You can imagine my delight when a copy of his newest release, Jim and the Flims, landed on my doorstep. In this novel, Rucker reimagines the myth of Orpheus as only he can – Jim Oster is a former surfer dude, part-time stoner, and current Santa Cruz mailman who dabbles in high-tech research. His wife Val is a kindergarten teacher with a thing for cactuses. But when Jim accidentally ruptures the membrane between the real world and the afterworld – ultimately killing his wife in the process – he sets off on a surreal journey that will eventually lead him to Flimsy, a realm that exists inside of every electron, the afterlife, a recycling station for souls…
Suddenly Jim finds himself “a crucial player in a cosmic drama,” an astral traveler who alone can save the world from a bizarre invasion of demonic blue baboons – and, just maybe, bring his dead wife back to life…
Here’s just a sampling of Rucker’s intelligent yet outlandish writing style. When Jim gets to Flimsy, he is curious whether those in the afterlife can have sex. They can – but it’s more likened to paramecia reproducing:
“My organ was taking on a strange form. Little feelers were branching out from the tip, like tentacles on a sea anemone. And the shaft was discouragingly flexible. Meanwhile the aethereal flow from Ginnie’s crotch had increased, forming a low, glowing mound with its own set of anemone feelers. Bizarre as this was, we were both quite excited. Sex is, after all, largely in the mind…”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In this novel, characters smoke mummies, travel dimensions through giant snails, and come out with profound statements like “Floopy goopy. Beauty is sooth.”
If you read Jim and the Flims and become addicted to Rucker like I am, here are a few of my B&N Reviews for some of his older releases…
Why do I suddenly feel like a bibliophilic pusher? 
Rudy Rucker's newest offering -- a unique blend of George Orwell's 1984 and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland -- is a brilliantly wacky cautionary tale about the homogenization of society as only Rucker can envision it.
Fans of Rucker's cyberpunk masterpieces (Wetware, Software, The Hacker and the Ants, et al.) are in for a treat. The hero of this techno-organic fable -- set on a dramatically transformed Earth in the year 3003 -- is 12-year-old Frek Huggins, an ordinary boy who lives in his family's bio-tweaked house tree in the sleepy hamlet of Middleville. In a technologically advanced, ecologically friendly society ruled by the enigmatic Gov, fitting in and not causing any trouble is a way of life. Frek knows all too well what happens to people who question Gov: His father left Earth a year ago for the sanctuary of space after being targeted as a malcontent. But when a tiny alien ship enters Earth's atmosphere and lands underneath Frek's bed, the naïve youngster quickly becomes an outlaw revolutionary on the run for his life. Thus begins his epic quest to find an elixir to restore Earth's biome and to somehow destroy Gov. Before all is done, Frek's quest will take him to the ends of the universe and to the very center of the galactic core.
Profound. Astonishing. Irreverent. Anyone who doesn't cherish this richly described and wildly imaginative novel overflowing with weird aliens, outrageous technologies, and a future Earth with uproarious colloquialisms and a disturbingly closed-minded monoculture is absolutely gollywog gurpy. – Paul Goat Allen
Rudy Rucker has done it again: After 2004's Frek and the Elixir (selected as the Science Fiction/Fantasy Book of the Year on the B&N Editor's Choice Top Ten list), the retired San Jose State University computer science professor returns with a romantic comedy/multiverse-hopping adventure revolving around two brilliant mathematicians and the woman they both love.
While completing their theses, graduate students Bela Kis and Paul Bridge stumble across a world-shattering theorem that not only predicts aspects of the future but also opens up hyper-dimensional tunnels to an infinite number of alternate realities. With both young mathematicians pursuing the same love interest, video blogger Alma Ziff, their rivalry spurs them to change the very reality around them to win her. But messing with universal dynamics -- "the science of the gnarl" -- comes with a heavy price
One of the pioneers of the cyberpunk movement in the early '80s (Software, Master of Space and Time, Wetware, et al.), Rucker writes in an ever-evolving style as totally unclassifiable as it is unpredictable. This novel -- featuring an amalgam of abstract, Ph.D.-level mathematical and scientific speculation and screwball fantastical satire à la Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -- will appeal to probability theorists and discerning science fiction fans alike. Mathematicians in Love -- like Frek and the Elixir -- is more than an intellectual, irreverent romp through time and space; it's a truly visionary work that will blow readers away as they contemplating the numerous potential technological advances right around the corner Kurt Gödel meets Monty Python. – Paul Goat Allen
Rudy Rucker's 1984 classic science fiction romp through time and space asks the question: What would you do if you could alter reality with a mere thought? When two madcap scientists create a machine that enables them to instantaneously fulfill their wildest dreams, chaos ensues.
Joseph Fletcher is a down-and-out engineer slaving away at a dead-end job and making barely enough to support his wife and young daughter. He longs for the day when he can once again be his own boss and run his own company. When Joe's old partner, a crazy inventor named Harry Gerber, suddenly reappears in his life in the form of a flock of miniature Harrys on the dashboard of his 1956 Buick, he is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to build a blunzer, a machine that turns thought into reality. Once the blunzer is built, Joe and Harry (and Harry's homely girlfriend, Sondra Tupperware) instantly indulge. Joe becomes a millionaire, Harry turns into a deity, and Sondra transforms herself into a flying blonde sexpot. But paradise soon turns unruly as a giant lizard attacks New Jersey, parasitic alien "spine-riders" invade Earth, and porkchop bushes and fritter trees grow wild everywhere!
Rucker's genius is found in his unique ability to blend hard mathematical and scientific speculation with an insanely unpredictable imagination. Master of Space and Time is comparable to other irreverent Rucker masterworks like The Hacker and the Ants and Frek and the Elixir -- a twisted, uproarious, and surprisingly perceptive look at life, the universe, and porkchops. – Paul Goat Allen
From one of the founding fathers of cyberpunk, a cyberspace masterwork revisited. The Hacker and the Ants Version 2.0 is a new and improved rendering of the Rudy Rucker classic, originally published in 1994.
Jerzy Rugby is a hacker, which Rucker defines as a "fanatically committed programmer" not a computer criminal. Aside from his job developing sentient robots at the GoMotion Corporation, Rugby's life is unraveling. His wife recently left him and took their three children. The house he's renting is up for sale and is under siege on a daily basis from greedy real estate agents. Rugby's last sanctuary is in cyberspace. But when he finds digitized ants in his computer and investigates further, his world is turned upside down. The rapidly multiplying ants infect his personal robot, Studly, and eventually get into a cable wire to temporarily disable televisions all over the world. On the run from the police, Rugby must somehow figure out the ant mystery before it's too late.
Almost a decade after its initial publication, The Hacker and the Ants Version 2.0 is just as timely and chilling today, and still wildly irreverent. Rucker's twisted sense of humor is at its best in this cyberpunk classic. – Paul Goat Allen
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
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I love witty plots and surreal touches! The anemone sex has ensnared both my sense of humor and imagination. (Just like you intended.)Thanks to your aggressive book pushing Paul, I'll have to read Jim and the Flims; and if I really like it, I'll refer back to this blog for Rucker's other works.
