Gravity’s Rainbow (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Pynchon
- First Published: 1973
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Historical realism
- Time of Work: 1944-1945
- Setting: Europe
- Principal Characters: Tyrone Slothrop, Dr. Edward W. A. Pointsman, Roger Mexico, Vaslav Tchitcherine, Major Weismann/Captain Blicero, Oberst Enzian, Katje Borgesius, Geli Tripping, Jessica Swanlake
- 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 Story:
World War II was winding down, and in London, Tyrone Slothrop had been assigned to a new post under the command of the Firm. The location known as the White Visitation had formerly been a mental hospital exclusively but was now occupied in part by Pavlovian scientists, among them Dr. Edward Pointsman, who were conducting a series of experiments on conditioned response. The scientists worked under the code name PISCES, an acronym for Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender, and the section experimenting on dogs as subjects was subcoded Abreaction...
[The entire page is 1991 words long]
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