Subject: THE WORLD NEXT DOOR by Brad Ferguson

From: [email-masked] (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Date: 23 Dec 91 19:58:40 GMT

THE WORLD NEXT DOOR by Brad Ferguson
                        A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
			 Copyright 1991 Evelyn C. Leeper

        As the book begins we are shown what is clearly a post-holocaust town
   in upstate New York.  And, like so many poorly written post-holocaust
   novels, this one has everything too easy--lots of stuff to scavenge, no
   residual radiation, no real damage to the area.  But this *isn't* poorly
   written, because in THE WORLD NEXT DOOR, it *is* "the world next door"--a
   world in which the atomic war came in 1962, when such a fortuitous outcome
   was still possible.

        But life is not entirely idyllic for the people of the town of
   McAndrew.  For one thing, they're all starting to have strange dreams,
   dreams that the reader recognizes immediately as being of our timeline,
   dreams of what the dreamers would have been doing had "Kingdom Come" not
   come.  And other strange things are happening.  Songbirds are returning, and
   deer, ... and then cats and dogs--not wild cats and dogs, but animals
   obviously well fed and cared for.  Just what is going on?

        This would seem to me to be a sufficient story, but Ferguson adds more.
   There is an attempt by the army--or what passes itself off as the army--to
   take over the town.  There are other, more distant government pressures.
   There is a whole subplot of romantic entanglements and conflicts.  I found
   the love story an awkward intrusion on the rest of the story, and the
   resolution of the political aspects a little too facile and unconvincing.
   Either of these plotlines alone might not have grated, but using both of
   them is like piling Ossa on Pelion.  (Or perhaps more accurately, Pelion on
   Ossa, with Olympus as the dream plot.  The former reference is Virgil's
   GEORGICS I:281; the latter is Homer's ODYSSEY XI:315.) But the dreams, and
   what they mean, and what they lead up to, did keep me interested through all
   this.  On the whole, THE WORLD NEXT DOOR is a worthwhile book with one too
   many subplots.

        (This novel is an expansion of Ferguson's short story "The World Next
   Door," which appeared in the September 1987 ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION
   MAGAZINE and THERE WILL BE WAR VIII: ARMAGEDDON! edited by Pournelle and
   Carr.)

   %T      THE WORLD NEXT DOOR
   %A      Brad Ferguson
   %C      New York
   %D      October 1990
   %I      Tor
   %O      paperback, US$3.95
   %G      ISBN 0-812-53795-5
   %P      342pp

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 908 957 2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]