20th Century Un-Limited
4/5
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About this ebook
The 20th Century is over and done with and nothing can be changed. Or is it? Felice Picano's two short novels take delicious what-if peeks at outwitting Time's (seemingly) unbending Arrow.
In Ingoldsby, a handsome graduate student finds himself caretaking a Midwestern architectural treasure in which not everything or everyone is what they seem—or when they seem either! But a sexy newcomer challenges him to change all that, for himself, and for a gay youth way out of his own time.
In Wonder City of the West, a man too young in spirit to be at retirement age takes a leap back to Golden Age Hollywood. He encounters youth, friendship, a movie star lover, and talents he never knew he possessed. But as he succeeds beyond his dreams, he must ask—is he merely a tool for a shadowy group with a far larger purpose?
Provocative, mind-bending, sensual, and entertaining, 20th Century Un-limited is an unexpected addition to an established body of work by an author unafraid to confound and surpass expectations.
Felice Picano
Felice Picano’s first book was a finalist for the PEN/ Hemingway Award. Since then, he has published twenty volumes of fiction, poetry, and memoirs. Considered a founding member of modern gay literature along with other members of the Violet Quill Club, he founded two publishing companies: SeaHorse Press and Gay Presses of New York. Among his award-winning books are the novels Like People in History, The Book of Lies, and Onyx. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Reviews for 20th Century Un-Limited
4 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I was disappointed with the first story (**)! The initial pages are gleaming (that's why I bought the book...), but thereafter the writing style is descriptive, unimaginative and the plot uninteresting. Where is "my" Felice Picano of "Like People in History"?
Fortunately, the second story, Ingoldsby, is much better (****)! It is also a sci-fi/fantasy tale that mix past with present, but this time with much more subtlety. Even the narrative structure (a series of police reports, newspaper articles and journals) is smarter, bringing the reader to the author/narrator level, in trying to understand what happened from scraps, bits and pieces, just like what may happen in a real police investigation. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Two imaginative and engaging short stories both with the theme of time travel.The first, Wonder City of the West is told by the ageing and now bankrupt gay gentleman we will come to know as Christopher Hall. Befriended in 2010 by a mysterious neighbour claiming to be from the future who offers him the chance to go back to the 1930s and a new life. With all matters arranged our narrator arrives in Los Angeles in 1935 where he is meet by another mysterious stranger who provides guidance.It is now that our narrator takes the name Christopher Hall, and begins his new life, and makes new friends. Although it is the depth of the Depression Christopher, with his mature head and knowledge of the future sets about helping his friends, and along they way secures a promising future for himself involving Hollywood, films and film stars, including his gay idol. As he learns first hand of the 1930s his Twenty-First Century liberal conscience prompts him to put to try right the social injustices of the time he now occupies. It is around then that he (and we) learns the real reason for his being sent back in time.The second story, Ingoldsby, is initially more obscure, or intriguing. Told mainly through newspaper articles, police reports, eye witness accounts and eventually the main subject's own journals, it concerns a remarkable handsome young PhD student who is employed in his vacation at the mysterious country house of the title, a house the locals are wary of, and who parades around the nearby small town in little more than a skimpy pair of shorts, much to the horror of the local matrons and the delight of the young girls; that is before he disappears, for it his disappearance that is the centre of this tale.Of the missing man, Neal P Bartram, we learn about him from from others' reports, but of what happens to him from his own journals. That involves some visitors who appear to be out of their time, two handsome young men, one of whom is gay, and a beautiful young girl with whom he falls in love. Using his abilities as a student he investigates, and devises a plan whereby he can be with his new found girl, and at the same time help her hapless gay friend saving him from a life of compromise and repression. As with the other story the solution involves time travel.