Terraplane

My impressions upon reading this book in 1990. Many, many spoilers follow.

Given the strange argot this book is written in, it’s obvious Womack saw A Clockwork Orange one too many times. The book’s dialect is quite similar.

This book was interesting and good. At times it was not detailed enough. (This may be unfair since I have not read other books in the series. Dryco, the (to use Bruce Sterling’s cover blurb words) “sinister multinational cabal”, is not explained much at all. It seems to be amorally apolitical and subordinate both Russian and the U.S. to its wishes via trade. Drasnaya seems to be its Russian equivalent; a corporation dedicated to ruthlessly enforcing the edicts of “sozializtkapitalism” a system of forced show more consumption in Russia -- of Sov goods with the morbid touch of Stalin, the Big Boy, being the ultimate consumer icon.

A war fought between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and its surrogates all over the world, including around New York City, is very important in the lives of the characters.

Womack does throw in neat stuff: parallel universe travel via Telsa technology, Fortean events the results of travel between time tracks, an alternate universe where Lincoln was shot before he freed the slaves (Teddy Roosevelt did) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies before instituting the New Deal -- a universe where time flows at a different rate than in ours and catacylisms in our universe (like the Tunguska event and the first A-Bomb explosions) influence events in other time tracks. These include a plague brought back with the American Siberian Expeditionary force, Huey Long making an appearance as does a slave owning Coca-Cola Company which brands its human property.
Womack brings us two worlds of grimness, sorrow, and despair.

But what makes the book memorable, where Womack really shines, is in the creation of characters. There is the narrator, Robert Luther Biggerstaff, grim, sorrowful ex-soldier. Jake, psychopathic, yet honorable killer, capable of love who we see constantly hooked into the anguished tunes of a dead, obscure jazz singer. His only act of love kills the protean genius of supergirl Oktobriana Dmitrievna Osipova. “Good intentions always killed ... “ remarks Luther. Jake finds that out in his odd, brief, intense relationship with Oktobriana. Her death is poignant. We meet her brilliant, but politically stupid ex-boyfriend who travels to an alternate universe to bring back his hero Josef Stalin. There is the forger Cedric who develops a homosexual obsession for Luther. There is Wanda Quarles and her life of pain, some hidden from her husband. He is Norman Quarles, self-taught doctor and Womack’s greatest creation.

In him, Womack condenses the pain of his world and cleverly uses, in the guise of this self-taught doctor, the conventions, naivete, and innocence of the sf reader for the future. Quales sees a beautiful future of the ‘30s pulp magazines. He plies Luther with questions about the future. Luther simply replies that the future always disappoints. Womack cleverly uses the 1930 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York as the icon of Quales’ future faith. It is the same (well, almost) as the touchstone World Fair that inspired so many sf wonderous tales of tomorrow and writers like Fred Pohl. Quales’ imprisonment in a violent world that he naivelly, in a way a sf fan can empathize and sympathize with oh-so-well, believes will become wonderously better is supremely poignant especially for the sf reader. I felt the bite of Quales death acutely.

Womack’s tale is violent, sad, grim, and moving. show less

*note to self. (copy from Al).

1989 ed. Unwin paperbacks. different cover.