11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Stephen King's science fiction work is proof that he really did stop sucking. Running Man, The Cell, and 11/22/63 are some of the best novels I've ever read, and honestly make me wonder why King bothers with horror. This time travel alternate history novel was researched extensively by King, given a really accurate and historical feel to the events of 1958 and 1963, the time 11/22/63 is set in. A high school English teacher (in a trademark King move of giving his protagonists his own characteristics - King was also an English high school teacher) is summonsed by a local diner owner, Al, who seems to have aged and become terminally ill in less than 24 hours. Al shows Jake a time portal at the back of the diner, which leads to September 9, 1958, and tells him it's possible to change history, but a reset, happens on the return trip to 1958 which voids the change. Al is obsessed with preventing JFK's assassination and hatches a detailed plan, but the past resists change. He develops lung cancer and begs Jake to finish his mission. Jake goes back in time, preparing to foil Oswald, and unleashes a chain of events that changes the past, and his present. After changing the past, he discovers that there are numerous portals, and that changing the past doesn't erase the past, it just creates another time thread. More changes mean more threads, and a more unstable reality. When Jake returns to 2011, it has become a lawless dystopia, where the Civil Rights Act 1964 was never passed. The novel became an immediate number one best seller, and won the 2011 LA Times Book Prize, the 2012 International Thriller Writers Award, and was nominated for the 2012 British Fantasy and Locus Awards. This is the best King work the past decade, rivaling his greatest works like The Stand. I'm not sure what Stevie has been taking to improve his writing mojo, but whatever it is, please keep on taking it, Steven.

Books in 11/22/63 Series (1)

Vol. 1