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The Jaunt
"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.
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 government, which learned of the Jaunt through its inventor's use of a computer database in his experiments, soon took control of the project, demoting the scientist to a figurehead in the program. After the introduction of the Jaunt to the public in 1991, the country experienced a strong economic boom, and the price of oil declined to such an extent that OPEC disbanded. Due to environmental pollution, water became a more expensive and profitable commodity than oil by 2006.
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 government, which learned of the Jaunt through its inventor's use of a computer database in his experiments, soon took control of the project, demoting the scientist to a figurehead in the program. After the introduction of the Jaunt to the public in 1991, the country experienced a strong economic boom, and the price of oil declined to such an extent that OPEC disbanded. Due to environmental pollution, water became a more expensive and profitable commodity than oil by 2006.
25 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1981
38 people are currently reading
7689 people want to read
About the author
Stephen King
2,497 books886k followersStephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
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October 13, 2025
You and I sacrificed my adolescence / Just to waste my time on the edges of your life (Never Ending Song – Conan Gray).
Who needs sleep anyway? So let me just see~eet the scee~eene, I watched this movie recently called The Monkey, and it was an okay horror-comedy flick about not allowing grief hold you back from experiencing life and all its wonders, but then upon further reading, I found out that it was based on a Stephen King short story!? It’s wild because if you asked me even a year ago, I would have told you that his books were too inaccessible for me to really dive into, and yet here I am inadvertently watching movies based on his works or just straight up reading his thousands page novels! Sheesh, how many of this guy’s stories have I consumed without even realizing? So I figured I should just bite the bullet look for his most messed up story. There's got to be one that stands above all the rest, right? And after tireless research (ten minutes of searching), everybody said that his short story, The Jaunt, is the most gut-punching and fucked up slice of horror that I'll ever encounter. And you know what? That might just be true! We find ourselves teleported to the 24th century and society has progressed to the point where instantaneous travel indistinguishable from teleportation called “Jaunting” has since become as readily available as riding the bus. But like everything, this version of traveling comes with its own set of dangers, as a person needs to be put to sleep before going through with it because even though the process is technically instant, the mind doesn’t perceive is as such and you basically spend millions and millions of years in a Black Mirror John Hamm mind prison. We're given this information by a man named Mark Oates who’s trying to alleviate his family’s growing jitters towards the practice by distracting them with a history lesson. But details he gracefully leaves out for his family, he leaves in all its gruesome clarity for us! From horrible animal experimentation to inhumane testing on prisoners, it turns out that this whole business has a dark past with life-altering side-effects should things go wrong, and damn, do things go wrong in the worst possible way! So here’s the thing, the other reason why I picked this up was because I kept seeing that other book that’s making the rounds here on Goodreads about how hell is an eternity or something (I don’t remember its name), and I was too much of a scaredy-cat to read it because the thought of a forever prison really freaks me out. It always gets me! Even positive depictions of heaven that are of The Lovely Bones kind where we keep our thoughts and mind and just keep on keeping on seem awful. Like, am I supposed to be happy being stuck in a white void floating around like Ganondorf in the Sacred Realm all screaming, “CURSE YOU ZELDA! CURSE YOU LINK!” because if that’s the case, no thank you. So yeah, I guess you could say that I went into this thinking it’d be a lighter read than that other book, and yet here I am staring distantly and blankly at the wall as if I jaunted fully awake myself.
