Heathern (Jack Womack) [Kindle Edition]

Jack Womack (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the same surrealistic style of Ambient and Terraplaneok? , Womack's third novel takes place in an alternate America run by the Dryden Corporation (Dryco), whose owner, Thatcher Dryden, has engineered the assassinations of three presidents while searching for one who will remain under Dryden's thumb. Control of the country is also a problem, so when Dryden hears about Macaffrey, a teacher who works miracles, he decides to set up his own religion to be an opiate of the people. Not surprisingly, however, those who channel God's power aren't keen on obeying materialistic rulers. Womack thematically links this book with his previous novels through the use of "postliterary" futurespeak, and characters and plots that refuse to conform to conventional genres. While the book is initially slow going, patience is rewarded with a literate, well-rounded story, told from the viewpoint of Joanna, Dryden's mistress and Macaffrey's ardent disciple. ("Heathern," by the way, is a regional pronunciation of "heathen," as in one who does not believe in the Messiah.)
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ordered by her corporate bosses to investigate the authenticity and exploitability of a miracle-working preacher, a young woman confronts her own lost emotions at the hands of a man who just might be the Messiah. Womack returns to the setting of Terraplane (Grove Weidenfeld, 1988) for another dark and violent glimpse into a stark, dystopic future New York. Recommended where cyberpunk and new-wave sf are popular.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 1891 KB
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st Grove Press Ed edition (July 31, 1990)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001BXYIHG
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite simply, SF for adults, February 23, 2000

By 

Adam Greenfield "Clean living under difficult... (Helsinki, Finland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Heathern (Jack Womack) (Paperback)

I used to think whimsy was incompatible with a world-toughened, gimlet-eyed take on reality. That's until I started reading Jack Womack. Not *only* does he write works of lucid and humane beauty (which are typically if regrettably marketed as genre SF by the same boneheaded quants who sent PKD to his early grave), but he's the most incisive critic of English-language-as-annihilator-of-meaning since George Orwell. Read *Heathern*. Then go get *Elvissey* and *Random Acts*. For a non-SF, non-Dryco, bitterly funny book, try *Let's Put The Future Behind Us*.

The stuff is *that* good. You'll feel a little sadder and a little wiser and somehow more hopeful after having read *Heathern*, and you won't have to have been polluted by "Touched By An Angel." Verily, if the whole human race were on trial for its life, Jack Womack is the kind of writer you'd want to hold up and offer as evidence and argument for redemption.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This one's not a "smirker", February 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Heathern (Jack Womack) (Paperback)

If you're looking for a messiah,look no further than the pages of Jack Womack's novel Heathern. This novel tells the story of the marketing of a reluctant messiah and is set in a futuristic New York City that defies the word condemned. If you aren't looking for a Christ child, believe me, baby, the future according to Womack is desperate for deliverance. The reader is thrown headlong into the deceptive and duplicitous dealings of a man named Thatcher Dryden who is rumoured to have gained control of the city, the president, and quite possibly, the world. His discovery of the fact that an unemployed school teacher is working miracles in the gang-infested slums of New York leads him to try to gain control of the one thing that would offer him the key to total population control: redemption. The story travels to the top of the anthill, where the rich and overfed survey their lessers feeding upon themselves like so many rats; to the intestines of the earth, where mutants and other castoffs of humanity fester in abandoned subway terminals; and provides the reader with a compelling, satirical look at the future, its progeny, and the power and commodification of a messiah.

4.0 out of 5 stars The stuff of millennial nightmares, April 26, 2001

By 

Mac Tonnies (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Heathern (Jack Womack) (Paperback)

Womack's "Heathern," another installment in his brutal near-future satire (collectively known as the "Dryco Chronicles"), hinges on concerns expressed in "Elvissey" and "Terraplane" (and, to a lesser extent, his ultraviolent "Ambient"). When a schoolteacher demonstrates the ability to resurrect the dead, marketing kingpin Thatcher Dryden launches a campaign to exploit his potential as a messiah. The world outside Dryden's corporate corridors has fallen into ecological and social catastrophe: a haunting, utterly dehumanized caricature of late 20th century. Womack's narrative skill lies in his ability to make his future, as well as his characters, seem inevitable. This is the stuff of millennial nightmares.