Thomas Pynchon · 2006 · global

Thomas Pynchon's 2006 epic sprawls across the world between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the years after the First World War, following anarchists, mathematicians, spies and the airborne Chums of Chance. This route traces one path through its geography: from Chicago and the Colorado silver camps across the Atlantic to London, Gottingen and Venice, and on by airship to Inner Asia and the Tunguska sky.

1. 1
   Chicago

   The story opens above the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, where the boy aeronauts of the Chums of Chance moor their airship over the White City.

2. 2
   Telluride

   In the silver camps of Colorado, dynamite, labour war and the Traverse family set the ground-level story in motion.

3. 3
   New York

   Eastward to New York, gateway between the American century and the older troubles of Europe.

4. 4
   London

   London of spiritualists, mathematicians and spies, where light, time and the aether are all under investigation.

5. 5
   Gottingen

   Gottingen, capital of mathematics, where Kit Traverse pursues Vectorists, Quaternionists and the strange geometry of the age.

6. 6
   Venice

   Venice, and the drift toward the Balkans and the gathering shadow of the coming war.

7. 7
   Kashgar

   Kashgar and the deserts of Inner Asia, where expeditions hunt for a hidden city and the Chums fly on stranger errands.

8. 8
   The Tunguska Event

   Over the Stony Tunguska in 1908 the sky detonates, a light seen across a continent, as the novel bends toward its own approaching catastrophe.