# Has anybody else read Stephen King's short story 'The Jaunt.' Wow **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [January 17, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574 "2020-01-17T17:17:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/21 "2020-01-18T00:39:35Z")
> [@Alpha\_Twit](#): > > I read this many years ago and I agree, it stuck with me much more vividly than most of King’s short stories. I’d almost like to see this concenpt revived in a _Black Mirror_ episode. Cannot tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic - because like 75% of all _Black Mirror_ episodes seem to be some variation of the _Jaunt_ concept. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/22 "2020-01-18T00:58:07Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > It stuck with me, but the part I didn’t really agree with was the kid came back and acted like a kid and called his dad ‘dad’. > > He was probably stuck in the jaunt for trillions of years, if not much much longer. The concept of a ‘dad’ would have been long forgotten to him by then. So would all other language–but how many people would the story have stuck with if the kid’s statement was “Arrrrggghh!”? ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/23 "2020-01-18T02:07:50Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > So would all other language–but how many people would the story have stuck with if the kid’s statement was “Arrrrggghh!”? Maybe he was dictating? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/24 "2020-01-18T06:35:46Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > It stuck with me, but the part I didn’t really agree with was the kid came back and acted like a kid and called his dad ‘dad’. > > He was probably stuck in the jaunt for trillions of years, if not much much longer. The concept of a ‘dad’ would have been long forgotten to him by then. Naah, I suspect a trillion years is well nigh enough to push one to investigate all of one’s memories and turn every little fragment into a Legend and try one’s best to grab onto more. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/25 "2020-01-18T19:37:25Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Naah, I suspect a trillion years is well nigh enough to push one to investigate all of one’s memories and turn every little fragment into a Legend and try one’s best to grab onto more. I don’t know. I liked in the man from earth when he describes barely remembering a father figure after 14,000 years or so. I think you’d forget the same way most people forget their 3rd grade teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/26 "2020-01-18T19:48:08Z")
Just got through reading it and from the description it sounds like being in the jaunt would be similar to being left in a sensory deprivation chamber for an undetermined amount of time and not being allowed to sleep. Just stuck in nothingness with your own thoughts. After hours, days, years go by you’d surely go mad. A trillion years? Heck, i’d go nuts after a week. I can barely handle lying in bed in a dark room with insomnia for a few hours. Of course if you can sleep through it, like we do every night, you have no sense of the time passed. 8 hours passes in a blink and you’re fine. No feeling like “god, I was so bored just lying there for 8 hours”. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/27 "2020-01-18T20:07:58Z")
I recently read that story for the first time because someone linked to it either on here or reddit a year or two ago. The John Hamm Black Mirror episode is a similar nightmare. I imagined the Jaunt time to be around a human lifetime so 70ish years. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/28 "2020-01-18T20:35:06Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > I recently read that story for the first time because someone linked to it either on here or reddit a year or two ago. The John Hamm Black Mirror episode is a similar nightmare. I imagined the Jaunt time to be around a human lifetime so 70ish years. In the story they mention it being a billion eternities and longer than time itself (so at bare minimum 14 billion years). ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/29 "2020-01-18T20:39:55Z")
A number of the stories I read in the late 70s from his _Night Shift_ collection (“The Mangler”, “The Ledge”, “Quitters, Inc”, “The Man Who Loved Flowers”) seemed to cling onto my leg like homesick diarrhea more than Jaunt did. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/30 "2020-01-18T21:21:59Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > In the story they mention it being a billion eternities and longer than time itself (so at bare minimum 14 billion years). Do they? I thought the whole point was that he’s, uh, Just Asking Questions; that, after just tossing out the idea that, hey, it could be a hundred years or a million, he moves on to tossing out the idea of it taking a billion eternities — but he still doesn’t really _know,_ he’s still just kind of putting stuff out there, is all, right? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2020, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/31 "2020-01-18T22:12:25Z")
