Product Description
Joe Cube is a Silicon Valley hotshot--well, a would-be hotshot anyway--hoping that the 3-D TV project he's managing will lead to the big money IPO he's always dreamed of. On New Year's Eve, hoping to impress his wife, he sneaks home the prototype. It brings no new warmth to their cooling relationship, but it does attract someone else's attention.
When Joe sees a set of lips talking to him (floating in midair) and feels the poke of a disembodied finger (inside him), it's not because of the champagne he's drunk. He has just met Momo, a woman from the All, a world of four spatial dimensions for whom our narrow world, which she calls Spaceland, is something like a rug, but one filled with motion and life. Momo has a business proposition for Joe, an offer she won't let him refuse. The upside potential becomes much clearer to him once she helps him grow a new eye (on a stalk) that can see in the fourth-dimensional directions, and he agrees.
After that it's a wild ride through a million-dollar night in Las Vegas, a budding addiction to tasty purple 4-D food, a failing marriage, eye-popping excursions into the All, and encounters with Momo's foes, rubbery red critters who steal money, offer sage advice and sometimes messily explode. Joe is having the time of his life, until Momo's scheme turns out to have angles he couldn't have imagined. Suddenly the fate of all life here in Spaceland is at stake.
Rudy Rucker is a past master at turning mathematical concepts into rollicking science fiction adventure, from Spacetime Donuts and White Light to The Hacker and the Ants . In the tradition of Edwin A. Abbott's classic novel, Flatland, Rucker gives us a tour of higher mathematics and visionary realities. Spaceland is Flatland on hyperdrive!
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Review
"Science fiction author-hero Rudy Rucker is an oddity and a treasure . . . . In these days of neat little marketing categories, few writers attempt to cover so much ground."-- Wired
"His work links the largest possible cosmic view with the trivia and tribulations of everyday life . . . . He portrays thoroughly real, everyday people grappling with some far-fetched phenomenon . . . with comic results."-- Fantasy & Science Fiction.
"A hilarious tribute to Edwin Abbott's Flatland . . . combining valid mathematical speculation with wicked send-ups of Silicon Valley and its often otherworldly tribespeople . . . belly-laugh funny." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From Publishers Weekly
Like a Mbius strip, that mathematical curiosity in which one surface is produced by twisting judiciously then joining two ends of a ribbon, Rucker's new hard SF satire tweaks the dot-com Y2K subculture into a hilarious tribute to Edwin Abbott's Flatland (1884). Kencom techie Joe Cube fatally miscalculates how his increasingly dissatisfied, yuppie, dingbat wife, Jena, really wants to celebrate the millennial New Year's Eve. Joe should have remembered that Jena likes sex even better than he does. Instead he brings her two Dungeness crabs, a bottle of Dom Perignon and some really cool electronics, an experimental three-dimensional TV. This indigestible combination fizzles Joe's stab at romance, but the electronics sizzle, hurling Jena into the arms of Joe's skuzzy engineer pal, Spazz, and propelling Momo, a siren-voiced denizen of the fourth dimension, into Joe's life. For her own nefarious purposes, Momo cons Joe into helping her people, the Kluppers, against their mortal enemies, the Dronners. Only Joe's three-dimensional reality, Spaceland, separates the two warring races. Combining valid mathematical speculation with wicked send-ups of Silicon Valley and its often otherworldly tribespeople, Rucker achieves a rare fictional world, a belly-laugh-funny commentary on the Faustian dilemma facing a lumpish 21st-century tech-addicted everyman: What is the real price in human relationships, in love and friendship and compassion, of those cutesy little user-friendly gadgets that happen to materialize so innocently on our desks?
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
On the eve of the millennium, Silicon Valley researcher Joe Cube brings home an experimental machine that unexpectedly connects him with the fourth dimension. When Joe meets one of its inhabitants, a curious woman named Momo, she offers to show him the wonders of life beyond the confines of his three-dimensional realm a proposition Joe accepts despite indications that Momo's intentions are not as benevolent as they seem. The author of Realware gives an appreciative nod to Edward Abbot's Flatland, a classic tale of two-dimensional adventure, in this 21st-century allegory of progress and its foibles. As always, Rucker laces his hard science with ample doses of humor to create an sf adventure for the dot-com generation. A good choice for most sf collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Amazon.com Review
The product manager for a Silicon Valley startup, Joe Cube thinks the best way to enter the new millennium is to stay safely home with his wife and watch the year 2000 come in on an experimental television/interactive device "borrowed" from work. His wife, however, is less than pleased. And after Jena passes out from too much New Year's imbibing, Joe discovers the undertested device has opened a gateway to a new universe: he is contacted by a fourth-dimensional woman named Momo....
