TERRAPLANE by Jack Womack

[Evelyn C. Leeper]

TERRAPLANE by Jack Womack
Tor, 1990 (1988c), ISBN 0-812-50623-5, $3.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Evelyn C. Leeper

This starts out as a futuristic science spy type of novel. But when
the main characters try to escape from the Soviet Union in an airplane, they
trigger a device which catapults them into an alternate world--or more
accurately, a parallel world. Why the latter rather than the former? Well,
they find themselves not in the 21st Century, but in 1939, which they
attribute to the rate of history being different in the second world. This
idea of a similar (or not so similar) world just a step away from ours is
more in line with the parallel universe assumption, even though the use of a
break-point to build a different world than our own is more an alternate
history convention.

And there is a break-point, though to reveal it would take much of the
enjoyment out of the novel, since part of Womack's skill is in gradually
showing us what has made this world what it is. It is not a "steampunk"
world, though the cover with its high-tech look around a 1930s car might
give you that impression. The technology in universe #2's 1939 has minor
differences from our own, but there are no amazing steam-driven spaceships
or anything.

Womack also does a good job in showing life in universe #2 from the
point of view of the blacks. Too often, scientists who travel to an
alternate universe meet scientists in that universe, travel in comfortable
circles, and don't have to deal with any class problems. The other variant,
of course, is they find themselves a black scientist in an America where
slavery still exists or some such. But in TERRAPLANE Womack draws something
partway between these two extremes, and does it well.

The weaknesses of the novel are minor. The claim of differing rates of
time to explain how the protagonists end up in 1939 is, I think, not really
convincing. (Is it that some critical event such as the first multi-celled
being occurred 60 years later in one universe, or is it that everything in
universe #2 happens at the speed of the life of universe #1 minus 60 years,
all divided by the life of universe #1?) Some explanation of how traveling
between universes sometimes results in a time-slip might have served better.
A couple of the subplots could have been eliminated, but don't really
detract greatly. A more annoying distraction is the future lingo that the
characters speak--evidently the next major resource crisis is that all the
verbs are used up and nouns and adjectives must serve instead. So the
characters talk about how someone needs to be hospitaled, or how they
curbsided their car. After a while the reader is annoyanced by this, and
wants to wallslam the book. Luckily, for most of the book the characters
normal-language rather than future-speak, so it is bearable.

Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or e...@mtgzy.att.com