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Terraplane (novel)
Encyclopedia
Terraplane, published in 1988, is a Jack Womack
science fiction
novel. The Terraplane
is a 1930s automobile
, which plays a significant role in this novel. It is also a time machine
from the corporate-dominated future of DryCo, a manipulative multinational corporation
in "New" New York
, 2033 CE. In this future, climate change
has resulted in rising sea levels, and would have inundated the original city if it had not been for the massive construction of a giant seawall, and New New York on higher ground. Altogether, Jack Womack set four novels in a quartet series in this future world, and its alternate history liaisons.
, where rival multinational corporation
Krasnaya dominates Russian society through consumer capitalist mass production of products. However, Luther and Jake discover that Krasnaya has two highly advanced quantum physicists under duress, Oktobriana Osipova and Alekine. The two Dryco mercenaries manage to abduct the physicists, but their escape sends them back to 1939 in a conservative alternate history.
In this world, Abraham Lincoln
was killed by a Baltimore
pro-slavery
mob in 1861 CE, so the American Civil War
never happened, and Theodore Roosevelt
abolished slavery
in 1907 due to European pressure on J.P. Morgan, who feared loss of his European financial assets. In 1932, Giuseppe Zangara
assassinated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill
died from a car accident. As a result of Roosevelt's premature death, it is noted that John Nance Garner
proved to be a fiscal conservative, leading to a situation where much of the western United States had to threaten civil war to obtain economic relief from the ongoing Depression
. As the novel progresses, Alekhine, actually a Krasnaya operative, abducts Joseph Stalin
from Moscow
, to be transferred to Krasnaya custody and kept in a dacha
, in a future which has abandoned communism
and uses the image of "Big Boy
" as nostalgic consumer iconography.
When this world eventually does undergo its World War II
, it is assumed that there will be no effective opposition to Nazi Germany
from its Soviet Union
or United Kingdom
as a result. However, as is disclosed in its sequel, Elvissey
, this is an incorrect assumption.
Luther and Jake make the accqaintance of Norman Quarles, an African American
doctor and his wife, Wanda, but their presence attracts the suspicions of (unseen) J. Edgar Hoover
, who sends FBI agents in pursuit. During the chase, Norman is killed, and Oktobriana contracts Dovlatov's Syndrome, a mutated influenza
virus that emerged in Irkutsk
, Siberia
in 1909, and led to the deaths of Queen Alexandra, US House Speaker William Dean Howells
, Charlie Chaplin
, Christy Mathewson
, French Premier Clemenceau
, Claude Debussy
, Guillaume Apollinaire
and Amedeo Modigliani
, amongst others, during the ten year space of this epidemic. Ultimately, Luther and Wanda return to Dryco's future, while Oktobriana and Jake are lost in the interdimensional void.
As an aside, Luther notes that there are sects described as the Albigensian Church of Jesus the Light, Reformed and the Valentinian House of God in this world, which implies the survival of gnosticism
has occurred in this timeline. Amongst the books cited in the Albigensian Bible
are the Gospel of Matthew
, Gospel of Mark
, Gospel of Luke
and the Acts of the Apostles
, but this gnostic bible also includes the Gospel of Thomas
, Gospel of Truth
, and the Hymn of Light. The latter revelation will play an important role in Womack's next novel, Elvissey
.
Jack Womack
Jack Womack is an American author of fiction and speculative fiction. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter, and works as a publicity manager for the Orbit and Yen imprints of Hachette Book Group USA....
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel. The Terraplane
Terraplane
The Terraplane was a car brand and model built by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan between 1932 and 1938. In its maiden year, the car was branded as the Essex-Terraplane; in 1934 the car became simply the Terraplane...
is a 1930s automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
, which plays a significant role in this novel. It is also a time machine
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
from the corporate-dominated future of DryCo, a manipulative multinational corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
in "New" New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, 2033 CE. In this future, climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
has resulted in rising sea levels, and would have inundated the original city if it had not been for the massive construction of a giant seawall, and New New York on higher ground. Altogether, Jack Womack set four novels in a quartet series in this future world, and its alternate history liaisons.
Plot summary
DryCo has sent two operatives, retired African-American general Luther and his white bodyguard Jake, to post-communist MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where rival multinational corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
Krasnaya dominates Russian society through consumer capitalist mass production of products. However, Luther and Jake discover that Krasnaya has two highly advanced quantum physicists under duress, Oktobriana Osipova and Alekine. The two Dryco mercenaries manage to abduct the physicists, but their escape sends them back to 1939 in a conservative alternate history.