Usually, tribute novels are like movie remakes: a bad idea. However, this tribute to Edwin A. Abbott's classic novel Flatland works wonderfully. This is because Spaceland is written by Rudy Rucker, a Silicon Valley professor of mathematics and computer science who is also a hard-SF writer with the most gonzo sensibility in science fiction. --Cynthia Ward
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1 New Year s Eve My idea for handling December 31, 1999, was that Jena and I should fix a nice meal, drink champagne, watch TV, and stay clear of the Y2K bug. I bulldozered over Jena s gently voiced objections. I figured that at midnight the power would go out and the rioting would start. We d lock the door and light some candles, and Jena would smile at me and kiss me and say I d been right to make us stay home. In my mind, that s what was going to happen. And, hey, even if I was wrong about the rioting, we d miss a Millennial traffic jam.My secret hope was to get Jena in bed before midnight so we could be in each other s arms right at the moment of the Big Flip, all those nines rolling over to zeroes and the two of us close as close could be. That was the right way to usher in a new Millennium! Yes! Not that I came out and told this to Jena, as I knew very well that she would have preferred to go somewhere complicated and expensive.Jena liked sex even more than I did, but she didn t like for me to make assumptions about when we d do it. It was always supposed to be some kind of surprise. A spontaneously occurring romantic impulse. A force of Nature, unpredictable as an earthquake or a hurricane. When in fact it was inevitably every one to four days. One of the ways I passed my time at work was to update an Excel spreadsheet tracking our sex frequency. I had a formula in one of the cells to compute what I called the DBS index. A rolling average of the days between sex acts. When the DBS rose above three, it was time to turn on the charm. Buy flowers, talk about Jena s problems, do like that. Not that I always did. To tell the truth, a high DBS was my fault as often as it was Jena s. Even though I talk a good game, I m not the most highly sexed guy around.Thanks to a stressful Christmas visit with Jena s mother and stepfather back in Prescott, Arizona, the DBS was up to 4.1. I should have at least planned to take Jena out for dinner on New Year s Eve. Put us both in a romantic mood. But by the time the facts hit my radar, every place was booked and full, as things always were in California. Not that I really and truly looked that hard for someplace to go. I was fixated on my game plan. Hit the sack before midnight and the romance would take care of itself!Late in the afternoon of New Year s Eve I drove over to the Kencom campus in San Jose to bag this experimental TV set from our lab. In my pinheaded ignorance of what women actually care about, I had the notion that if I brought home some really cool electronics, then Jena would be down with staying home on New Year s Eve. As if.Spazz Crotty was there in the lab, busy at his giant flat-screen monitor as usual. A tall, skinny guy, late twenties, a few years younger than me. I m thirty-one. Spazz was wearing baggy, long skater pants, black leather sneakers, and a T-shirt with The Finger on it. He had short, bleached-blonde hair, with the sides of his head shaved. He had a ring in his nose and a big silver stud up on the top of his ear. I kind of admired him. Spazz was cool. He had tattoos. Jena had always wanted me to get a tattoo. Yo, Spazz. He did a voice recognition thing, answering me without looking up. Hi boss. Want to watch me write some TRACE statements? Nasty bug in the serialization code. Even though Ken Wong had hired me on as the product manager for the 3Set development team, I knew next to nothing about programming, and Spazz never let me forget it. You shouldn t be working, Spazz. Today s a holiday. The Big Flip. So what`re you doing here?` Spazz broke into coughing, having trouble getting his voice started up. He coughed a lot.`I want to take the 3Set home and test it out. You haven`t broken it, have you? It s working, said Spazz. He had a hoarse, wheezy voice, and he talked very slowly. Every time Spazz spoke, he made it sound like he was letting you in on a big secret. I was watching the Teletubbies this morning. I was getting really good depth. But then when I went to save and reload the image I got a power-switch crash. I felt a surge of annoyance. We don t need the freaking save and reload. We took it outta the beta spec last week. It s developer gold plating. You were at the meeting. Why are we even talking about this? It s New Year s Eve, dude. Spazz turned and stared at me for a minute, fingering the hoop in the side of his nose. And then he smiled, suddenly happy as a kid let out of school. Thanks for reminding me. What time is it?I m supposed to meet Tulip at home. He glanced back at his screen. Jesus, it s almost six. I ll ifdef out the serialization code, do a rebuild, and close it down. He hit a few keys and the build messages began scrolling down the bottom of his screen. No warnings, no errors. We were almost ready for production. You re taking the 3Set? said Spazz. Does Ken know?``I might have mentioned it to him, I said. Though of course I hadn t. No way would Ken want the 3Set leaving the lab. It was so secret that even his venture capitalists didn t really know what it was. Not to mention the fact that the 3Set was, theoretically at least, dangerous enough to be a liability risk.Spazz grinned. You re the boss, Joe. He copied the fresh build of the 3Set driver software to a Zip disk for me, shut down his computer, put on his leather jacket, and held the doors for me while I carried the 3Set out to my leased silver Explorer SUV, a premium model with the full Eddie Bauer trim package. The 3Set was a heavy mofo, with a thing like a fish tank instead of a picture tube. A true 3D display. The chips in it had a way of combining successive TV images to build up a 3D image inside the tank. It was pretty neat, when it was working. The risk aspect had to do with the fact that there was a hard vacuum inside the tank, and it could conceivably implode. But I was cool with that. I set it onto my back seat and fastened the seat belt around it.Spazz s red Japanese motorcycle was next to my car; he took out his keys and unfastened his helmet from it. We re outta here, huh Joe? said Spazz. It was getting dark. There was a Wells Fargo bank right across the lot, with people lined up to get money out of the cash machine. I d already gotten mine. What are you doing tonight, man? I asked Spazz. Riding up to San Francisco with Tulip.