Currently in an International CyberPunk Literature class, we are reading a novel called Terraplane. In it, an American duo of special agents (one a former military man named Luther) kidnap a brilliant young Russian scientist in order to find her mentor who has gone missing leaving a huge question about his mysterious work. The year is 2056 and there have been many wars since 1988 (when the novel was written). After the expedition goes wrong, Oktobriana, the young Russian scholar, has no choice but to use the mysterious device and they find themselves in 1939 New York, crashing into a swamp. Rescued by a black doctor, they learn that they did not travel back in time but rather to another alternate universe in which history seems very similar but not identical. For instance, slavery was abolished by Teddy Roosevelt in 1901.
It is through many new experiences of discrimination that we learn that Luther is black, a fact which was barely noted upon in his nearly post-racial apocalyptic 2056. Initially absent, race plays a growing role in the novel (when Luther is harassed by a group of Irish immigrants, he complains to the police who break his ribs). While WW2 has not yet occurred in this different world, the seeds of the Black Pacific have already been planted and some parallel images bring the two world closer. In one moment, Luther describes to Wanda, the doctor's wife, what will happen in the future:
" 'You know the future, Luther. What am I going to miss?'
'This September, Hitler invades Poland,' I said, deciding for folklore's sake to follow our world's chronology. 'Starts World War Two. Conquers most of Europe. Sets up death camps. Kills millions of Jews. Many know but none act-- '
'Figures,' she said. 'Haven't there been enough dead already?'
In God's plan, I doubted Hitler had ever had a cold.
'Fighting HItler's like makes us forever more like the fought.' I continued. 'We abyssgaze overlong. That's Europe. Another front opens in the Pacific. Japan attacks Hawaii in late 1941 with planes built' -- I had to laugh, remembering now-- 'with scraps of the Sixth Avenue el. A bomb--'
'Japs?' she asked. 'Good.'
'Good?'
'They're colored people,' she said. 'True?' " (Womack, 195)
Even in an alternate universe, slavery occurred and lasted much longer. Japanese propaganda seems to also have reached jaded Black Americans, former slaves on what became the state of Cuba. The struggle of white imperialism versus native and colored peoples of the world has so marked our 20th century that for Womack, it was not an option to change it. The world as we know it would be unrecognizable without it, and this near recognition is a crucial plot point in Terraplane.
Another passage brought to mind the political cartoon entitled "The Harvest in the Philippines" (page 109 of the text, 265 of the reader) and the implications that dead bodies are harvested, that war is a producer of death and assimilation and that people are commodities is referred to in Terraplane as well. Luther, a former high ranking officer of the army has flashbacks about his time in the field. In one particular touchy campaign, Luther had to kill children. A sudden fit of exhaustion brings the memory of burying all the children back to him:
"As I watched I recalled the rest, unable to contain the flood. Three [children] remained to be planted and I chose to be their farmer" (Womack 209).
The bodies of the future children of Long Island are, like the Filipinos of the cartoon, dead seeds to be planted in an orderly fashion by the US army, however unwitting they may be. Here, the near post-racial qualities of Luther's life make him feel closer to the children, not because as a member of a minority, he identifies with them, but because he mourns their lost childhoods. But the image of the farmer, plucking life from his victims is in both cases stimulated by American imperialism over an island which did not want to follow orders set by the US.
Works Cited
Womack, Jack. Terraplane: A Novel. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. Print.
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