Sewer, gas & electric
Subtitle: the public works trilogy : a novel
By: by Matt Ruff.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 450
Subjects: Rand, Ayn -- Fiction.; City and town life -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction.; Twenty-first century -- Fiction.; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction.
Other titles: Sewer, gas, and electric
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.