Sewer, gas & electric

Alternate Titles

• Sewer, gas, and electric

Description

From the back cover of Warner Books paperback September 1998: AMERICA: 2023 AT THE HELM: THE TALKING, HOLOGRAPHIC HEAD OF AYN RAND IN A HURRICANE LAMP.... Harry Gant is building a new Tower of Babel five hundred stories above the polluted streets of Manhattan. In the festering sewers, his crusading ex-wife, Joan, hunts a mutant great white shark named Meisterbrau, while in the waters of the Atlantic, eco-pirate Philo Dufrense leads his crew on a desperate quest to make the world safe for ring-tailed lemurs. A wild ride between the good, the evil, and the indifferent, SEWER, GAS & ELECTRIC, destined to become a classic, is a young writer's no-holds-barred journey into the raging America of the near future...

First Sentence

No one could say he hadn't been warned.

Description

The year is 2023. High above the canyons of Manhattan, a crew of human and android steelworkers is approaching the halfway point in the construction of a new Tower of Babel. The Tower is the brainchild of billionaire Harry Gant, who is building it as a monument to humanity's power to dream. Meanwhile, on the streets (and below), a darker game is afoot: A Wall Street takeover artist has been murdered, and Harry's ex-wife, Joan Fine, has been hired to find out why. Accompanying her is philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, resurrected from the dead by computer and bottled in a hurricane lamp to serve as Joan's unwilling assistant. While Rand vainly attempts to tutor her in "the virtue of selfishness," Joan discovers that the murder is the key to a much larger mystery - one in which millions of lives may hang in the balance. The world of Sewer, Gas & Electric includes such characters as submarine eco-terrorist Philo Dufrense; his daughter, Seraphina, who lives in the walls of the New York Public Library; newspaper publisher Lexa Thatcher, whose Volkswagen Beetle is possessed by the spirit of Abbie Hoffman; and Meisterbrau, a mutant great white shark who swims in the sewer tunnels beneath Times Square - all of whom, and many more besides, are caught up in a conspiracy involving Walt Disney, J. Edgar Hoover, and an army of homicidal robots.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Sewer, gas & electric: the public works trilogy : a novelAtlantic Monthly Press1997-01-01
• Sewer, Gas and ElectricHardcoverAtlantic Monthly Press1994-09-01
• Sewer, Gas and ElectricAspect1998-09-01
• Sewer, Gas and ElectricPaperbackGrove Press2004-09-10
• Sewer, Gas and ElectricGrove/Atlantic, Incorporated2007-01-01