#321/B – 11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 is about a man who has a chance most of us only dream of—to stop a major tragic historical event from happening.

We’ve all daydreamed about time travel at some point in our lives, I’m sure. Killing Hitler, stopping 9/11 or Pearl Harbour…or *cough* more current events. Or maybe you just wished you could have saved a loved one.

The opportunity presented here is the JFK assassination, something that has been explored many times before, including shows like Quantum Leap and Red Dwarf.

Our protagonist, Jake Epping, is a high school English teacher in Maine (big shocker there), who stumbles upon the secret of a friend of his, Al, who owns a diner, and why he’s able to keep the price of his burgers so low. There’s a portal back to 1958 in the pantry.

I mean, hey, why not?

In writing, time travel is tricky business. If you follow the standard conventions, you might come off as cliché. Try something new, and SF nerds may nitpick you to your grave.

11/22/63 doesn’t spend too much time worrying about the technical details and gets on with the story, exploring the idea in a hands-on kind of way rather than exposition and theorizing.

Because, well, time travel isn’t real. And any theory that utilizes known physics to create a plausible-sounding means for it to happen is still just bending reality in a convenient way… not unlike warping space for FTL space travel.

Sometimes you can explore these technical elements of make-believe science in a way that’s fun. Trying to explain how dragons work can be really interesting. Or you can just accept them and get on with the story.

One unique twist to King’s scenario is that the time window opens up five years before JFK’s assassination, and you have no choice but to wait it out. Returning to the present and going back puts you right back at 1958 with everything reset.

This means Jake has to bide his time. Not that he has any intention of waiting until the day of the event, but we know going in it will come to that. Hell, the title of the book makes that pretty obvious.

For Jake, there are other problems involved. Namely—what if Oswald didn’t act alone? Jake is 95% certain he did, but given the length of time required to get to Oswald and the fact the past (the obstinate past) does its best to get in his way, he wants to be 99% certain before he kills the man.

Now, if the only thing this book was about was the logistics of preventing the JFK assassination, it probably wouldn’t be more than a novella, rather than a big honking novel.

But 11/22/63 is equal parts love story. And a darn good one at that. I will say no more on the matter, but if you’re familiar with the general tropes of time travel romance, you’ll hear echoes of them in how this is handled.

There was something else I noticed in the tone of the book. Maybe it’s an overfamiliarity with King’s work, but there was a sense of moral dread throughout—the thought that despite our hero being on the side of angels that somehow he’s wrong to assassinate an assassin.

Homicide is never something to be taken lightly, and King makes sure that the superhero fantasy versions of such a time travel event are flushed thoroughly down the toilet. Right or wrong, killing changes a person.

Something surprising (and welcomed) in this book was his choice to have a bit of a world overlap in his story. Fans of the novel IT (or its adaptations) will soon realize that his first attempt at altering the past is set in a familiar time and place with a couple of characters from the book.

This is separate from the JFK storyline, however… just in case you were worried that Pennywise turns out to be behind the grassy knoll. I recommend the book to any fan of time travel stories, King fans, or King fans who don’t care for his horror stories (they exist!)