The most common complaint about the horror genre is that it always features characters doing some dumb shit and then getting killed due to said dumb shit, but good ones like The Jaunt highlight unfair helplessness above all else because nothing is scarier than relatable horror. The ones that don't just feature some freaky shit, but freaky shit that couldn't have been avoided no matter what! The movie Hereditary is another good example of this, because despite the fact that the film’s main focus is the family drama, the main themes of mental illness and trauma almost become inconsequential by the end because it emphasizes the fact that these events would have occurred regardless of any character arc had throughout the movie. There’s a special kind of frightening reserved for the stories that couldn't be solved, no matter how much clarity hindsight gives us. In that sense, I loved how The Jaunt lulls you into a sense of security by mundane descriptions that feel like they go on for an eternity, because it makes the horrific twist ending all the more horrifying without any need for excessive gore. The middling prose prior to the reveal also helps amplify the point that this book’s premise isn’t about some malicious act, but rather just a totally random accident. Now that’s spooky! It reminds me of a tweet that said something like “the reason why I’ll never get LASIK eye surgery is because the creators wear glasses,” and while I don’t know if that’s true or not because I never fact checked, I choose to believe because it informs my already prejudiced view of the practice. But really though, sometimes it’s nice to be able to take off my glasses, because... I’ve seen enough. All I know is that I won’t be getting Lasik any time soon and you know what? Should teleportation become available as a mode of transportation sometime in the future, I’ll be taking a pass on that too. Otherwise, I did think that the writing style was a bit dated in the sense that the kid characters are very much of the “annoying brat" variety that you’d find on an old Full House type of sitcom, and even though this takes place a hundred or so years from now, let alone the 80’s, there’s still an almost overbearing male-oriented tone to the narrative in the way that both the wife and daughter are constantly described as annoying and shrill. Which, you know, was especially notable considering this was only twenty pages. I mean, I’m not complaining too hard on this front, because even though a lot of people use the phrase “timeless” to compliment works of literature, the truth is that there’s no such thing as art that exists outside of its context. 1984 didn’t predict future events like a lot of people try to claim, instead it was always a reflection of the political climate of its time! Maybe things just didn’t get that much better and that’s why it still applies. Similarly, The Jaunt is a look into the future by taking a guess at what will change, and what will sadly stay the same. It's a short story that's effortlessly engaging and full of tension despite the fact that most of it is just exposition about a world we’ll probably never see again, and while it’s short with the horror being rather minimal, there's something here that just sticks. I read The Jaunt because I thought it’d be a quick and easy jaunt, but having finished it, I know I’ll spend many eternal moments thinking about it.
“Wanted to see! I saw! I saw! Longer than you think!”
Who needs sleep anyway? So let me just see~eet the scee~eene, I watched this movie recently called The Monkey, and it was an okay horror-comedy flick about not allowing grief hold you back from experiencing life and all its wonders, but then upon further reading, I found out that it was based on a Stephen King short story!? It’s wild because if you asked me even a year ago, I would have told you that his books were too inaccessible for me to really dive into, and yet here I am inadvertently watching movies based on his works or just straight up reading his thousands page novels! Sheesh, how many of this guy’s stories have I consumed without even realizing? So I figured I should just bite the bullet look for his most messed up story. There's got to be one that stands above all the rest, right? And after tireless research (ten minutes of searching), everybody said that his short story, The Jaunt, is the most gut-punching and fucked up slice of horror that I'll ever encounter. And you know what? That might just be true! We find ourselves teleported to the 24th century and society has progressed to the point where instantaneous travel indistinguishable from teleportation called “Jaunting” has since become as readily available as riding the bus. But like everything, this version of traveling comes with its own set of dangers, as a person needs to be put to sleep before going through with it because even though the process is technically instant, the mind doesn’t perceive is as such and you basically spend millions and millions of years in a Black Mirror John Hamm mind prison. We're given this information by a man named Mark Oates who’s trying to alleviate his family’s growing jitters towards the practice by distracting them with a history lesson. But details he gracefully leaves out for his family, he leaves in all its gruesome clarity for us! From horrible animal experimentation to inhumane testing on prisoners, it turns out that this whole business has a dark past with life-altering side-effects should things go wrong, and damn, do things go wrong in the worst possible way! So here’s the thing, the other reason why I picked this up was because I kept seeing that other book that’s making the rounds here on Goodreads about how hell is an eternity or something (I don’t remember its name), and I was too much of a scaredy-cat to read it because the thought of a forever prison really freaks me out. It always gets me! Even positive depictions of heaven that are of The Lovely Bones kind where we keep our thoughts and mind and just keep on keeping on seem awful. Like, am I supposed to be happy being stuck in a white void floating around like Ganondorf in the Sacred Realm all screaming, “CURSE YOU ZELDA! CURSE YOU LINK!” because if that’s the case, no thank you. So yeah, I guess you could say that I went into this thinking it’d be a lighter read than that other book, and yet here I am staring distantly and blankly at the wall as if I jaunted fully awake myself.
