Guy fr now,goes to future,meets girl,runs fr bad guys

[kirchan57]

That's basically it. I read this in jr.-hi/high school. He is transported when someone in the future tests a star drive engine. The world is run by big competing corporations. Governments are for show as they are irrelevant; bureaucrats are called drones. The families that run the corporations are called "The Heirs". A competitor called Transystems kidnaps the guy and the girl -one of the Syncom Heirs- then tries to kill them. I think his name might be Paul and she is Dorian.They land in West Covina and survive with help from strangers -a father and son, an elderly lady, a cowboy maverick- that they encounter as they try to get back across North America to her family somewhere in the Alps, I believe. Commoners range from the relatively poor -who use stim box electronic implants to feel better about things- to a more comfortable working/middle class. They use a variety of transports to evade the bad guys. Big airliner sized hover buses, hoverships, planes, trains, and boats.They get home, papa is grateful, but he wants his star drive back. So they redo their sequence and he gets back just about when he left. He is more appreciative of his family, but is thinking he doesn't care for his present girlfriend so much anymore. Thanks for your help.

[kirchan57]

Addition: Cover has a sketch of the young couple running from someone; background has some of the assorted storied vehicles.

[kirchan57]

Found on Amazon. No Time Like Tomorrow by Ted White. What did we do before the Net and Amazon? The book cover thumbnails really help.

[admin]

Ted White is an interesting character. I've enjoyed a few of his stories, but he never made a big impact as a writer. He is probably remembered, when at all, as an editor of Amazing and Fantastic, where he brought good cover art to the magazines. It did not save them. I seem to remember he wrote a novel in which an android tries to prove he is human, and in the end proves it by impregnating a human girl. Don Wolheim, editor at Ace, insisted he change the ending, because at Ace books good girls did not get pregnant. Ted did time for drugs, even though he is white, which is unusual enough to note. He was a major player in the minor key of science fiction fandom and, if memory serves, something of an expert on jazz.