In this world, Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
was killed by a Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
pro-slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
mob in 1861 CE, so the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
never happened, and Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
abolished slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
in 1907 due to European pressure on J.P. Morgan, who feared loss of his European financial assets. In 1932, Giuseppe Zangara
Giuseppe Zangara
Giuseppe Zangara was the assassin of Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, though United States President–elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have been his intended target. Roosevelt escaped injury, but five people were shot including Cermak.- Early life :Zangara was born in Ferruzzano, Calabria, Italy...
assassinated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
died from a car accident. As a result of Roosevelt's premature death, it is noted that John Nance Garner
John Nance Garner
John Nance Garner, IV , was the 32nd Vice President of the United States and the 44th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives .- Early life and family :...
proved to be a fiscal conservative, leading to a situation where much of the western United States had to threaten civil war to obtain economic relief from the ongoing Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. As the novel progresses, Alekhine, actually a Krasnaya operative, abducts Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, to be transferred to Krasnaya custody and kept in a dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
, in a future which has abandoned communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and uses the image of "Big Boy
Big Boy (restaurant)
Big Boy is a restaurant chain with its headquarters in Warren, Michigan.Big Boy was started in 1936 by Bob Wian, in partnership with Arnold Peterson in Glendale, California, USA. Marriott Corporation bought the chain in 1967...
" as nostalgic consumer iconography.
When this world eventually does undergo its World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, it is assumed that there will be no effective opposition to Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
from its Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
or United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
as a result. However, as is disclosed in its sequel, Elvissey
Elvissey
Elvissey is a Jack Womack science fiction novel, one of his Dryco quartet, set in a dystopian 2033 CE. This fictional universe is dominated by Dryco, a Machiavellian multinational corporation which pursues its plans for global domination of its world, amidst runaway climate change, unstable...
, this is an incorrect assumption.
Luther and Jake make the accqaintance of Norman Quarles, an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
doctor and his wife, Wanda, but their presence attracts the suspicions of (unseen) J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
, who sends FBI agents in pursuit. During the chase, Norman is killed, and Oktobriana contracts Dovlatov's Syndrome, a mutated influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
virus that emerged in Irkutsk
Irkutsk
Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...
, Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
in 1909, and led to the deaths of Queen Alexandra, US House Speaker William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Christy Mathewson
Christy Mathewson
Christopher "Christy" Mathewson , nicknamed "Big Six", "The Christian Gentleman", or "Matty", was an American Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher. He played his entire career in what is known as the dead-ball era...
, French Premier Clemenceau
Clemenceau
Clemenceau may refer to:* Georges Clemenceau , French physician, journalist and statesman* Clemenceau , a French aircraft carrier* Mount Clemenceau, a mountain in the Canadian Rockies...
, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
and Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, amongst others, during the ten year space of this epidemic. Ultimately, Luther and Wanda return to Dryco's future, while Oktobriana and Jake are lost in the interdimensional void.
As an aside, Luther notes that there are sects described as the Albigensian Church of Jesus the Light, Reformed and the Valentinian House of God in this world, which implies the survival of gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
has occurred in this timeline. Amongst the books cited in the Albigensian Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
are the Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
, Gospel of Mark
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...
, Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
and the Acts of the Apostles
Acts of the Apostles
The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...
, but this gnostic bible also includes the Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...
, Gospel of Truth
Gospel of Truth
The Gospel of Truth is one of the Gnostic texts from the New Testament apocrypha found in the Nag Hammadi codices . It exists in two Coptic translations, a Subachmimic rendition surviving almost in full in the first codex and a Sahidic in fragments in the twelfth.-History:The Gospel of Truth was...
, and the Hymn of Light. The latter revelation will play an important role in Womack's next novel, Elvissey
Elvissey
Elvissey is a Jack Womack science fiction novel, one of his Dryco quartet, set in a dystopian 2033 CE. This fictional universe is dominated by Dryco, a Machiavellian multinational corporation which pursues its plans for global domination of its world, amidst runaway climate change, unstable...
.
Publication history
- 1988, USA, Grove Press ISBN 1-555-84165-1, Pub date October 1988, Hardback
- 1988, USA, Grove Press ISBN 0-802-13562-5, Pub date April 1998, Paperback