A sprawling adventure novel set roughly between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the years after the First World War. It follows a large cast, including a family of anarchist-linked miners in America, scientists, spies, aeronauts and wanderers, across the United States, Europe and Central Asia. Themes include labour conflict, light and mathematics, secret powers, and the approach of modern war. It is long, playful and ambitious, with many genres blended together.
Quotes
Merle's all-night illumination prolonged itself into an inescapable glow that began to keep him awake.
If the U.S. was a person," he later became fond of saying, "and it sat down, Columbus, Ohio would instantly be plunged into darkness
All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.