11.22.63 - General Discussion

[Thrifty]

53 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Hah! I have a daughter older than you! I was born in 1953.
But your point is well taken.
I didn't read the book, but if it included a mention of Wallace, I would imagine an explanatory sentence would have been included that might have sounded too expository for a TV show.

It's been a while since I read the book, but I think Wallace might have been elected president in 1968, but that was more a symptom of the earthquakes, and the earthquakes turned the world to hell.  President Wallace didn't play much of a role.

[KaveDweller]

On 8/15/2017 at 10:24 AM, Thrifty said:

It's been a while since I read the book, but I think Wallace might have been elected president in 1968, but that was more a symptom of the earthquakes, and the earthquakes turned the world to hell.  President Wallace didn't play much of a role.

I didn't read the book, but how could Kennedy not being assassinated lead to more earthquakes?

[Thrifty]

8 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

I didn't read the book, but how could Kennedy not being assassinated lead to more earthquakes?

Supernatural causes.  See the spoiler stuff for further details.

 

Spoiler

So basically, every time Al or Jake or anyone went back through the time portal and did anything, it created an additional reality.  Every time someone goes through the time portal, it resets everything.  I can't remember if this was stated in the TV show, but Al's diner was incredibly successful because he sold his burgers super cheap.  He did this by going back in time and buying his hamburger meat at rock bottom 1958 prices.  Anyway, since Al was buying the same meat over and over and over again, he was creating dozens and dozens of new realities.  Since this was a trivial change, it didn't cause much damage. 

 

The Yellow Card Man (who's name is given in the book as "Kyle") is part of a group of guardians (who are just normal humans) who hang out near these time portals and have memories of all the different realities.  Keeping the disparate realities eventually drives them to insanity and suicide.

 

Anyway, once Al started to change more significant things--in the book it was a young girl who was rendered paraplegic by a hunting accident--it caused these new realities to differ significantly from the "default" reality.  This puts a strain on the universe, like stretching a rubber band.  The bigger the change, the bigger the strain on the universe.

 

Since Jake made an enormous change when he prevented the Kennedy assassination, the strain was immense.  The strain caused a lot of increasingly severe earthquakes over the years.  It also caused these audible tears in the fabric of reality, described in the book as "a loud, wet, ripping sound".

 

Hope that clears it up.

[shapeshifter]

58 minutes ago, Thrifty said:

Supernatural causes.  See the spoiler stuff for further details.

Sounds interesting. So you would recommend the book?

[Thrifty]

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

Sounds interesting. So you would recommend the book?

Yeah.  It's a good book.  Very long though.

[KaveDweller]

18 hours ago, Thrifty said:

Supernatural causes.  See the spoiler stuff for further details.

 

Wow, that is very different than the show. Just hearing a summary, I think I like the show's explanation better 

Spoiler

That Harry was just wrong from the beginning about how great Kennedy could be for the world and the whole thing was a mistake, rather than just the act of time travel made everything get screwed up. Because in that explanation Harry could have been right, it's just that it didn't matter because there was no real way to change it without dire consequences.

But again, that's without reading it.

 

Usually if I see a show/movie based on a book before I read the book, I never want to read the book, but am sort of tempted with this one. But I have a really long to read this.

OTOH, after I read a book I always want to see the show/movie, even though they are never as good.

[shapeshifter]

34 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

Usually if I see a show/movie based on a book before I read the book, I never want to read the book, but am sort of tempted with this one. But I have a really long to read this.

OTOH, after I read a book I always want to see the show/movie, even though they are never as good.

Interesting. For my daughter and me, it has been the opposite. After I happened to catch part of the B&W version of Pride and Prejudice on a friend's TV, I launched into a 15+ year affair with all of Jane Austen's novels—but then again, it was Austen, not King. And after my daughter had spent years of her childhood reading and rereading all of the Anne of Green Gables books (my daughter has red hair too), she never wanted to see the TV movie versions because, she said, she didn't want the way she pictured it in her mind to be disturbed.

Anyway, I guess I'll at least get the book from the library and skim it.

ETA: I just requested it from another library, and, yoiks! You weren't kidding about long, @Thrifty! 849 pages!

Edited August 20, 2017 by shapeshifter

[John Potts]

I haven't seen the show but I have read the book and what really annoyed me was how Jake - in all his time travelling - never considered he might be making things worse. Even if he thought JFK was the greatest President ever (which, to my recollection, he didn't particularly) you'd think he might consider the possible negative consequences of his actions. And while I get that Jake hadn't seen all the subsequent time travel stories about how killing Hitler didn't actually make the world a better place (and he certainly couldn't account for its rather unnecessary literally Earth shattering consequences) you'd think he might wonder whether a surviving President Kennedy would be able to push the Civil Rights Act through Congress like President Johnson did by using Kennedy's death as a rallying point. It's not like he didn't have the time to do it!