Overview
Wild, young mathematicians Bela and Paul are friends and roommates, and both are in love with Alma, Bela's girlfriend. Living in a contemporary world much like our own Berkeley, California, the two graduate students are trying to finish their degrees and find jobs, all while they fight it out over Alma using cutting-edge math to alter reality to win her heart. At the same time, they discover that their unpredictable adviser, Roland, a mad mathematical genius, has figured out a way to predict specific bits of the future that can cause a lot of trouble... and that he's starting to see monsters in mirrors. This novel is a romantic comedy with a whole corkscrew of SF twists from the writer who twice won the Philip K. Dick Award for best SF novel.Synopsis
Reality is never more unpredictable than when two mathematicians are in love with the same girl, and can change the world to get her.
Bela and Paul, two wild young mathematicians, are friends and roommates, and both are in love with Alma, Bela’s girlfriend. They fight it out by changing reality using cutting-edge math. The contemporary world they live in is not quite this one, but much like Berkeley, California, and the two graduate students are trying to finish their degrees and get jobs. It doesn’t help that their unpredictable advisor Roland is a mad mathematical genius who has figured out a way to predict specific bits of the future that can cause a lot of trouble…and that he’s starting to see monsters in mirrors.
When Bela and Paul mess around with reality, all heaven and hell break loose. Those monsters of Roland’s were really there, but who are they?
This novel is a romantic comedy with a whole corkscrew of SF twists from the writer who twice won the Philip K. Dick Award for best SF novel.
Publishers Weekly
Rucker cleverly pulls off a romantic comedy about mathematicians in love. Following 2004's Frek and the Elixir, this even zanier excursion into alternative versions of Berkeley, Calif., is set in university towns called Humelocke and Klownetown, full of quirky, charming life-forms human and otherwise and ruled by a god who's the female jellyfish-creator of Earth. All this seethes around Bela Kis; Bela's roommate, Paul Bridge; and Bela's girlfriend, Alma Ziff, who ping-pongs between them in a sometimes acute, sometimes obtuse love triangle. Bela and Paul struggle for their Ph.D.s under mad math genius Roland Haut by inventing a paracomputer "Gobubble" that predicts future events. While most of the mathematical flights may stun hapless mathophobes, Rucker's wild characters, off-the-wall situations and wicked political riffs prove that writing SF spoofs, like Bela's rock music avocation, "beats the hell out of publishing a math paper." (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewRudy 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
Publishers Weekly
Rucker cleverly pulls off a romantic comedy about mathematicians in love. Following 2004's Frek and the Elixir, this even zanier excursion into alternative versions of Berkeley, Calif., is set in university towns called Humelocke and Klownetown, full of quirky, charming life-forms human and otherwise and ruled by a god who's the female jellyfish-creator of Earth. All this seethes around Bela Kis; Bela's roommate, Paul Bridge; and Bela's girlfriend, Alma Ziff, who ping-pongs between them in a sometimes acute, sometimes obtuse love triangle. Bela and Paul struggle for their Ph.D.s under mad math genius Roland Haut by inventing a paracomputer "Gobubble" that predicts future events. While most of the mathematical flights may stun hapless mathophobes, Rucker's wild characters, off-the-wall situations and wicked political riffs prove that writing SF spoofs, like Bela's rock music avocation, "beats the hell out of publishing a math paper." (Dec.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.From the Publisher
"Rudy Rucker should be declared a National Treasure of American Science Fiction. Someone simultaneously channelling Kurt Godel and Lenny Bruce might start to approximate full-on Ruckerian warp-space, but without the sweet, human, splendidly goofy Rudy-ness at the core of the singularity."—William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition on Mathematicians in Love "This may well be Rudy Rucker's best novel—funny, wise, fast and inventive. A real advance."—Gregory Benford on Mathematicians in Love"Rudy Rucker writes like the love child of Philip K. Dick and George Carlin. Brilliant, frantic, conceptual, cosmological . . . like lucid dreaming, only funny. This book rocks!" —Walter John Williams on Mathematicians in Love "Rudy Rucker never fails to leave me breathless. . . Reading one of his stories is like a reset button on reality: when it's over, the whole universe looks slightly different...and much stranger." —Spider Robinson on Mathematicians in Love "For sheer gonzo inventiveness, trust Rucker and this gut-wrenching, near-ftl-speed intellectual adventure. And trust me, too: You won't read another sf work all year this much mind-bending, synapse-tingling fun."—Michael Bishop on Mathematicians in Love