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Johnny and the Bomb

Johnny and the Bomb

FantasyScience Fiction
Pages
272
Published
2004
Language
English

Synopsis

A bag-lady with a shopping trolley full of time gives Johnny Maxwell and his friends an accidental trip back to 1941, to the night a local street was bombed in the Blitz. There are people on that street who will die unless something changes — but changing what happened in the past is exactly the kind of thing you are not supposed to do. The third and final Johnny Maxwell novel, in which Pratchett confronts the mechanics of time travel with characteristic discomfort about what heroism actually requires.

Prose complexity
2/10

Vibe

FunnyTenseThought-ProvokingAdventurous
Time LoopSurvivalComing of AgeReluctant Hero

Genres

Fantasy Science Fiction Young Adult Adventure Time Travel World War II Alternate History

About the author

T
Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was an English author best known for the Discworld series, a sequence of forty-one comic fantasy novels set on a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. Across four decades, the Discworld grew from a parody of sword-and-sorcery fantasy into one of the most sustained works of social satire in English literature, examining politics, religion, science, gender, race, capitalism, and the nature of stories themselves. Pra...

Characters

Johnny MaxwellProtagonist

In 1941, confronting real consequences for the first time and discovering that knowing what will happen does not make it easier to watch.

Mrs TachyonSupporting

The bag-lady whose shopping trolley is the time machine — eccentric, unreliable, and almost certainly more aware of what is happening than she lets on.

KirstySupporting

Returns from the first book — more organised than Johnny and more willing to treat the past as a problem to be solved.

All characters in Johnny and the Bomb

Frequently asked questions

  • When was Johnny and the Bomb published?

    First published in 1996 by Doubleday. It is the third and final novel in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy.

  • What is the historical event in Johnny and the Bomb?

    The novel centres on a real event — the bombing of a street called Blackbury Mews during the Blitz in 1941 — in which a number of people were killed. Johnny and his friends must decide whether and how to intervene.

  • Was Johnny and the Bomb adapted?

    Yes — a BBC television adaptation was produced in 2006.

  • Is this the last Johnny Maxwell book?

    Yes. Johnny and the Bomb is the third and concluding novel of the trilogy. Pratchett did not write further Johnny Maxwell books.

  • Do I need to read the previous books?

    Johnny and the Dead introduces a character (Kirsty) who returns here, and reading the trilogy in order is recommended, though each novel is largely self-contained.

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