The Armageddon Blues

by Daniel Keys Moran

Jalian travels seven hundred years back in time in hopes of preventing a nuclear war

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Ebooks, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad this wasn't my first book from Daniel Keys Moran. It might have been my last. I can see the beginnings of the "Continuing Time" universe but it is so disjointed it's hard to make out.

The saving grace of this book was it's characters. They aren't perfect or great just oddly interesting enough to keep me wanting to turn pages. "Emerald Eyes" was my first Moran book and it is a very good place to start. The characters are better and the the plot line is 'continuous'.

[Rob Gates · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this previously but am re-reading my entire Daniel Keys Moran collection, reminding myself how brilliant his books are.

[Bryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, Daniel Keys Moran, how I used to adore your books! This one was my second favourite, after The Long Run -- I read all of them in 1994 and 1995 and they were beloved in my social/gaming circle and we would have long conversations about the smallest details of them and copy the aesthetics and generally behave like the fannish young people we were. And I even read this one a few times since then, but not for a very long time -- I just took the time to look and it was 1997 the last time, and both I and the world have changed so much since then.

So perhaps I should have expected that the book would no longer work for me, but I was still surprised by how poorly it hangs together; it is a very young book from a very particular time and place and I am not that person nor in that place. I did enjoy reading it, but as a piece of my past and as a piece of frozen time, rather than as a story now. It is a book about loving travel on freeways and classic movies and rock music in a way I see as very male, a book about the particular shape that fear of nuclear war took in the 1980s, a book that wants to respect women but still needs men to fix all the problems. It's passionate in that way of young people, every single scene is wrought to a fever pitch so that the reader is just skating along on the top of high emotions on each page, like a movie that is all the beating hearts and very little to connect them. I see exactly why I loved it in 1994, having been young and newly in love with cities and having grown up marinated in that particular 80s fear, and full of fervent hope that computers and the Internet would somehow save us all, and I respect it for what it meant to me then, but I am not certain I will reread it again.

[James]

I honestly wanted to give this 5 stars, because very few books so brilliantly illustrate the concept of linear vs. nonlinear time.

"It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."

Sorry, couldn't resist.

What works, and sometimes doesn't is the various threads of people interacting isn't clear, and when everything is pulled together...I still don't understand everything that happened, and that's what cost it a fifth star. Why did Georges Mordreaux kill himself? This could easily be my own failure, and not the authors, but there were a lot of the character interactions I just didn't GET, which diminished the effect of the awful, onrushing day of Armageddon.

[Warren Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always loved his books--this one is no exception.

[Barry Haworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago (borrowed from a friend) and recently came across a second hand copy and decided to revisit it. The book stuck in my mind mostly on account of one of the main characters, Georges Mordreaux, who has a unique and fascinating power.

Written in the 1980s, the story is very much Cold War inspired. It is an alternative history, our own time line being disrupted by a time traveller from the future. The story is an interesting one, with other memorable characters as well as Georges, and a novel approach to nuclear disarmament.

[John Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the first part, "All The Time In The World," in the May 1982 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and I'm not sure any single piece of writing left a more lasting impression on mine. I didn't find out about the rest until much later. I'm still working through it, but I give it five stars just from that first few thousand words.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. There’s a whole lot going on here, from the person who reverses entropy to the time traveler to the meditations on warfare and impending doom. It was hard to really pin down what the characters were actually trying to do, and why.

[Michael Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very early book in the Great Wheel series (of which the Continuing Time series is a subset). This sets up the Praxcelis Union, which contains some memorable stories.

I love this book. Very well paced, great story, brilliant ideas. All the hallmarks of DKM at his finest.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice love story

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be a reread but I can't remember.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just had a hard time following this.

2.1

[James Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of his stronger works. A little choppy and discordant in structure. Reminded me in some respects of the Terminator 2 storyline crossed with Drakon.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked this book more than i expected to. by the end though i was getting a bit confused about who was on whose side and what was happening. perhaps i was just too tired?