It’s one of his best, simply because it is genuinely disturbing. A great big spider or a werewolf or an insane hotel caretaker can kill you but, hell, I might get killed tomorrow just driving around. What King describes in The Jaunt is much worse. Much, much worse. Like, you would be better off never having been born. > [@Wesley Clark](#): > > n the story they mention it being a billion eternities and longer than time itself (so at bare minimum 14 billion years). It is never stated how long a Jaunt feels like. Ideas are thrown around but no one actually knows, because no one survives it for long; the only comments you have from someone who has experienced it are “It’s eternity in there” and “Longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think!” It would not have to feel long to be hell. The sensation of time passing with no external stimuli of any kind, not even proprioception, for even a “day” would be torture. For a “year” would certainly drive you quite insane. It would FEEL like eternity, and since the perception of time is only somewhat connected to its physical passing, how it feels is really all that matters. > [@](#): > > It stuck with me, but the part I didn’t really agree with was the kid came back and acted like a kid and called his dad ‘dad’ A person is not in the Jaunt for any perceptible amount of real time, though. After rematerializing on Mars, the boy’s brain will still retain the neuron patterns of his memories prior to entering the Jaunt; they just, one presumes, now quickly rewire to remember his perception of time passing in the Jaunt. He still has a memory of who his father is; it could not have rewired in the Jaunt because no physical time passed. Of course, that doesn’t explain how his hair turned white. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/32 "2020-01-19T22:43:12Z")
I think his hair turned white because he aged during the Jaunt. The prisoner they sent through did the same thing. I took it to mean that the brain cannot go for any meaningful length of time without sensory input. So the Jaunt doesn’t take years to get from Earth the Mars. The initial experiments the scientist did showed the item showing up on the other side almost instantaneously. I think the Jaunt takes mere minutes, but with absolutely no sensory input during that time you go mad if you’re awake. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/33 "2020-01-19T23:16:46Z")
Sensory deprivation doesn’t turn your hair instantly (0.000000000067 seconds according to the story) white, though, and “His face had not changed in any physical way— it was not lined or jowly or wasted…” Clearly something super weird and freaky is going on in there, better not to even know about it if you value your sanity… ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/34 "2020-01-19T23:54:26Z")
Either that or the old trope about insanity itself turning your hair white. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2020, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/35 "2020-01-22T22:51:57Z")
Somehow I never came across this story before, but was prompted to read it based on this thread. …and despite the very interesting premise, I thought the execution came across as both dated and juvenile. King’s description of the hellscape that the world had become by 1987 due to the continued oil crisis was definitely overcome by events. The juvenile part was the reaction of the son after being jaunted – Stephen King seems to relish shocking his readers by having the boy claw his own eyes out. As to the premise of the story: if the consequence of being jaunted while awake were really that dire (i.e. death or insanity), surely the protocol would involve something more than just a quick inhalation of anesthetic gas that could be so easily circumvented by a kid. (Which is why modern general anesthesia for surgery is a much more involved process, in which the anaesthetic agents are generally administered intravenously.) Anesthesiologists also conduct tests and carefully monitor patients before and during surgery to ensure they are unconscious. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/36 "2020-01-23T01:06:01Z")
> [@robby](#): > > The juvenile part was the reaction of the son after being jaunted – Stephen King seems to relish shocking his readers by having the boy claw his own eyes out. You realize that King is a _horror_ writer, right? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/37 "2020-01-23T03:05:02Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You realize that King is a _horror_ writer, right? Of course. It just struck me as overly gratuitous, IMHO. For what it’s worth, I’ve always preferred his non-horror works more than his horror fiction, like [_Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Hayworth_and_Shawshank_Redemption) (which I read over a decade before the movie came out), and his fantasy novel [_The Eyes of the Dragon_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Dragon). _The Jaunt_ seemed to read like a typical science fiction short story, until it took a left turn at the very end to graphic horror. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised because I knew who the author was going in, but it was still jarring. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/38 "2020-01-23T03:11:40Z")
> [@robby](#): > > As to the premise of the story: if the consequence of being jaunted while awake were really that dire (i.e. death or insanity), surely the protocol would involve something more than just a quick inhalation of anesthetic gas that could be so easily circumvented by a kid. (Which is why modern general anesthesia for surgery is a much more involved process, in which the anaesthetic agents are generally administered intravenously.) Anesthesiologists also conduct tests and carefully monitor patients before and during surgery to ensure they are unconscious. This was the issue I had that made it difficult for me to enjoy The Jaunt. I love me some Steven King, especially his short stories, but I had problems with this story because of that flaw. Still, great concept and fine storytelling. The Mist remains my personal fave. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/39 "2020-01-23T03:24:51Z")
Second recommendation for “The Raft”. Sorta left turn: Does anyone remember King’s short story “Man With a Belly”? Cerebral but cringe-worthy mob marriage/revenge saga. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2020, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574/40 "2020-01-23T14:37:13Z")
There is also the short story about the guy with the finger eyes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anybody-else-read-stephen-kings-short-story-the-jaunt-wow/846574.md?page=3)