Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893
and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from
the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New
York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the
Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious
Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris,
silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly
speaking on the map at all.
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it
is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false
religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high
places. No reference to the present day is intended or
should be inferred.
The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists,
balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts,
innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists,
shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives,
adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances
by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.
As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears
and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are
mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they
manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.
Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business.
Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the
most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place.
Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically.
Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the
world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment
or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes
of fiction.
Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
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