The most common complaint about the horror genre is that it always features characters doing some dumb shit and then getting killed due to said dumb shit, but good ones like The Jaunt highlight unfair helplessness above all else because nothing is scarier than relatable horror. The ones that don't just feature some freaky shit, but freaky shit that couldn't have been avoided no matter what! The movie Hereditary is another good example of this, because despite the fact that the film’s main focus is the family drama, the main themes of mental illness and trauma almost become inconsequential by the end because it emphasizes the fact that these events would have occurred regardless of any character arc had throughout the movie. There’s a special kind of frightening reserved for the stories that couldn't be solved, no matter how much clarity hindsight gives us. In that sense, I loved how The Jaunt lulls you into a sense of security by mundane descriptions that feel like they go on for an eternity, because it makes the horrific twist ending all the more horrifying without any need for excessive gore. The middling prose prior to the reveal also helps amplify the point that this book’s premise isn’t about some malicious act, but rather just a totally random accident. Now that’s spooky! It reminds me of a tweet that said something like “the reason why I’ll never get LASIK eye surgery is because the creators wear glasses,” and while I don’t know if that’s true or not because I never fact checked, I choose to believe because it informs my already prejudiced view of the practice. But really though, sometimes it’s nice to be able to take off my glasses, because... I’ve seen enough. All I know is that I won’t be getting Lasik any time soon and you know what? Should teleportation become available as a mode of transportation sometime in the future, I’ll be taking a pass on that too. Otherwise, I did think that the writing style was a bit dated in the sense that the kid characters are very much of the “annoying brat" variety that you’d find on an old Full House type of sitcom, and even though this takes place a hundred or so years from now, let alone the 80’s, there’s still an almost overbearing male-oriented tone to the narrative in the way that both the wife and daughter are constantly described as annoying and shrill. Which, you know, was especially notable considering this was only twenty pages. I mean, I’m not complaining too hard on this front, because even though a lot of people use the phrase “timeless” to compliment works of literature, the truth is that there’s no such thing as art that exists outside of its context. 1984 didn’t predict future events like a lot of people try to claim, instead it was always a reflection of the political climate of its time! Maybe things just didn’t get that much better and that’s why it still applies. Similarly, The Jaunt is a look into the future by taking a guess at what will change, and what will sadly stay the same. It's a short story that's effortlessly engaging and full of tension despite the fact that most of it is just exposition about a world we’ll probably never see again, and while it’s short with the horror being rather minimal, there's something here that just sticks. I read The Jaunt because I thought it’d be a quick and easy jaunt, but having finished it, I know I’ll spend many eternal moments thinking about it.
“Wanted to see! I saw! I saw! Longer than you think!”
Read
May 9, 2022stephen king will write about manmade horrors beyond our comprehension but will still find a way to mention an underage girl's boobs
July 17, 2025
وحشت درست و حسابی همینه. اینکه یه ایده توی ذهنت کاشته بشه که همش بهش فکر کنی و هر بار که بهش فکر میکنی حسابی بگرخی
الان حسرت میخورم چرا کینگ داستانهای علمیتخیلی بیشتری ننوشته
ترکیب علمیتخیلی و وحشت لاوکرفتی باعث شده این یکی از بهترین داستانهاش باشه
توی آیندهی 300 400 سال دیگه تلهپورت بین سیارات منظومه شمسی یه امر عادی شده و یه خونواده چهار نفره میخوان تلهپورت کنن به یکی از شهرهای مریخ و همونطور که آماده میشن برای این سفر و منتظر هستن، پدر خونواده ماجرای کشف تلهپورت رو برای بچههاش تعریف میکنه
ایدهی اولیه داستان چیز خیلی خاصی نیست ولی خب کینگه دیگه. یه چیزی اون وسط و توی روایتش داره که باعث میشه داستانهاش اینقدر تأثیرگذار بشه و توی ذهن بمونه
الان حسرت میخورم چرا کینگ داستانهای علمیتخیلی بیشتری ننوشته
ترکیب علمیتخیلی و وحشت لاوکرفتی باعث شده این یکی از بهترین داستانهاش باشه
توی آیندهی 300 400 سال دیگه تلهپورت بین سیارات منظومه شمسی یه امر عادی شده و یه خونواده چهار نفره میخوان تلهپورت کنن به یکی از شهرهای مریخ و همونطور که آماده میشن برای این سفر و منتظر هستن، پدر خونواده ماجرای کشف تلهپورت رو برای بچههاش تعریف میکنه
ایدهی اولیه داستان چیز خیلی خاصی نیست ولی خب کینگه دیگه. یه چیزی اون وسط و توی روایتش داره که باعث میشه داستانهاش اینقدر تأثیرگذار بشه و توی ذهن بمونه
March 17, 2024
انتظار ترس از خود ترس ترسناکتره
February 19, 2021
"It's eternity in there..."