``Was it hard to get reservations? Spazz gave me a pitying look. The taquerias on Mission Street don t take reservations. You re so uptight, Joe. It s like you re middle-aged. I bet you re planning to stay home and watch TV. On the 3Set, right? You`re gonna wish you were with me when all the lights go out,` I said. `The roads`ll be gridlocked. It`ll be straight outta Mad Max. have to admit I m just a little bit worried, too, said Spazz earnestly, using his slowest, hoarsest voice. I have this mental image of the Earth as being like one of those chocolate oranges, pre-cut into time-zone-sized segments. And when the Millennium hits, the segment with Tonga works its way free and tumbles off alone into black space, the sun glinting on the curved sector of its rind, with Tonga s part of the South Pacific all sloshing off the segment s edges. It s probably already happened, dude, but they re covering it up. And presumably the rest of the South Pacific is pouring down into the huge, wedge-shaped gap that Tonga s segment left, it s a thousands-of-mile-high waterfall that vaporizes into steam or even into plasma when it hits the molten nickel of the Earth s exposed core. It s gonna drain the Pacific dry. And more and more of the segments are falling out, needless to say. I wonder how soon the drop in the water level will be noticeable in the San Francisco Bay. Spazz broke off in a fit of coughing, bending nearly double.I looked at him for a minute. He was putting me on. Freak.``I m articulating the basic fear, said Spazz, straightening up and fingering the stud in his ear. It s atavistic. The Y2K bug is a psychological displacement mechanism. People are terrified of the Millennium, and, ashamed of their fear, they project it onto this specific little computer problem. A niggling factoid to talk about instead of facing their inner Void. Hell, I know some of the hackers who helped hype the bug. It s a hoax on managers, man. A way to take down the industry for a few billion bucks. I hope you`re right,` I said, though really I hoped he was wrong.`Look, why don`t you and Tulip stop by my place on your way up to the City. We`re on your way.` Spazz and Tulip rented a crappy shack in the Santa Cruz mountains even though Tulip was a very well paid process engineer at a chip fab.`You`re really staying home with Jena?` asked Spazz. `Where do you live, anyway?`He looked slightly interested. Spazz had met Jena at the Christmas party and they`d hit it off. Jena was a real live wire in social situations. As a marketing manager for a web tool company called MetaTool, face-to-face interactions were her thing.`In Los Perros,` I answered. `We bought a townhouse next to Route 85. It`s at 1234 Silva View Crescent. Just a starter place till Kencom goes IPO.`Ah, the IPO, more eagerly awaited than the second coming. Until Kencom went public, our shares of founder`s stock were toilet paper. The thing was, Kencom still hadn`t come up with the killer product that would galvanize the market. For a dot-commer, Ken Wong was kind of old school. We knew we wanted something to do with communication, fine, but Ken had this obsession with making our new product from wires and plastic and chips-instead of from Java and press releases. Frankly, the 3Set looked like a bit of a dog. I mean, a full-grown man could barely even carry the thing. Where was that at, in this day and age?I wrote my home address on the back of a Kencom business card and handed it to Spazz. `Stop by around nine. Maybe I will, said Spazz with a wheezy laugh. Jena s hot. What a thing to say. Sometimes it was like techs didn`t realize that I actually had a mind. Like I was an ape, or a robot.On the way home I picked up a fresh loaf of sourdough, a couple of Dungeness crabs, a bottle of Dom Perignon, and some roses.Jena was just getting out of the shower, wet and gorgeous. She was half Yavapi, and s...
About the Author
Rudy Rucker is a mathematician, computer scientist, professor and writer who has twice won the Philip K. Dick Award for best SF paperback original, and has published a number of successful popular books on mathematical subjects, including The Fourth Dimension and Infinity and the Mind. He lives in Los Gatos, California.
From Booklist
Rucker gives his conception of a fourth dimension of physical extension--a classmate of left-and-right, up-and-down, and backward-and-forward--fictional reality in a romp set in the recent past. At Y2K time in Silicon Valley, manager-type high-techie Joe Cube is visited by Momo from the fourth dimension, or at least half of it, since it is divided by our world, three-dimensional Spaceland. Momo gives Joe some fourth-dimensional capacities, such as being able to see the insides as well as the outsides of three-dimensional stuff, in exchange for making him rich. How? By giving him fourth-dimensional circuitry enabling worldwide clear-channel phone links that bypass phone-company-owned facilities. Business is set up, a funding angel is hooked, and all systems are go--well, except Joe's marriage, spoiled by his hardware specialist's hot bedroom manners with Joe's wife--when it turns out that Momo is double-crossing big-time: we're talkin' end-of-Spaceland here! Rucker spiffs up predictable plot developments with slangy dialogue and catchy descriptions of the second as well as the fourth dimension. Roland Green
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Fiction
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