Spaceland
A Novel of the Fourth Dimension
ISBN10: 0765303671
ISBN13: 9780765303677
Trade Paperback
304 Pages
$17.99
CA$29.99
Joe Cube is a Silicon Valley hotshot—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 been enjoying. 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 of the deal becomes much clearer to Joe once Momo helps him grow a new eye (on a stalk) that can see in the fourth-dimensional directions. So he agrees to the proposal. Next comes 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 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 on the line.
Reviews
Praise for Spaceland
"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
"[Rucker's] 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 phenomena [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)
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
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....