This Shared Dream
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Kathleen Ann Goonan introduced Sam Dance and his wife, Bette, and their quest to alter our present reality for the better in her novel In War Times (winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel and ALA's Best Science Fiction Novel of 2008). Now, in This Shared Dream, she tells the story of the next generation.
The three Dance kids, seemingly abandoned by both parents when they were younger, are now adults and are all disturbed by memories of a reality that existed in place of their world. The older girl, Jill, even remembers the disappearance of their mother while preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Goonan has created a new kind of utopian Science Fiction novel, in which the changes in history have created a present world that is in many ways superior to our own, while in other worlds people strive to prevent their own erasure by restoring the ills to ours. This Shared Dream is certainly the most provocative Science Fiction speculation of the year, and perhaps the decade.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following up on her Campbell Award-winning novel In War Times, Goonan again explores morality and temporality in her engrossing newest, which focuses on the children of her previous book's protagonists. Thanks to a time travel "Device" invented by their parents, Jill, Brian, and Megan Dance live in a world where the Kennedy assassination was prevented, and much of the turmoil of the 20th century was avoided, including the Vietnam War and Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Technology is more advanced, and the world is a more peaceful place, but it still isn't perfect. However, Jill and her siblings are haunted by memories of the other "Timestream," wherein JFK didn't make it, and history progressed as we know it. When a mysterious individual begins digging into their parents' past, the Dances realize it's time they solved the mystery of these memories from a time that never was, and wherein their lives pan out very differently. Though keeping the timestreams separate can be a chore in this complex book, Goonan's smart prose is straightforward, and her fleshed-out characters and intriguing moral questions make for a quick and thought-provoking read.
