Last Year
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4.5 • 17 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant.
In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson's Last Year, the technology exists to open doorways into the past--but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened.
A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination.
Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 21st-century time travelers who came to 1870s America didn't just reveal themselves to be from the future; they also built the City of Futurity in the Midwest to give tourists at least those willing to pay the extremely expensive ticket price a vague look at the world to come. Jesse Cullum is a "native" City employee, born in the 19th century, who knows he's got a good deal working security and means to keep it, especially while supporting his sister, Phoebe. Knowing the future people's oddities well, he's not surprised by the forthright and occasionally crude behavior (by 19th-century standards) of his new security partner, Elizabeth DePaul. But he is surprised when he falls in love with her, and shocked when someone arms the oppressed groups of the 19th century with future knowledge and weaponry. Wilson (The Affinities) flips the traditional time-travel genre on its head with an engaging protagonist who adapts the best of both worlds into rugged, brainy secret-busting resourcefulness, forging talents superior to 21st-century technology. Wilson's turnabout effectively turns both past and present into "another country" and may just lure readers tired of temporal clich s back into the time-travel fold.
