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edboies's review against another edition
3.0
Stopped with about 75 pages to go. Just wanted to read the other 2 books I was reading much more. Pretty good plot but the writing was too languid for it and I got kind of bored.
ginnad's review against another edition
1.0
This book started off badly for me. On page one the narrator, Sam Dance, announces that he spent 3 years studying chemical engineering at the University of Dayton. 2 pages later, he discusses the 3 years spent studying physical chemistry at the University of Chicago... The errors in facts and timelines just continued from there.
It seems like the author has no idea how long things take to do. Sam spends 2 years waiting to deploy to the UK, doing nothing about building the machine. He spends 100% of his non-working hours learning about, listening to, and playing jazz music. Once in England in January 1944, he works full-time in wartime, spends hours a week at an orphanage talking up the headmistress, and forms a jazz band with some mates, and drinks heavily at local pubs seemingly every night. Oh, and while doing all that, he builds a prototype of the mysterious machine, by April. When would he have the time? Even assuming men in their (late?) 20's don't sleep, it defies belief.
The rest of the book continues with these strangely conceived events and actions. Sam as a character has zero personality. He spends years not working on the machine, to be prodded into action by Hadantz, then drops it again. He marries the mysterious Bette, who is seemingly unknowable, even by her husband.
The climax of the book is of course, saving JFK, and changing his own timeline. Right, because if you could go back in time, having fought in WW2, that's exactly what you would do.
I've never read anything else by Goonan, and I doubt I ever will.
It seems like the author has no idea how long things take to do. Sam spends 2 years waiting to deploy to the UK, doing nothing about building the machine. He spends 100% of his non-working hours learning about, listening to, and playing jazz music. Once in England in January 1944, he works full-time in wartime, spends hours a week at an orphanage talking up the headmistress, and forms a jazz band with some mates, and drinks heavily at local pubs seemingly every night. Oh, and while doing all that, he builds a prototype of the mysterious machine, by April. When would he have the time? Even assuming men in their (late?) 20's don't sleep, it defies belief.
The rest of the book continues with these strangely conceived events and actions. Sam as a character has zero personality. He spends years not working on the machine, to be prodded into action by Hadantz, then drops it again. He marries the mysterious Bette, who is seemingly unknowable, even by her husband.
The climax of the book is of course, saving JFK, and changing his own timeline. Right, because if you could go back in time, having fought in WW2, that's exactly what you would do.
I've never read anything else by Goonan, and I doubt I ever will.
merrinish's review against another edition
3.0
So this was my first foray into the "speculative fiction" side of sci fi. You know, what if the Japanese had won the war, how would the world have been different if blah blah blah hadn't been assassinated, etc. I found this author via the Nebula showcase book for 2009.
And I'm just not sure.
The book was a whole lot of nothing happens except what actually happened in the war, a little bit of "well what does this do?" and a lot of "huh?" at the end, before wrapping things up in two pages of exposition. I liked best the parts that weren't science fiction at all, when Sam, the main character, and his war buddy Wink got into Hawkeye and BJ style antics in occupied Germany. Goonan used her father's journals of what the war was like from the view point of an engineer, actually quoting bits of his journals in the text, and those were also completely fascinating. This is a book that sent me to google more than once, and I definitely appreciate that in a book.
HOWEVER. The science fiction side of it still, again, made little to no sense, and wasn't incredibly well executed. I'm left a little cold at the end.
And I'm just not sure.
The book was a whole lot of nothing happens except what actually happened in the war, a little bit of "well what does this do?" and a lot of "huh?" at the end, before wrapping things up in two pages of exposition. I liked best the parts that weren't science fiction at all, when Sam, the main character, and his war buddy Wink got into Hawkeye and BJ style antics in occupied Germany. Goonan used her father's journals of what the war was like from the view point of an engineer, actually quoting bits of his journals in the text, and those were also completely fascinating. This is a book that sent me to google more than once, and I definitely appreciate that in a book.
HOWEVER. The science fiction side of it still, again, made little to no sense, and wasn't incredibly well executed. I'm left a little cold at the end.
rdebner's review against another edition
4.0
This was a really enjoyable historical fiction novel with a sci-fi twist to it. At times, it had a bit of a Forrest Gump flavor to it, as the main character shows up at a number of key moments in 20th century history. The author's exploration of jazz as an analogy for consciousness and quantum science was also very interesting.
theartolater's review against another edition
A sci-fi/timeshifting thing that only partially interested me to start and never got anywhere. I went 150 pages before skipping ahead a bit to figure out the twist, being utterly bored by it, and moving on.
katbond's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best books I've ever read. It's surreal but not too unrealistic and a meditation on the nature of the universe, time, and our place within it all.
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