runaway climate change, unstable weather patterns and rising sea levels, which threaten to eventually inundate old New York (although DryCo has constructed a "New" New York on higher ground). It won a Philip K. Dick Award
in its year of publication.
Plot summary
In this novel, DryCo is facing problems from a mass religious movement centered on the premise that
miracles for believers in his sect. It decides to resolve this problem by retrieving a younger alternate history
Elvis, and bringing him to present day New New York to discredit the posthumous reputation and mythology that now surrounds Elvis.
The retrieval team are a married couple, Iz and John. Iz is actually an
Nazi-Soviet Pact, but Operation Barbarossa does not occur because the USSR rearms to the same extent as Nazi Germany. Moreover, Trotsky declares war on Nazi Germany before it can launch Barbarossa to its east and betray the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1941. In the Pacific theater, the United States defeats Japan in 1946, but they do so through dropping fourteen atomic bombs on the Home Islands, which reduces the nation to an irradiated wasteland. Meanwhile, Hitler is assassinated in 1944, and the new Chancellor Albert Speer signs an armistice with the United Kingdom
, the United States and the Soviet Union, which leads to an unstable multi polar world due to the inconclusive result of World War II in this world.
In its 1954, the alternate Elvis turns out to be a
Valentinian House of God as background detail, alerting aware readers to the survival of Gnosticism
in this timeline.
The
world view. Due to this psychological pressure, his psychosis escalates after he is transferred to Dryco's homeworld. However, his masquerade collides with scepticism at a London "ElCon" (Elvis Convention) religious gathering and there is a riot. Iz, John and Elvis use bootleg DryCo time travel technology to travel back to London in the alternate world's forties and Elvis loses himself amidst the debris of St Paul's Cathedral
.
However, Elvis is relatively psychologically healthy and morally sane compared to the intense anti-human pathology of DryCo's world; in the end he risks everything to escape it.
DryCo's plan has failed. Although John and Iz are sacked from DryCo Central, DryCo Europe offers Iz a position within their local hierarchy. John commits suicide in the bath, and is persuaded by Iz (frightened for her own life, and that of her fetus) that she intends to join him moments later; she does not. Dying, John becomes aware that she deceived him and intends to remain behind and continue living during his last cognizant moment. He communicates non-verbally that he understands, although whether he believes in the end that the child is his own is unclear. Iz has survived, but at great personal cost.
