Jack Womack Books In Order

Publication Order of Dryco Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Jack Womack is a bestselling science fiction author that is best known for the “Ambient” series of novels.

The author was born in 1956 in Lexington, Kentucky, and loves to describe his childhood as Kafkaesque. He had a productive even if haphazard education and it was while he was fifteen and living in Kentucky that he began writing.
At this time, he had one of the best teachers for all his schooling years who make it possible for him to express himself artistically as well as psychologically through the act of writing.
When Womack was done with school, he decided to pursue higher education and enrolled at Transylvania University for his college education.

But he only studied for a year and dropped out and enrolled at the University of Kentucky where he only lasted for a fortnight.

He would then drop out and head back to Transylvania where he spent six months and quit education altogether as he moved to New York.

It was while he was living in New York where he worked in a library for four years and in bookstores for twelve years that she began writing his novels.

As for how he got into science fiction, Jack Womack loves to say that he came to science fiction from the outside in. At the time he began writing, he had no experience in it, since he grew up reading Shirley Jackson’s ghost stories.
During the early 1970s, he had once read “Strange Creatures From Time and Space” by John Keel which referenced “Childhood End.” He had then found the latter pretty boring just like he did reading Rolling Stone articles about Phil Dick during the 1970s.
Back then, he thought the science fiction author Phil sounded like a lunatic.

At some point, he stumbled upon “The Man in the High Castle,” which he read and found to be very impressive and still believes is one of the best books the author ever published.
He would then discover Edgar Rice Burroughs and Thomas Ruggles Pynchon who made him fall in love with science fiction even more.

But even though he has now become a renowned science fiction author, he still does not read much in the genre as he prefers to read nonfiction.

Aside from his long-form fiction, Jack Womack has also been writing short stories for a long time. His short stories have been featured in many prestigious anthologies by the likes of Delia Sherman, Ellen Kusher, and Ellen Datlow.
His essays, reviews, and short fiction have appeared in the likes of Suddeutsche Zeitung, Omni, Artbyte, Spin, the Washington Post Book World, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

He is the author of the introduction of the electronic edition of the Charles Fort books and authored the afterword for Neuromancer by William Gibson which he called Some Dark Holler.

Working with Elliott Sharp the musician, he penned “Binibon” the musical which was played at New York’s The Kitchen in 2009. He has also written several short pieces that have been on Radio Bavaria, BBC 2, and BBC 1.
Womack has since become an award-winning author as he was the winner of the 1994 Philip K. Dick Award. He has also taught creative writing at the Seattle-based Clarion West workshop.

Jack Womack’s novel “Ambient” is a work set in New York City in the future. It is a city that looks like a horrible combination of Germany during the Thirty Years’ War, modern-day Beirut, and A Clockwork Orange’s London.

The Manhattan of the 21st century is full of freaks who are the result of a nuclear accident on Long Island. The ambients or freaks still have a sense of community that has disappeared about everywhere else across the globe.

Nonetheless, civic authority lies with a conglomerate known as Dryco which took control of the entire governmental apparatus. Lately, things have been falling apart for Dryco and Dryden Jr. the CEO believes that Dryden Sr. is responsible.
He believes his father has been destroying the company through wild speculation in the real estate properties in the Bronx. Jr. manages to convince the protagonist O’Malley to take out his father but he fails and is forced to flee to save his own skin.
It makes for a timeless and well-written story that makes clever use of slang in a world that is so outrageously unlike where we live making for a very addictive read.

“Terraplane” is a disturbing novel about time travel that presents a vision of New York in a future time.

The protagonist-narrator Luther works as an intelligence officer for an American company working in Russia during the 21st century.

They are operating in a world that is a hellish parody of capitalist society as it hurtles towards its ultimate violent, consumer-mad, and self-destructing end.
Luther and Jake his friend learn about a secret Russian invention that has been produced by a secret lab that makes time travel possible.

They steal the invention and get out of Moscow where they activate the time machine only to be cornered by the Russians.

Since they do not have time to get the correct settings, they find themselves in Depression-era America in 1939 just in time for the World Fair.
But things are not so right in the parallel world as slavery has not been abolished and will not be until several decades later.

Cuba is part of the Union, and the New Deal was never implemented as FDR is killed before he takes office which resulted in a terrible Depression.

The work follows the life and times of the refugees as they navigate this mad world on a quest to find the time machine that would take them back to a more familiar time.

Jack Womack’s novel “Heathern” is the third title in the “Dryco” series of novels that is set in 1998 in New York City. It is at a time when society is on the verge of collapse and the Army has come into town to enforce order since martial law has been declared.
Dryco the multi-national conglomerate is still in charge of everything but from behind the scenes. Johanna is the narrator and an executive at Dryco that is charged with investigating Lester McCaffrey an inner-city teacher.

According to the rumor mill, McCaffrey is a miracle worker and could even be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. In the eyes of the bigwigs at Dryco, this presents an opportunity to exploit and assimilate, which is what they do best.
Johanna begins to question her allegiance to the company as she becomes closer to Lester.