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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Ontological Pickles Never Tasted so Good…, 10 Mar 2004
Wow. Every so often you’ll read a book that just blows you away – Fuzzy Dice is one such book. Paul Di Filippo has produced his masterpiece here, a brain-melting conglomeration of cutting-edge scientific concepts filtered through an alternately hilarious and moving story about an inveterate loser. Given the ability to traverse the multiverse in search of happiness (and the answer to the Ontological Pickle) we follow the lead characters hopeless misadventures from the subquantum shaving cream of the initial singularity to the Omega Point and the end of time, taking in superspace, cellular automata, chaos theory, morphic resonances, Menger sponges, hot babes and plenty more besides (including ultimately the lead characters death) along the way.The sheer mass of ideas here is impressive enough, with each of the twelve sections providing enough material for an entire novel, but no matter how complex the underlying concept is, Di Philippo makes the novel a joy to read, with the lead character being the driving force and focus of the readers attention. This is great science fiction – mind-expanding but with a solid emotional core. With the lead characters frequent bewilderment at the strangeness of the universe, and the underlying quest for the meaning of existence, Fuzzy Dice perhaps most closely resembles The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and, heretically, may even be the better book. As such the only disappointment comes from realising that by being a limited edition small press publication Fuzzy Dice currently only stands to be read by a few hundred people. Why this wasn’t snapped up by a major publisher God only knows. Paul Di Filippo seems to have spent his entire career in the small press, so it’s not surprising that the disillusioned failed author who stars in this novel shares his name. If you enjoy science fiction, wild concepts and belly laughs, you need this book. Utterly essential.
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