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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Sam Dance is a young enlisted soldier in 1941 when his older brother Keenan is killed at Pearl Harbor. Afterwards, Sam promises that he will do anything he can to stop the war.
During his training, Sam begins to show that he has a knack for science and engineering, and he is plucked from the daily grunt work of twenty-mile marches by his superiors to study subjects like code breaking, electronics, and physics in particular, a science that is growing more important to the war effort. While studying, Sam is seduced by a mysterious female physicist that is teaching one of his courses, and given her plans for a device that will end the war, perhaps even end the human predilection for war forever. But the device does something less, and more, than that.
After his training, Sam is sent throughout Europe to solve both theoretical and practical problems for the Allies. He spends his free time playing jazz, and trying to construct the strange device. It's only much later that he discovers that it worked, but in a way that he could have never imagined.
During his training, Sam begins to show that he has a knack for science and engineering, and he is plucked from the daily grunt work of twenty-mile marches by his superiors to study subjects like code breaking, electronics, and physics in particular, a science that is growing more important to the war effort. While studying, Sam is seduced by a mysterious female physicist that is teaching one of his courses, and given her plans for a device that will end the war, perhaps even end the human predilection for war forever. But the device does something less, and more, than that.
After his training, Sam is sent throughout Europe to solve both theoretical and practical problems for the Allies. He spends his free time playing jazz, and trying to construct the strange device. It's only much later that he discovers that it worked, but in a way that he could have never imagined.
About the Author
Kathleen Ann Goonan burst into prominence with Queen City Jazz, the start of her Nanotech Quartet. The Bones of Time, her widely acclaimed second novel, was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2000. Crescent City Rhapsody (third in the Quartet) was a Nebula nominee, while Light Music, the conclusion of the series, was described by Booklist as the "brilliant conclusion to a tetralogy as consequential in sf as Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy."
She and her husband divide their time between homes in Tennessee and in the Florida Keys.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
"In War Times" is a great novel of ideas and action, showing why contemporary science fiction may be the most important literary genre of our time, grappling with greater clarity of thought and literary skill, the very nature of human existence, than what one usually discerns from so-called literary mainstream fiction. Katherine Ann Goonan's elegantly sparse prose captures vividly the vicissitudes of love, war, peace, and indeed, of reality itself. She weaves concepts as arcane and as dissimilar as the structure of DNA, the nature of time, and the atomic bomb, into one long elegant literary tribute to jazz, with each new unexpected development, as the tale progresses, emerging like some unexpected jazz riff played with ample conviction by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Jazz is the perfect metaphor to describe what the reader observes in this brilliantly conceived, vividly imagined novel; the merging and splitting of alternate realities, of different future histories, as witnessed by compelling characters such as Sam Dance, Bette Elegante, Wink and others, especially enigmatic physicist Dr. Eliani Hadntz, who presents Sam Dance with the plans of a mysterious device destined to alter all of their futures. Goonan explores how time - past, present and future - can be altered by the least likely of events, sending her characters into different alternate realities that differ by the slightest changing of a few details, relatively trivial in nature, with important implications for the respective futures of these realities. Hers is a novel whose historical settings range from Pearl Harbor to the American crossing of the Rhine near the close of World War II, the Kennedy assassination and the anti-war protests as the United States enters the Vietnam War; it is indeed a novel of grand ambitions which Goonan displays via her ample heartfelt conviction and exceptional literary craft. "In War Times" is certainly one of the most notable contemporary science fiction novels of the 21st Century, and one that should be required reading by mainstream literary audiences.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
18 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Trying to alter history while stumbling around in the dark
11 Feb 2008
Format:Hardcover
At the outbreak of World War II, Sam Dance's mysterious physics teacher gives him detailed instructions for building a "quantum machine" that can affect human behavior and possibly change the course of history. The next day, he finds out that his brother has been killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. This event sets his resolve to work on this device that may change the timeline and allow him to alter reality.
Throughout his WWII experiences he and his friend Wink try to build the device in their spare time, sometimes secretly receiving updated instructions. Their first finished device doesn't seem to do anything, but they continue in their attempts to make a better one. After the war, Sam begins to notice some curious anomalies.
This book was well-written, the characters likeable, and many scenes interesting, but I wasn't really able to really get into it or find it a page-turner. The characters seemed a little distant. I believe this might be because they have no agency - they are not controlling the flow of the story but reacting, having no idea whether their device will work and what it should do. When it appears changes may finally be occurring, they are still in the dark and so is the reader (one could argue that this is at least realistic - what character could get their head around everything?). History is finally presented as having nexus points at which it may be altered, but I found the choice of event the book focused on at the end to be a bit predictable.
Throughout his WWII experiences he and his friend Wink try to build the device in their spare time, sometimes secretly receiving updated instructions. Their first finished device doesn't seem to do anything, but they continue in their attempts to make a better one. After the war, Sam begins to notice some curious anomalies.
This book was well-written, the characters likeable, and many scenes interesting, but I wasn't really able to really get into it or find it a page-turner. The characters seemed a little distant. I believe this might be because they have no agency - they are not controlling the flow of the story but reacting, having no idea whether their device will work and what it should do. When it appears changes may finally be occurring, they are still in the dark and so is the reader (one could argue that this is at least realistic - what character could get their head around everything?). History is finally presented as having nexus points at which it may be altered, but I found the choice of event the book focused on at the end to be a bit predictable.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A Splendid Novel of Ideas and Action Set in an Alternate Recent Past
31 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover
"In War Times" is a great novel of ideas and action, showing why contemporary science fiction may be the most important literary genre of our time, grappling with greater clarity of thought and literary skill, the very nature of human existence, than what one usually discerns from so-called literary mainstream fiction. Kathleen Ann Goonan's elegantly sparse prose captures vividly the vicissitudes of love, war, peace, and indeed, of reality itself. She weaves concepts as arcane and as dissimilar as the structure of DNA, the nature of time, and the atomic bomb, into one long elegant literary tribute to jazz, with each new unexpected development, as the tale progresses, emerging like some unexpected jazz riff played with ample conviction by the likes of Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Jazz is the perfect metaphor to describe what the reader observes in this brilliantly conceived, vividly imagined novel; the merging and splitting of alternate realities, of different future histories, as witnessed by compelling characters such as Sam Dance, Bette Elegante, Wink and others, especially enigmatic physicist Dr. Eliani Hadntz, who presents Sam Dance with the plans of a mysterious device destined to alter all of their futures. Goonan explores how time - past, present and future - can be altered by the least likely of events, sending her characters into different alternate realities that differ by the slightest changing of a few details, relatively trivial in nature, with important implications for the respective futures of these realities. Hers is a novel whose historical settings range from Pearl Harbor to the American crossing of the Rhine near the close of World War II, the Kennedy assassination and the anti-war protests as the United States enters the Vietnam War; it is indeed a novel of grand ambitions which Goonan displays via her ample heartfelt conviction and exceptional literary craft. "In War Times" is certainly one of the most notable contemporary science fiction novels of the 21st Century, and one that should be required reading by mainstream literary audiences.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Thoughtful, touching science fiction
27 Jun 2007
Format:Hardcover
Goonan used to do more hard science fiction -- nano- and bio-tech. This is much more alternate history, and damn it, but it's good. Part of it is how well she's researched it (I read a review somewhere that said she used her own father's diary from the war), but a lot of it is how well she integrated what she's learned into the story. It's complex, and rich, and it rewards people who re-read books in a way I haven't seen since Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.
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