breaking it down

[Jeremy Rice]

couldn't tell if this was out there yet or not, but here we go...
-
Amazon.com, under 'Editorial Reviews': (!!!)

Book Description

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.

--Thomas Pynchon

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