Numbers Don't Lie - Softcover

Bisson, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1892391325 ISBN 13: 9781892391322

Publisher: Tachyon Publications, 2005

Synopsis

Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction as the short stories "The Edge of the Universe," "Get Me to the Church on Time," and "The Hole in the Hole," this inventive and quirky novel combines the stories, featuring the inspired adventures of Wilson Wu, a jack-of-all-trades who uses his eclectic background to solve a variety of wacky futuristic dilemmas. An Ivy League graduate, Wu is a rock musician, a Volvo mechanic, a trial lawyer, a camel driver, an aeronautics engineer, an entomological meteorologist, and, most importantly, a math wizard with a formula for every occasion. A godsend for his friends and the universe, Wu uses his eclectic skill set to prevent the imminent collapse of the universe, guarantee good weather for an Alabama wedding, and tow an abandoned lunar rover from the surface of the moon to a junkyard in Brooklyn. Irreverent and inventive, these adventures exemplify Bisson's smart, hilarious, and satirical style that has earned him Hugo and Nebula awards and comparisons to Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut.

About this title

About the Author

Terry Bisson is the author of Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories, which won the Hugo, Locus, Nebula, and Sturgeon awards, The Fifth Element, and The Pickup Artist. He lives in Oakland, California.

Reviews

Starred Review. To the honorable list of science-fictional nutty geniuses, among them Stanley G. Weinbaum's Prof. Haskel Van Manderpootz and J.U. Geisy's Dr. Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, add the name of Wilson Wu, the hero of Bisson's hilarious collection of three related stories filled with puns and inscrutable mathematical formulas. No piker, Wu manages to walk, in "one long step for mankind," from an auto repair garage in a nondescript part of Brooklyn directly to the moon in "The Hole in the Hole." He even brings back half of a dune buggy left behind by astronauts and casually explains the situation as "a periodic incongruent neotopological metaeuclidean adjacency." In the second tale, "The Edge of the Universe," Wu saves the expanding universe from shrinking. Finally, he patches "a hole in the fabric of space-time" in "Get Me to the Church on Time." Fans of the late Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will relish this irreverent but never smart-alecky spoof. Bisson has won Hugo, Nebula and other major SF awards. (Dec.)
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Lawyer and Brooklyn patriot Irving has this six-foot-two friend, Wilson Wu, also an attorney (Harvard-trained, no less; well, maybe Yale)--not to mention pastry chef, rock guitarist, engineer, herbalist, camel driver, Volvo connoisseur (so's Irv), and, during the period spanned by the three stories corralled here under a title that's also his motto, entomological meteorologist. First and foremost a Princeton mathematician, Wu can explain--via equations, of course--the anomalies in space-time that Irving innocently encounters. Like the gateway to the moon in the Volvo junkyard Irving goes to for the parts that'll stifle his squealing brake pads. Like the segment of universe-edge that's going counterclockwise in Huntsville, where Irv is cramming for the Alabama bar while waiting for his sweetheart Candy's daddy to make good on a do-not-resuscitate order. Like the fact that everything in New York runs on time when Irv returns for his honeymoon with Candy. Bisson, an sf clown-prince who madly embroiders ludicrous premises with wordplay, nutty incongruities, goofy character humor, and outrageous irony, is in top form here. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Tachyon Publications
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1892391325
• ISBN 13: 9781892391322
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220