Dream of Venus (Or Living Pictures)

DREAM OF VENUS (OR LIVING PICTURES), a novel set in the 1939-'40 New York World's Fair, is a speculative history reanimating the last great international fair this world would ever know. Meshing actualities with invention, DREAM OF VENUS renders a future past that is nostalgic and predictive, an account of hope and longing at the onset of World War II. Focusing on Zeke Lichtenquist - an artist moved into the Fair's Town of Tomorrow - VENUS takes us on a search for authenticity and meaning. Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and the Fair's president Grover Whalen all pop in and out, players in a fabled New York of the late 1930s. This work of alternative history has taken its title from Salvadore Dali's surrealistic pavilion featured at the fair.