Gnarl!: Stories

Rudy Rucker

ISBN 10: 1568581599 / ISBN 13: 9781568581590

Published by Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000

About this Item

[ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Edition: First ] Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows Pub Date: 4/18/2000 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 500 First edition.

Seller Inventory # 6018045

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Gnarl!: Stories
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1568581599
• ISBN 13: 9781568581590
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Though he is also a mathematician, computer scientist, and essayist, Rudy Rucker is best known for his ground-breaking science fiction. The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.

Reviews

Gnarly is surfer slang for complex wave conditions. Used as a noun, it suggests a startling intricacy of detail. Gnarl! collects three dozen stories written since the 1970s by cyberpunk pioneer Rucker (Freeware). Arranged in chronological order, the stories combine hard science with a gonzo "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" sensibility. By far the best pieces are those written after 1986, when Rucker moved to California, and of those, collaborative efforts with Bruce Sterling and Marc Laidlaw are especially good. Two Rucker-Laidlaw yarns, "Probability Pipeline" and "Chaos Surfari," are among the best in the collection. Both feature a couple of physics-savvy stoners who build a surfboard using Imipolex, the weird Nazi plastic from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. "The Indian Rope Trick Explained" introduces the concept of Aether Pitons; "Soft Death" postulates immortality through software engineering; and "Rapture in Space" describes the making of the first zero-gravity sex video. Not everything is of high quality, but at his best Rucker invites comparisons with sf crossover artist Philip K. Dick or Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics. Recommended for most fiction collections and essential for sf enthusiasts.DEdward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.