What an absolutely chilling piece of sci-fi with a dash of existential horror! With nods to sci-fi greats Alfred Bester and Ray Bradbury, King recounts the tale of the amazing scientific breakthrough that leads to planetary and interplanetary teleportation technology. It becomes a ray of hope in a despairing world in the midst of severe energy crises and environmental devastation, but has the potential for some deeply disturbing side-effects that have become the stuff of legend. Highly recommended to sci-fi fans, even those, like me, that have only a limited affinity for King's works (mainly The Dark Tower series).
What an absolutely chilling piece of sci-fi with a dash of existential horror! With nods to sci-fi greats Alfred Bester and Ray Bradbury, King recounts the tale of the amazing scientific breakthrough that leads to planetary and interplanetary teleportation technology. It becomes a ray of hope in a despairing world in the midst of severe energy crises and environmental devastation, but has the potential for some deeply disturbing side-effects that have become the stuff of legend. Highly recommended to sci-fi fans, even those, like me, that have only a limited affinity for King's works (mainly The Dark Tower series).
December 16, 2025
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
There’s something terrifying about the vastness of infinity. The eternal, unending reach, suffocating perspective, and rendering time meaningless. This story is indelibly entrenched in my memory. It is one of King’s best, and I will come back to it again and again. Longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think!
There’s something terrifying about the vastness of infinity. The eternal, unending reach, suffocating perspective, and rendering time meaningless. This story is indelibly entrenched in my memory. It is one of King’s best, and I will come back to it again and again. Longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think!
March 18, 2021
Classic SF with a horror twist.
In the 24th century teleportation, called Jaunting, has become commonplace. Mark Oates and his family are about to jaunt from the Port Authority Terminal in New York City to the colony on Mars where he will be working for the next two years. While they are waiting for the stewardesses to put them under, he entertains his kids by telling them about the creation of the Jaunt and its inventor, the eccentric scientist Victor Carune.
Carune had been unsuccessfully working on teleportation and was strapped for cash when one day, working on the project in his barn, he made a breakthrough. He accidentally teleported two of his fingers across the room.
From that point on we and Mark’s kids hear how Carune tries to figure out how his invention works, which gets a little tricky when he starts teleporting living things, before at the end of the story we witness the Oates’ own jaunt to Mars.
From a technology standpoint this story feels very dated. Frankly, it probably did so already at the time of publication. It reads more like 50s SF than something that had been written in 1981. Which actually makes me think that King has done this on purpose. Perhaps as a homage to stories he loved as a kid. Personally, I enjoyed the old school vibe the story gives off. But if you are here for the science, this is not the story for you.
The general idea of how the Jaunt works is still interesting, though, and King also gives some thought to ecological and economic issues. What makes this story great, however, is how the suspense builds up during Carune’s experiments, and the twist-ending. It still sends shivers down my spine. It’s not so much what’s on the page, but rather its implications. He really managed to get into my head there.
Freaked me out.
