Was (or Was... in the UK edition) is a WFA nominated 1992 novel by American author Geoff Ryman, focusing on themes by L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the musical film version. Ranging across time and space from the 1860s Kansas to the late 1980s CaliforniaThe concept of WAS is an adult parallel to the magical Land of Oz, that never existed as a real place.