects, but also make occasional symbolical appearances in other genres. In keeping with their traditional cultural associations as omens, they often threaten destruction to Earth. This commonly comes in the form of looming impact events, and occasionally through more novel means such as affecting Earth's atmosphere in different ways. In other stories, humans seek out and visit comets for purposes of research or resource extraction. Comets are inhabited by various forms of life ranging from microbes to vampires in different depictions, and are themselves living beings in some stories.

<i>Princess of Mars</i> 2009 American film

Princess of Mars is a 2009 direct-to-DVD science fiction film made by American independent studio The Asylum, loosely based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel A Princess of Mars (1917). The film's promotional art mentions how the original story inspired some elements of the James Cameron film Avatar (2009), but neither the credits nor promotional material mention Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is not to be confused with the higher-budget science fantasy film John Carter (2012), which is a direct adaptation of the novel. In the UK, the film was released with the title The Martian Colony Wars, and in other international markets with the title Avatar of Mars.

"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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teleportation in fiction</span>

Teleportation is the theoretical transfer of matter 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.

References

  1. Beahm, G. (1998). Stephen King from A to Z: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Work. Andrews McMeel Publishing. p. 110. ISBN   978-0-8362-6914-7 . Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  2. Wiater, S.; Golden, C.; Wagner, H. (2001). The Stephen King Universe: The Guide to the Worlds of the King of Horror. St. Martin's Press. p. 444. ISBN   978-1-58063-160-0 . Retrieved 2022-01-04.
  3. "'The Jaunt' Series Based On Stephen King Short Story Coming From 'Fear The Walking Dead' Co-Creator Dave Erickson". slashfilm.com. 24 August 2021. Retrieved 5 January 2022.
  4. "Stephen King teleportation story 'The Jaunt' to be adapted into TV series". space.com. 3 June 2021. Retrieved 5 January 2022.