4 – 4.5 stars
In the 24th century teleportation, called Jaunting, has become commonplace. Mark Oates and his family are about to jaunt from the Port Authority Terminal in New York City to the colony on Mars where he will be working for the next two years. While they are waiting for the stewardesses to put them under, he entertains his kids by telling them about the creation of the Jaunt and its inventor, the eccentric scientist Victor Carune.
Carune had been unsuccessfully working on teleportation and was strapped for cash when one day, working on the project in his barn, he made a breakthrough. He accidentally teleported two of his fingers across the room.
From that point on we and Mark’s kids hear how Carune tries to figure out how his invention works, which gets a little tricky when he starts teleporting living things, before at the end of the story we witness the Oates’ own jaunt to Mars.
From a technology standpoint this story feels very dated. Frankly, it probably did so already at the time of publication. It reads more like 50s SF than something that had been written in 1981. Which actually makes me think that King has done this on purpose. Perhaps as a homage to stories he loved as a kid. Personally, I enjoyed the old school vibe the story gives off. But if you are here for the science, this is not the story for you.
The general idea of how the Jaunt works is still interesting, though, and King also gives some thought to ecological and economic issues. What makes this story great, however, is how the suspense builds up during Carune’s experiments, and the twist-ending. It still sends shivers down my spine. It’s not so much what’s on the page, but rather its implications. He really managed to get into my head there.
Freaked me out.
4 – 4.5 stars
August 25, 2019
Ooooo, chilling. Keeps you hooked til the morbid conclusion. My only gripe is that this should be a full length novel. I would devour it.
October 25, 2017
It's eternity in there.
December 28, 2023
I usually don't review short stories that I have read from short story collections, but this one felt like one that I should make an exception for. The Jaunt is a part of Stephen King's Skeleton Crew, and at 25 pages a fast-paced read that does not take long to get through.
Something that consistently impresses me about Stephen King's writing is how well he manages to bring out the horror in seemingly ordinary or mundane situations, channeling the innermost emotions and hidden fears that lurk in our darkest thoughts. And The Jaunt is, at its heart, a sci-fi story about a futuristic society that has advanced to instantaneous transportation across immense distances, even across the solar system, which has fundamentally changed humanity as we know it. That's an ambitious premise, sure, but not yet a horrific one—the horror comes as Stephen King creates characters that inhabit this premise, characters who learned to live with this technology and are still left alone to their thoughts and ruminations about what could happen. King creates an entire mythology around the origin of this technology, infused with horrors all of its own, and then turns the tables on the reader with a twist that knocked my breath away.
I am reviewing all of the stories in Skeleton Crew while I'm slowly making my way through the book here, but The Jaunt is my favorite so far and made me want to give it a spotlight of its own.
“Your mind can be your best friend; it can keep you amused even when there's nothing to read, nothing to do. But it can turn on you when it's left with no input for too long.”
Something that consistently impresses me about Stephen King's writing is how well he manages to bring out the horror in seemingly ordinary or mundane situations, channeling the innermost emotions and hidden fears that lurk in our darkest thoughts. And The Jaunt is, at its heart, a sci-fi story about a futuristic society that has advanced to instantaneous transportation across immense distances, even across the solar system, which has fundamentally changed humanity as we know it. That's an ambitious premise, sure, but not yet a horrific one—the horror comes as Stephen King creates characters that inhabit this premise, characters who learned to live with this technology and are still left alone to their thoughts and ruminations about what could happen. King creates an entire mythology around the origin of this technology, infused with horrors all of its own, and then turns the tables on the reader with a twist that knocked my breath away.
I am reviewing all of the stories in Skeleton Crew while I'm slowly making my way through the book here, but The Jaunt is my favorite so far and made me want to give it a spotlight of its own.
September 21, 2020
Whoa! I’d found a subreddit all about the best short horror stories and after digging through the most famous of King’s, Lovecraft’s, Poe’s, Jackson’s, and Barron’s stories...I found the Jaunt. Comment after comment of people saying it was the scariest Stephen King story they’d ever read, but no one said WHY.
Thank God for that.
I just read it. I found it as an audiobook on YouTube. 53 minutes long. That’s like one episode of a TV show and this is a guaranteed terror.
5/5, very surprised by this story and it did live up to the hype.
