|
-
News
- Features
- Events
Calendar
- Editorials
- Monthly
Zine
- Offworld
Report
- Our Daily
RSS Feed
- Movie/TV
Reviews
> Recent movies
> Movies by year
> Movies by title
- Book
Reviews
> Recent books
> Books by year
> Books by title
- Home
- Worlds
- Biography
- Bibliography
- Appearances
- Reviews
- Blog
- Community
- Press
- Links
Become
an Advertiser
- Web
Site Directory
- Search
the Net
- StephenHunt.net
- WoodenRocket.com
- Check
your E-mail
- Non Sci-Fi
News
|
Master Of Space And Time by Rudy Rucker
01/11/2005 . Source: Phil Jones 
pub: Thunder's Mouth Press. 229 page enlarged paperback. Price: $14.95 (US). ISBN: 1-56025-703-2. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.avalonpub.com
Joe Fletcher is just a normal person. He does a normal job and just sticks to the flexi-time hours and no more. He's a computer programmer for a bog standard software company. Formerly, he had his own business which he ran with his friend Harry Gerber creating cutting edge technology. The company, though, folded and both sought jobs elsewhere with Harry setting up a TV repair shop.
One day, on leaving his job to go home, Joe is stunned when on getting into his car he sees a small version of his friend along with multiple smaller copies. His friend Harry declares he is a master of time and space. He proves it to Joe by putting him in an infinite recursive loop and says that tomorrow he should go to see Harry in his repair shop. He's to tell him he's going to design and build a Blunzer. This is a machine that can alter the very universe at a quantum level for the user by changing Planck's constant using gluons. He should also take with him $2000 for parts, which just happens to be Joe's and his wife's complete savings.
Joe goes to see Harry and convinces him to build the Blunzer. They activate it with Harry inside. Harry alters reality creating trees that grow pork chops and a mirror world that have slug-like parasites that attach to people's brains and control them. The only dilemma is once the gluons run out, problems start and the search is on for more gluons of the right colour so the blunzer can be used again.
I must admit I was hugely disappointed with this book. For a start, the science is a bit ropy, albeit there are some good ideas and uses of various theories such as Hoyles' shrinking universe. This allowed things from the future to be smaller than in the present and conversely larger if sent to the past. Resulting from the fact the whole of the universe in shrinking. Hence, the Godzilla-like scene with the pet iguana when it was sent to the past. I also liked the fact for every object or person moved in time, there had to be an equal and opposite sent in the opposite direction in time to balance things out. The machine created to allow time travel and any other outcome the user wanted for a set period of time was interesting but under-used.
The whole concept was really a play of the whole Arabian and Muslim mythology of the djinn. It's the old 'be careful what you wish for scenario.' With the advent and construction of Blunzer, they are given the potential of three wishes. Able to alter the universe if they can get a hold of the right coloured quarks, each becoming rarer than the last. So we are in familiar territory here? The characters are given the chance to do anything they want and, of course, they screw it up. The following uses of the machine are used to clean up, each time with a different user and less time to sort things out, attributable in-part to the availability of the different coloured quarks get less and less in quantity and availability.
The characters are, in the most part, one-dimensional and under-developed as are the concepts and ideas that are featured throughout the story. The idea that you can create multiple universes or worlds is nothing new and could have been played with to a greater degree than just a mirror world and the like. The whole dilemma of the brain-like parasite that escapes to our world just peters out along with the rapidly growing food trees that threaten to engulf the planet seem to be dismissed in a whim.
There are a few things that worry me about this book as well. The way Rucker
deals with sexuality and trying to preach a moralistic stance to the characters'
actions just doesn't sit comfortably with me. On the plus side, well, it's short
and easy to read.
This was first published back in 1984 and a film is currently in production, pencilled in for 2006, directed by Michael Gondry and staring Jack Black. My personal feelings are that unless they radically depart from the book, we're going to be reliving familiar territory. We've had plenty of films/TV that feature quantum time travel and in a way it's just a re-hash of 'The Wishmaster'. It will fit nicely with Hollywood's close-minded pulp factory fraternity if it stays in its original form.
It is, to me, a run of the mill pulp sci-fi novel that is typically eighties. Its ideals are a bit dubious and, to my mind, its attempt at humour does not justify it. There are a lot better 80's novels out there. William Gibson for example. This certainly ain't cyberpunk. If you're desperate to fill some spare time, this may fill a gap otherwise avoid.
Phil Jones
|
|
