Has anyone seen/read 11.22.63? (SPOILERS)

[democrattotheend]

I wasn't sure if this should go here or in the Lounge. I figured it was at least tangentially related to current events so I posted it here.

I finished watching it last week, and then bought the book and skipped to the end because I was so unsatisfied with the explanation of the alternate history on the show.

I couldn't figure out why I was so shaken up by it, until yesterday, when I realized that there are some striking similarities to how things could turn out. In the alternate history, thanks to Jake intervening, Kennedy is not killed in 1963 and is reelected in 1964. But then a backlash ensues and he is followed by George Wallace, an avowed racist who gets us into a nuclear war and uses bombs on American cities to stop the race riots. By 2011/2016 when Jake returns, the US has been all but reduced to rubble.

This is the kind of thing that would give me nightmares no matter what, but I think it's especially disturbing because I could see Trump being like Wallace in the book. He is running on an openly racist platform, and he is so unstable and ill-tempered, not to mention ill-versed in foreign policy, that I really don't trust him with the nuclear access codes. And if elected he would follow a young, charismatic two-term president who has been compared to Kennedy by many people, including members of the Kennedy family.

The Hulu show and book really served as a stark reminder of how dangerous Trump is.

That said, I really didn't like a lot of things about the ending: the show didn't explain the alternate history well at all, and the alternate history in the book didn't totally make sense. Why would Kennedy surviving the assassination attempt cause earthquakes to start happening right away that didn't happen in our reality?

[missingthebigdog]

1. I read the book, but didn't see the film adaptation.

It's been awhile, but I believe that the earthquakes in the book are the result of the instability caused by Jake's multiple trips into the alternate dimension.

Gotta love Stephen King.

[irisblue]

4. I agree about the instability causing the earthquakes

I read the book, even though I am lukewarm about King; I know he is a talented author, I enjoy his short stories more. Still an intriguing premise.

[democrattotheend]

5. But then how is it that he could magically reset everything?

Wouldn't going back to reset just create even more instability?

I think the point of the earthquakes was to show that things didn't go haywire because Kennedy lived; they went haywire because somebody went back in time to save him. But it was kind of muddied by the fact that some of the things in the alternate history could be traced to Kennedy surviving: he fails to pass civil rights, racial riots break out, George Wallace is elected as a backlash to the race riots, and that is a big part of why things went so wrong.

In the Hulu adaptation ....

EXTRA SPACE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE TV VERSION YET ...

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They further muddied it by having Harry tell Jake that all of the family members Jake saved ended up dying anyway. That is actually how I thought it might end with the Kennedy story - that Kennedy ended up being assassinated the following year or ended up dying of natural causes in his second term. But they took two very different tracks - Kennedy lived until 1983 but it caused so much geopolitical turmoil, completely changing the course of history. But with Harry's family, the same tragedy that Jake stopped ended up occurring in different ways.

[Runningdawg]

2. I have read the book

and liked it. Time travel stories are usually a 50/50 chance, either great or horrible. This one was right in the middle for me, I will be watching it as soon as it is released to Netflix.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Aldous Huxley and CS Lewis die?

Sorry, I should have put 'spoiler' on that too ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/eclipsed-in-death-we-remember-jfk-but-what-about-aldous-huxley-or-cs-lewis-8957192.html