num_pages: 187
description: This is a fast moving excursion into a fantasy world of the future. Ragle Gumm, 46, lived with his sister Margo &amp; his brother-in-law Vincent &amp; earned his living by consistently winning a daily newspaper contest labeled Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next? Ragle has moments when his world, recognizably 1959, disappears; he is left alone, seemingly thrust through a hole in the universe, &amp; in place of his surroundings he finds cryptic pieces of paper--one word messages. After an attempted escape, Ragle &amp; Vincent break thru the borders of the town, discover that the year is actually 1998 &amp; that for three years a civil war has been raging between the moon colonists--lunatics--&amp; earth isolationists. Ragle's heightened ability to discern patterns had been used to predict &amp; prepare for colonist missiles. When he became convinced that the colonists were right &amp; tried to join them he was brainwashed by the isolationists, regressed to scenes of his childhood &amp; continued his predictions, thru the contest, without ethical conflicts. His escape is deviously engineered &amp; the outcome of the war guarantees to be a compromise. Perching on the rim of the real &amp; the unreal, precariously vacillating, this effort is marred by some obvious, unexplained &amp; distracting inconsistencies.--Kirkus
language: English
title: Time Out of Joint
titlecomplete: Time Out of Joint
characters: Ragle Gumm
genres: Science Fiction Fantasy, Dystopia, American, Fantasy, Novels, Speculative Fiction, Fiction, Classics, Time Travel, Science Fiction
ratings_count: 13996
publisher: Penguin Books Limited