Thank God for that.
I just read it. I found it as an audiobook on YouTube. 53 minutes long. That’s like one episode of a TV show and this is a guaranteed terror.
5/5, very surprised by this story and it did live up to the hype.
August 2, 2025
The Jaunt is your one-way ticket to paranoia, metaphysical madness and the kind of horror that slaps you in the frontal lobe and giggles while you scream.
🚀 Teleportation: But Make It Nightmare Fuel
In King’s sci-fi-horror short, scientists invent “jaunting”—instant teleportation across space, but with one teensy caveat: you must be unconscious during the trip. Why? Because staying awake during the Jaunt is, in scientific terms, A VERY BAD IDEA. It's like- eternity is squeezed into a millisecond and your mind gets stuck in the infinite, while your body lands safely on Mars. YAYYYY! SCIENCE :)
👨👩👦 Family Travel Goes Wrong
A family is preparing for interplanetary relocation. Dad recounts the chilling history of Jaunt experiments, peppered with fatal flaws and some seriously unlucky volunteers. It’s all fun cautionary storytelling until - {no spoiler:)}
😱 Final Destination
The twist ending is classic King—brief, brutal and brain-breaking.😱😱😱
The Ending is literally a mental sucker punch!
🚀 Teleportation: But Make It Nightmare Fuel
In King’s sci-fi-horror short, scientists invent “jaunting”—instant teleportation across space, but with one teensy caveat: you must be unconscious during the trip. Why? Because staying awake during the Jaunt is, in scientific terms, A VERY BAD IDEA. It's like- eternity is squeezed into a millisecond and your mind gets stuck in the infinite, while your body lands safely on Mars. YAYYYY! SCIENCE :)
👨👩👦 Family Travel Goes Wrong
A family is preparing for interplanetary relocation. Dad recounts the chilling history of Jaunt experiments, peppered with fatal flaws and some seriously unlucky volunteers. It’s all fun cautionary storytelling until - {no spoiler:)}
😱 Final Destination
The twist ending is classic King—brief, brutal and brain-breaking.😱😱😱
The Ending is literally a mental sucker punch!
November 1, 2025
„Разходката“ е много силен научнофантастичен разказ! Стивън Кинг е описал в него страховита история за телепортирането...
May 9, 2016
Chilling. I can't think of another word now that I finished the story. Well written and scary. The story uses our fear of time, death and the unknown, quite interesting.
I might come back to this review at some point in the future because it feels like my brain hasn't fully processed the story.
I might come back to this review at some point in the future because it feels like my brain hasn't fully processed the story.
July 29, 2015
There's a rumor The Jaunt will be a movie soon. I have to see it. What if scientists discovered how to teleport from one place to another. What if a conscious mind will realize that from one place to another "it's an eternity in there?" One of the scariest I've read.
September 10, 2020
Booooooooi!! Heard it read aloud by a half decent reader but ughhhh sometimes this book put me to sleep. TMI where I didn’t need it and not enough where I wanted. Also the only takeaway was that this man is a gross dad like eeewewww why you like at women and girls like that smh
January 3, 2023
Read this story on my lunch break today in one sitting. This was written decades ago as part of SK's collection Skeleton Crew. I read Skeleton Crew back when I was a teenager and did not recall this one at all. What a gem. It feels like it could've been written today and involves a future time where teleporting has been invented (which is known as Jaunting). We have this father who's taking his family on a Jaunt to Mars for the first time. Apparently, the only side effects of Jaunting occur if you're awake and not sedated during the process. I'm going to stop right there. Read this if you get a chance. It's pretty terrifying actually....
December 22, 2016
Just a snapshot of a story that gives a reader a sampling of how great a horror author Stephen King truly is. There are times when is stuff can fall flat on its face and other times when no one other than the Master can creep you out and have a story stick to your forever. Revival is one of this and THIS little slice is one of those times as well. Well done!
September 30, 2021
So many stories flashed in front of my eyes as I finished The Jaunt. The White Christmas (Black Mirror), Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, certain episodes of Doctor Who. I agree with the people who are categorizing this story as Existential Horror. This is one of those stories that goes plain and smooth and then leaves you with a dark aftertaste that lingers for days.
