Terraplane [Import] [Paperback]

Jack Womack (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; New Ed edition (February 22, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0044406169
• ISBN-13: 978-0044406167
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,820,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rewarding transtemporal love story, January 31, 2001

By 

Mac Tonnies (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Terraplane (Paperback)

"Terraplane," Womack's earlier novel, is a rewarding transtemporal love story that shares a great deal of its plot with "Elvissey": visitors from our future go back in time--not to 1950s Memphis, but to a deranged alternate 1930s where slavery was only recently abolished and the AIDS epidemic has been prefigured by an extraterrestrial virus that causes heightened dexterity, intelligence--and certain death. Womack's skewed look at our past is as frightening as any imagined future. "Terraplane" is a haunted examination of what it is to be human, laced with wit and sad romance. Definitely a trip worth taking.

4.0 out of 5 stars Left me wanting more..., March 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Terraplane (Hardcover)

I was enjoying the heck out of this novel, and all the sudden it was over! Womack creates a dark and detailed alternate past, drops in some interesting characters from an equally dark future, makes up an original lanquage, throws in some ultra-violence and a famous Blues musician, then seems to have given up on it all tacked on a Deus Ex Machina ending. Did his deadline come up, or what? There was so much more that could have been done with the story. Personally, I thought we were going to the Worlds Fair to consult Tesla on time travel. Womack seemed to have it all set up and it could have been really interesting, but then...nothing. I still recommend this book for its rich texture and some nice surprises, but it should be twice as long as it is.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like Maus?, December 21, 2000

By 

Kevin S. Schemerholtz (Sunny Oakland, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Terraplane (Paperback)

The complaints raised against this compelling and important work are meaningless. This novel is masterpiece, and the comments it makes about race history in America and slavery as part of our nation's serious underside are profound, important, and impossible for 99% of SF nerds to understand. Let them go back to the easy answers in Heinlein. For many people, "Maus" by Art Spiegleman brought home the horrors of the Holocaust. This novel did the same thing for slavery that Maus did for 1940's Poland.

Great SF is not writing about the future, it is a way to get us to start thinking about the present. For those with the courage to challenge themselves and their thinking, few books are going to go as far as this one. Like PKD and Orwell, Womack is a master who writes literature, not SF. Not sure of where genre ends and literature begins? Grow up and buy this book.