{PDF EPUB} a Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah! by Harry Harrison DSPACE
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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah! by Harry Harrison DSPACE. Science, pictures, editing, wasting time with computers. Hurrah! A delightful reading experience at last! A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by Harry Harrison. NEL 1976, 192 pages. Considered logically, this book has many flaws. Read closely, it shows a lot of proofreading errors, and at least one glaring copyediting error — the presence of ‘Brabbage‘ mechanical calculators, rather than ’Babbage’. Yet I think it’s a good book and happily recommend it. Harrison posits that, through a single small event coming out differently, Spain remains Muslim in the 20th century. As a result, North America was not colonised by the Spanish. The English therefore gained a stronger toehold, with the result that it remains part of the empire, and indeed is not yet even independent. Cover of 1976 NEL edition of the book. Harrison lays out the consequences of the events clearly enough. For some reason Germany remains a confederation of minor states. The French are the great enemy, and George Washington, whose heir is the story’s protagonist, is a reviled traitor. Harrison seems to suggest that, because the aeroplane was invented in America and the steam train in Britain, the aeroplane is a large slow device but the train is a nuclear powered miracle. This of course does not hold up to the most cursory inspection. Wasn’t the nuclear reactor just as much an American invention as the aeroplane? And, if we consider the development of nuclear science as accelerated by WWII, would it exist in any form in an alternative world where Fermi and the like were not gathered in the US but scattered across Europe (because here they were not fleeing the Nazis — who do not exist). And Europe was not that far behind the Wright brothers in developing planes, and by 1910 most of the development was happening in Europe. There are other, similarly unconvincing repercussions, but to pick at them misses the charm of the book. Yes, tunnelling thousands of miles across the Abyssal Plane is … unlikely to say the least. Yes, the stiff Victorian-ness of key characters seems unlikely — just because the empire persisted, does not mean it stood still. But Augustus Washington’s journey by giant lumbering gas-powered helicopter, his battles with the forces of sabotage, privilege and misunderstanding, the races against time, the rescues and cliff-hangers, these things make this a fun read. Perhaps not a scholarly one, even the author admits! These days, we would consider the book as steampunk And it is. I can’t say I’ve read a lot of steampunk, so I hesitate to recommend this to the modern connoisseur; but it would certainly be worth a look. Harrison wrote a lot of pretty ordinary SF. While his work was popular and widely available, no one considers him as the genre at its most literary. The books he is most well known for are fast actioners like the Stainless Steel Rat books, and another parallel universe series, the West of Eden books, which are in many ways his most major achievement. This book deserves to be ranked up there with his most highly regarded books. It is still mostly about fast action, but it places it in an interesting time and place. Though there are some pretty cardboard characters, Harrison does not play them false and maintains excellent control of tone. Harrison’ s grip on the required terminology and appropriate technology is solid and never takes you out of the story — as long as the preposterous tunnel of the title doesn’t bother you too much. I believe this is also known by the inferior title Tunnel through the deeps . By either name, it’s what I would call ‘a good read‘. Perhaps find it in a different, more carefully edited edition, though. While Harrison’s prose and characters never jerked me out of the story, the errors certainly did! It makes a good airport novel; read it while you fly over the Atlantic, and imagine spending half a day hurtling through an evacuated tunnel inside a sealed can towed by nuclear powered steam locomotive. It’s a glorious vision of a world that never was. ResoluteReader. Harry Harrison's novel A Transatlantic Tunnel Hurrah! (also known as Tunnel Through the Deeps ) is a forgotten classic of steampunk alternate history. In this reality, history diverged from our own timeline around the time the Moors occupied Spain. This leads to a number of major differences in Europe (Spain and Portugal don't exist for instance). But the most important piece of this alternate history for our story, is that the American Revolution failed, and George Washington was shot as a traitor. As a result, the United States remains part of the British Empire, though other bits are breaking away. The US is a smaller group of states, and economically in hoc to Britain. The great victorian engineer, Brunel is in the process of slowly building a transatlantic tunnel that will link this major colony with the motherland. But his drilling will take hundreds of years, and funding for the American end is short. The hero of the tale, Captain "Gus" Washington, is a direct descendent of the traitor Washington. A brilliant engineer, his ideas and enthusiasm clash with Brunel. He determines to drive the American end of the tunnel forward faster, with new technologies, ideas and funding. The race to finish the tunnel becomes a a race between the old of the British Empire and the new of a strengthening US capitalism. This is steampunk, so coal powered aircraft and rocket mail is mixed with atomic trains and the odd lack of the internal combustion engine. The strict hierachical society of Victorian England remains, though at its apex is the current Queen and Prince Phillip. First published in 1972 there are enough knowing nods towards the modern world to make this an amusing tale, and Harrison plays it very much for laughs. There is an obligatory race scene, that really ought to be form the centrepiece of a movie adaption, a love interest and a whole collection of pompous Victorian businessmen. A forgotten classic of science fiction that deserves a new steampunk audience. ISBN 13: 9780765327864. Over 4,000 miles in length, intended to sustain a pressure of 1,000 atmospheres while accommodating cargo and passengers traveling in excess of 1,000 miles per hour, the Transatlantic Tunnel is the greatest engineering feat in the history of the British Empire, a project worthy of Her Majesty's Empire in this the eighth decade of the twentieth century. If the project is a success, the credit will belong to Captain Augustus Washington, the most brilliant engineer of our age. It is Washington's greatest hope that his success will at last erase the family shame inspired by that other Washington, George, traitor to his King, who was hanged by Lord Cornwallis more than two centuries ago. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. HARRY HARRISON, author of innumerable science fiction novels and stories, divides his time between Ireland and California. Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. : Chapter One A HURRIED MESSAGE AND A DANGEROUS MOMENT Leaving Paddington Station, the Flying Cornishman seemed little different from any other train. Admittedly the appointments were cleaner and newer, and there was a certain opulence to the gold tassels that fringed the seat cushions in the first-class carriage, but these were just a matter of superficial decoration. The differences that made this train unique in England, which was the same as saying unique in the entire world, were not yet apparent as the great golden engine nosed its way over the maze of tracks and switches of the station yards, then out through the tunnels and cuttings. Here the roadbed was ordinary and used by all trains alike. Only when the hulking locomotive and its trailing cylinder of closely joined coaches had dived deep under the Thames and emerged in Surrey did the real difference show. For now even the roadbed became unusual, a single track of continuously welded rails on specially cushioned sleepers that was straighter and smoother than any track had ever been before, sparkling in deep cuttings that slashed a direct channel through the chalk of the downs, shooting arrow-straight across the streams on stumpy iron bridges, a no-nonsense rail line that changed direction only in the longest and shallowest of curves. The reason for this became quickly apparent as the acceleration of the train steadily increased until the nearby fields and trees flashed by, visible as just the most instantaneous of green blurs; only in the distance could details be picked out, but they too slipped backwards and vanished almost as soon as they had appeared. Albert Drigg had the entire compartment to himself, and he was very glad of that. Although he knew that this train had made the return trip from Penzance every day for almost a year now and had suffered no mishap, he was aware of this only in theory, so that now experiencing it in practice was a totally different matter. From London to Penzance was a total of 282 miles and that entire incredible distance would be covered in exactly two hours and five minutes—an average speed including stops of well in excess of 150 miles per hour. Was man meant to go that fast? Albert Drigg had a strong visceral sensation that he was not. Not even in this year of Our Lord 1973, modern and up-to-date though the empire was.