Fuzzy DicePaul Di Filippo
PS Publishing, hardback, 296 pages, £35
This is a limited edition, signed and numbered. There’s also a slipcased version.
Review by Steven Blake (2003)
Paul Giraud is fed up, fed up with the bookshop he works in, and looking forward to breakfast (should get it before going to work mate, much better). Boredom is ended when a sliding (moves through alternate universes) and time-travelling robot plant/post-human thing appears. Would he like a quantum yo-yo, granting the same travel privileges enjoyed by the robot plant/post-human thing?
How can he say no? Paul, disappointed old hippie and failed writer in search of the meaning of life, goes on the picaresque ride of his life. There’s an alternate Earth/universe where it’s still the 1970s, there’s one like a computer game, there’s one just starting up, there’s one that’s a feminist paradise, there’s one that’s black and white TV land! And not just those. Fuzzy Dice can get seriously weird, and seriously funny. There are a lot of hidden references and jokes. The title, for instance, comes from the book’s structure, which is ornate (but doesn’t affect its readability), and plays on Einstein’s remark about God not playing dice with universe. In Fuzzy Dice, maybe he does.
Di Filippo makes all this work, showing the invention, control and ideas typical of his short stories. The worst we can say is that possibly there are too many ideas for one book, and maybe the structure makes the adventures too formularised – it reads a bit like a TV series. Maybe, going by the cover, it's meant to be a bit like an animated series! Nevertheless, Fuzzy Dice is still interesting and fun to read.
With an introduction by Rudy Rucker.