Them Bones (novel)

Them Bones (1984) is the first solo novel by science fiction writer Howard Waldrop. It was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1984, but lost out to William Gibson's Neuromancer; both novels were part of the third Ace Science Fiction Specials series edited by Terry Carr.

Plot summary

In 1929, some archaeologists find a horse skeleton in a mound in the Louisiana swampland—a mound which pre-dates the re-introduction of the horse to North America. Moreover, the mound contains something even more anachronistic—a corroded brass rifle cartridge.

This is a novel about shifts in time. From the late twenty-first century, Madison Yazoo Leake, a member of the Special Group, is transported back in time in an attempt to stop the destruction of the human race. However, he arrives not in 1930s Louisiana, but in a world where Arabs explored America, the Roman Empire never existed, and the Aztec empire extended to the Mississippi.

External links

• Them Bones at the Internet Book List