Michael E Johnson
Banned
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/news/sfw_news_20070723.html
War To End All Wars
SF author Kathleen Ann Goonan told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, In War Times, is about World War II soldier Sam Dance, who is given plans to a mysterious device that supposedly has the power to end war. "Sam, with his close friend 'Wink' Winkelmeyer, spend the war trying to build the device," Goonan said in an interview. "Stationed in England and then in Germany, their attempts meet setbacks, and they really don't know exactly what it will do, although they have many theories."
Sam is an exceptionally intelligent volunteer with bad eyesight who nevertheless is finally able to join the armed services via a recruiting station run by used-car dealers in Indiana, Goonan said. "He loves jazz and is able to equate its intellectual and spatial qualities, especially those of bebop, to the problem [of the device]," she said. "Sam's brother, Keenan, is killed at Pearl Harbor, and Sam vows to try and create [the] device, which [supposedly has] the power to end war."
The plans for the device were given to Sam by Dr. Eliani Hadntz, a scientist at the forefront of European physics, who was brought to the United States to work on the atomic bomb, Goonan said. "She has worked with all the luminaries of physics now in the U.S., including Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, both of whom confirmed the physics making fission possible," she said. "She tells Sam that an atomic bomb is in production, and that her alternative is better."
Postwar, when Sam and Wink can only see one another at Army reunions, they realize that the device has worked, Goonan said. "But what it does, exactly, and how it affects the world, history and Sam's family, ... draws personal responsibility and morality in the larger scheme of things heartbreakingly together," she said.
In War Times is a very distanced family history, Goonan said. "Sam Dance is not my father, though his experiences are based on my father's," she said. "Bette is not my mother, but my mother did fly small planes for the Civil Air Patrol. I am not Jill, but I was caught up in the student protests of the late '60s and early '70s. We did not live in Washington D.C., but in the Virginia suburbs, but I often dream of living downtown, on streets with huge trees, in a vital, important city, while I worked and went to school there."
The book is built upon the stories Goonan's father told about his days in England, France and Germany, she said. "Like Sam, he was in ordnance, the 610th," Goonan said. "The 'device' came from one of those stories. ... I'd always wanted to gather my dad's war stories, and a few of them are in the book verbatim." —Cindy White
War To End All Wars
SF author Kathleen Ann Goonan told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, In War Times, is about World War II soldier Sam Dance, who is given plans to a mysterious device that supposedly has the power to end war. "Sam, with his close friend 'Wink' Winkelmeyer, spend the war trying to build the device," Goonan said in an interview. "Stationed in England and then in Germany, their attempts meet setbacks, and they really don't know exactly what it will do, although they have many theories."
Sam is an exceptionally intelligent volunteer with bad eyesight who nevertheless is finally able to join the armed services via a recruiting station run by used-car dealers in Indiana, Goonan said. "He loves jazz and is able to equate its intellectual and spatial qualities, especially those of bebop, to the problem [of the device]," she said. "Sam's brother, Keenan, is killed at Pearl Harbor, and Sam vows to try and create [the] device, which [supposedly has] the power to end war."
The plans for the device were given to Sam by Dr. Eliani Hadntz, a scientist at the forefront of European physics, who was brought to the United States to work on the atomic bomb, Goonan said. "She has worked with all the luminaries of physics now in the U.S., including Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn, both of whom confirmed the physics making fission possible," she said. "She tells Sam that an atomic bomb is in production, and that her alternative is better."
Postwar, when Sam and Wink can only see one another at Army reunions, they realize that the device has worked, Goonan said. "But what it does, exactly, and how it affects the world, history and Sam's family, ... draws personal responsibility and morality in the larger scheme of things heartbreakingly together," she said.
In War Times is a very distanced family history, Goonan said. "Sam Dance is not my father, though his experiences are based on my father's," she said. "Bette is not my mother, but my mother did fly small planes for the Civil Air Patrol. I am not Jill, but I was caught up in the student protests of the late '60s and early '70s. We did not live in Washington D.C., but in the Virginia suburbs, but I often dream of living downtown, on streets with huge trees, in a vital, important city, while I worked and went to school there."
The book is built upon the stories Goonan's father told about his days in England, France and Germany, she said. "Like Sam, he was in ordnance, the 610th," Goonan said. "The 'device' came from one of those stories. ... I'd always wanted to gather my dad's war stories, and a few of them are in the book verbatim." —Cindy White