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eBook Category: Science Fiction Nebula Award(R) Finalist, Ditmar Award Winner, Nebula Award(R) Preliminary Ballot Nominee
eBook Description: Montana Rockies, 1923: In this homage to "The Great Gatsby," Paul Orsatti's British Moth bi-plane is shot down in a blaze of anti-aircraft fire while investigating rumors of "something goofy" in the mountains. He awakens imprisoned in a luxurious prison beneath a mountain of diamond, surrounded by a group of fellow unfortunate aviators who have suffered the same fate. Their xenophobic warden, the multi-billionaire Randolph Estes Jefferson, will do anything to conceal the existence of his secret mountain of diamond, and apologizes to his prisoners while bestowing lavish comfort upon them in their prison of luxury. When Paul meets Jefferson's beautiful daughter, Phoebe, he see an opportunity to plan his escape.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: F&SF, 2001
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2002

738 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [96 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [82 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [79 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [285 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [88 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [111 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [148 KB] , hiebook (KML) [208 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [119 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [73 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [91 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [119 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [123 KB]
Words: 27029
Reading time: 77-108 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Dann is a fabulously evocative writer. This story -- a current Nebula finalist, as I write this review -- is absolutely compelling, telling of a man rich enough to create his own rules (if you own a diamond the size of a mountain, a little trifle like the Emancipation Proclamation doesn't prevent you from still keeping slaves just for the fun of it, and if your spoiled daughters want boyfriends, why, just abduct some square-jawed soldiers for them, and then kill them when the girls grow tired of them). The story is set shortly after World War I, and has rich characters, lots of action, and quite a bit of humor. A really enchanting read. -Robert J. Sawyer, Fictionwise Recommender

It was like being in a storm, except I heard the thunder first. That was the sound of a dozen anti-aircraft guns firing at us from the summit of a sheer butte that rose like a monolith above the cruel curls of the Montana Rockies.

The setting sun was wreathed with gauzy clouds, and it tinted the cliffs and crevasses below as pink as stained glass flamingos. We were flying a British Moth with a 60-hp de Havilland motor--those Brits could certainly make an airplane. The Moth was steady as a table and was Joel's and my favorite for wing walking and stepping off from one plane onto another. I was in the front cockpit this time, just along for the ride. It had been Joel's idea to borrow the boss's beaut and skip out after our last performance to investigate "something goofy" in the mountains near Hades, which was more bare rock than a village set in the saddle between a mountain that looked like a two-knuckled fist and the mountain that was shooting bullets at us.

Joel swore and shouted though the communication tube and tried to get us the hell out of there, as bullets tore into the fuselage. Another burst hit the upper wing just above my head, which was where the fuel tank was located. My face was spattered with gasoline and I figured then and there that I had just bought the farm; Joel was shouting through the tube to tell me that everything was okay--when we were hit again.

I heard a ping as a bullet hit the motor, and an instant later I could barely see through the oily smoke and fire. I gagged on the burnt exhalations of fuel and oil that smeared over my goggles as the Moth went into a dive. Reflexively, I took over the controls, which were linked to the front cockpit, God bless Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland. I shouted back at Joel through the tube and pulled as hard as I could on the stick while working the rudder and aileron pedals. The compass was going all wacky, as though someone was playing over it with a magnet, pulling the needle this way and that. Although I couldn't see Joel, I knew that he had been hit. Another wave of heat swept over me and I figured I'd be lucky to have another few seconds before the fuel tank blew Joel and me right out of the postcard pink and purple sky.

I'd always wondered what I'd be thinking about in my last moments. I'd wondered about it every time I climbed into a Spad during Bloody April of 1917; I could fly as well as most anybody, although I was no Rickenbacker. I had figured I was going to get it in '17 or '18, but I never even took a bullet, not a scratch--I had the proverbial angel on my wing--and now here I was, about to get it in 1923, which was supposed to be the best year of my life. I remembered Dr. Coué's prayer, which everyone was saying: "Day by day in every way I am getting better and better."

Better and better.

"Joel," I shouted through the tube, "you're going to be okay. We're going to be okay." Day by day in every fucking way, and I felt that hot, sweaty tightness all over my face like I always do when I'm going to cry, but I slipped out of that because the old girl was making a whining keening sort of a noise, and then the motor sputtered and everything became summer afternoon quiet, except for the snapping of the wing wires--

And I found myself counting, counting slowly and the ground spun through the smoke, and I kept the nose up as the valley floor rose like an elevator the size of Manhattan, and I wasn't thinking about anything, not about dying or the tank exploding or the smoke or the smell of the oil--or my Mother, or Lisa, whom I had only dated twice, but she had gone down on the first date and said she loved me, and she had so many freckles, and three curly black hairs between her breasts, I remembered those three black hairs as I counted and by one-hundred-and-forty-seven I expected the giant hand of God to slap me right into the canyon floor and the fuel tank to explode like the sun and--