The only issue I have, not just with this story, but with most of Stephen King's writing, is his inability to describe women (and girls) without mentioning their 'bosoms'. What kind of father thinks of his daughter's growing breasts when he laments over the passage of time? And why would a writer pass that as something normal?
The only issue I have, not just with this story, but with most of Stephen King's writing, is his inability to describe women (and girls) without mentioning their 'bosoms'. What kind of father thinks of his daughter's growing breasts when he laments over the passage of time? And why would a writer pass that as something normal?
September 16, 2019
It's longer than you think.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 10, 2020
Bullshit science, amazing story!
Read
May 21, 2020I hate myself for reading this
December 30, 2020
Just like most of Stephen King’s short stories for me: meh.
March 26, 2023
Well… that was a bit disturbing.
November 7, 2012
I read this story about a year back and it still give me creeps, literally. No, I am not trying to exaggerate at all. Even I used to wonder, how can reading a horror story scare you but I am really glad(or scared), I came across it!
April 9, 2021
If you like Ray Bradbury but want that patented Stephen King terror, read this story.
March 19, 2023
Damn.
That last paragraph was incredible, and genuinely scary. Would recommend.
That last paragraph was incredible, and genuinely scary. Would recommend.
February 14, 2021
This is, to me, one of King's most frightening short stories. It's much easier to imagine ourselves in a scenario that we don't know now, but could one day be real as technology advances. Stephen King takes a concept that we already understand and pushes it to the extreme: Each advance in transportation technology gets us to our destination faster but the danger is greater. Plane crashes are more deadly than car accidents are more deadly than bicycle crashes are more deadly than tripping while walking. All of these activities are incredibly safe and some people engage in all of them them almost daily. We accept that the faster and higher we want to go the longer and more deadly the fall. If this correlation is true then what could be the most deadly technology besides instantaneous teleportation. The idea that we could one day achieve such awesome power and yet that it should become so commonplace that the inherent risk is ignored is easily imaginal.
Though the specifics of its utility and the exact danger are an unlikely prediction, the terror of advancing technology is very real. And Stephen King is a scary man!
Though the specifics of its utility and the exact danger are an unlikely prediction, the terror of advancing technology is very real. And Stephen King is a scary man!
August 4, 2021
3.5 STARS
This was definitely an interesting short story! I enjoyed it overall, especially the ending. I had expected something like the ending to happen but it was still different than I'd thought.
There were a few things in here thought, that made me stop and questions whether that small detail really made such a big difference to leave it in. One I noticed and which definitely seemed unnecessary was the mention of the daughter likely going through puberty and "developing breasts" when they'd return to Earth. I think that detail wouldn't have needed to be explicitly mentioned in this story. Another instance was comparing the Jaunt scientists with the Nazi scientists who experimented with Jewish women. I don't really understand the need for that comparison.
This was definitely an interesting short story! I enjoyed it overall, especially the ending. I had expected something like the ending to happen but it was still different than I'd thought.
There were a few things in here thought, that made me stop and questions whether that small detail really made such a big difference to leave it in. One I noticed and which definitely seemed unnecessary was the mention of the daughter likely going through puberty and "developing breasts" when they'd return to Earth. I think that detail wouldn't have needed to be explicitly mentioned in this story. Another instance was comparing the Jaunt scientists with the Nazi scientists who experimented with Jewish women. I don't really understand the need for that comparison.
June 4, 2014
I'm not much of a time-travel book fan, but this one made me interested because it has a touch of horror in it. This book was set at a time wherein innovation is prominent and gas is at its lowest price. People are fascinated with JAUNTING.
Jaunting is a way of teleportation. It also has something to do with time travel. People go crazy when put in such a machine. The horrors could be endless and SK managed to show me just that.
I recommend this to people who are looking for a short, good scare.
Jaunting is a way of teleportation. It also has something to do with time travel. People go crazy when put in such a machine. The horrors could be endless and SK managed to show me just that.
I recommend this to people who are looking for a short, good scare.
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