Terraplane [Paperback]

Jack Womack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 1998

A retired general and his hit-man kidnap a Russian scientist and travel through time to an alternate New York of 1939. Plenty of high-tech glitz charges this powerful, breakthrough science fiction novel by the author of Ambient.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A droll and disturbing novel about time-travel, Womack's second work (after Ambient ) presents a vision of the pastNew York circa 1939every bit as frightening as its vision of the future. The narrator-protagonist, Luther, is a spy for an American corporation doing business in 21st century Russia, a society that is a nightmare parody of a capitalist society in its final, self-destructing stagescorrupt, consumer-mad and violent. Luther and his pal, Jake, meet with two Russians who are also involved in industrial espionage, and who reveal a secret Soviet invention, a time machine that is the product of a clandestine ESP lab. Escaping from Moscow with their catch, Luther and Jake activate the time-travel device when cornered by the Soviets, and are hurled backward in time to Depression-era America. They land in New York City at the time of the great World's Fair of 1939, but it is a funhouse-mirror vision, with everything slightly askew. Events have deviated somewhat in this parallel world. Cuba is now a state of the Union, slavery wasn't abolished until the turn of the century; and FDR was assassinated before taking office, thus aborting the New Deal and throwing the country into an even more severe depression. The book follows these disoriented refugees in this slightly mad world, as they seek to recover the time machine so that they can return to the future. Womack ingeniously plays with history and science to create a cats-cradle of a narrative. The futurespeak language he has invented for his characters makes the beginnings of the book a little rough going, but once the characters land in the past, it quickly takes off into imaginative hyperspace.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A Terraplane was an American automobile, wasn't it? It's also an early clue to its passengers (or to us) that the 1939 they have entered from the 21st century differs from the one in history books. A Russian scientist who has defected to the past via a VCR is hotly pursued by the Soviets and by black American general Luther. Once the FBI joins the chase, the action starts popping like a string of firecrackers, but it takes a long fuse to get there. And some sparks don't ignite: e.g., Stalin as poster-boy for a consumer society ruled, like America, by a gigantic corporation. Womack has imagined some nifty solutions to the dilemmas of time travel, but his moral imagination wastes itself on sympathy for an assassin. Luther's narration, in a knotty, futuristic English, doesn't help. Hugh M. Crane, Cambridge P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (April 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802135625
• ISBN-13: 978-0802135629
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,863,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

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.