Gravity’s Rainbow (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Pynchon
- First Published: 1973
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Science fiction--alternate history
- Time of Work: 1944-1945
- Setting: Europe
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction, Picaresque fiction, Apocalyptic and catastrophe fiction, Alternate history
- Subjects: Power, personal or social, Sex or sexuality, Europe or Europeans, 1940’s, World War II, Drugs, Espionage or spies, Behaviorism, Technology, Paranoia, Quest, Arms or weapons, Rocketry or rockets
- Locales: Europe, United States, London, England
The Plot
Although Gravity’s Rainbow is often considered a culmination of his earlier novel, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Thomas Pynchon created his magnum opus with this book. It is particularly difficult to categorize a work of this scope in any specific genre because it has been called revisionist history, apocalyptic, picaresque, a Grail quest, satire, social criticism, Magical Realism, and encyclopedic narrative, among others. It does, however, fall under the broad parameters of science fiction given its preoccupation with machinery—the fact that the...
[The entire page is 1225 words long]
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