With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

What If? In Next Novel, Stephen King Imagines a Chance To Alter the JFK Presidency

In early 2002, Stephen King said he was written out and was thinking of retiring. Some retirement. He has since published at least four novels, a couple of story collections and has collaborated on a monthly comic book. On Wednesday, Scribner, his publisher, announced that in the fall it will bring out yet another King novel, called “11/23/63.”

The new book is 1,000 pages long — enormous by most standards, but cruising length for Mr. King — and is apparently a “counterfactual,” a novel that imagines what would have happened had history turned out differently. It’s the story of a Maine high school teacher named Jake Epping who discovers a portal back to 1958 in a storeroom at a local diner. He travels back there and, while enjoying some sex and rock ‘n’ roll, finds himself with a chance to thwart the assassination of John F. Kennedy....
Read entire article at NYT