Fractal Paisleys (Di Filippo, Paul) [Hardcover]

Paul Di Filippo (Author), Paul Di Filippo (Author)

Book Description

Series: Di Filippo, Paul | Publication Date: September 2, 1997

Ten funky science fiction stories by the widely acclaimed author of The Steampunk Trilogy and Ribofunk. Here is cutting-edge science fiction by a writer called one of the funniest, most original, and most offbeat today. The book includes "alternate world" stories with a light, whimsical touch, in the vein of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paul Di Filippo is many things: author of The Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, and Lost Pages; a two-time Nebula Award finalist; a leading practitioner of alternate history; one of the original steampunks; one of the original cyberpunks; and a modern master of satire. The 10 stories in Fractal Paisleys blend alternate history, hard SF, modern fantasy, noir-detective fiction, satire, and pop culture to varying degrees, creating what the author calls "trailer park science fiction," in which regular folks (middle-, working-, and nonworking-class) encounter great and terrible powers and technologies of human, alien, futuristic, and fantastic origin.

In "Do You Believe in Magic?", the ultimate self-absorbed, '60s-obsessed Baby Boomer emerges from his New York apartment for the first time in 20 years and finds himself an icon and a joke, and his city fire-bombed and theme-parked. In "Flying the Flannel," one of the few Di Filippo stories to feature a female protagonist, an unknown garage-rock group is part of a cosmic battle of the bands, in which the fate of Earth itself is at stake. In the terrifying "Earth Shoes" (possibly the most unusual Philip K. Dick-inspired story ever written), a quantum-uncertainty-infected mood ring gives successive characters the power to remake reality according to their own often unacknowledged and dangerous desires. The remaining stories are as inventive, witty, entertaining, and well-written, making this another high-caliber collection from Paul Di Filippo. --Cynthia Ward

From Booklist

Funny man Di Filippo, identified at various times with cyberpunk, steampunk, and ribofunk (the latter, his own coinage, has to do with the coming dominant influence of high-tech biology on everyday life), here offers 10 examples of the genre he calls "trailer park science fiction." In "Master Blaster and Whammer Jammer Meet the Groove Thang," two trash haulers run into a space-time rift at the local landfill and reveal a wondrous presence that makes everything near it turn out for the best. The clever "Fractal Paisleys" uses a similar device: a loser and his girlfriend happen upon a TV remote from the future and are able to fold up all their enemies into invisible boxes--and make a fortune, too. Several of Di Filippo's stories take their titles from rock songs, and "Lennon Spex" actually speculates (whimsically) on how John Lennon found inspiration. They all amount to a sometimes strained but often genuinely funny mixture of Raymond Carver, Harry Harrison, and Douglas Adams. John Mort

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows; First Edition edition (September 2, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568580320
• ISBN-13: 978-1568580326
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,315,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A collection of popcorn for the brain sci-fi short stories, March 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Fractal Paisleys (Di Filippo, Paul) (Hardcover)

Paul Di Filippo has collected several of his sci-fi short stories with rock and roll undertones. Combining music, hard sci-fi concepts, and everyday average or below average people (some of which do live in a trailer park, hense trailer park sci-fi)is not an easy task, but Di Filipo pulls it off nicely. The stories are fast pased, light, and whimsical. Perfect for a lunch break.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Di Filippo Rules The School, July 13, 2002

By 

sebastian hope (Olympia WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fractal Paisleys (Di Filippo, Paul) (Hardcover)

You need to read this book. If you don't, you should just go back to living in a cave of your own self-imposed isolation. Di Filippo manages to take crazed, madman thoughts and make brilliantly constructed views of the human mind. Reading them is easy as they are rock and roll on the printed page, but at the same time they will stay with you for generations.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Di Filippo Rules The School, July 13, 2002

By 

sebastian hope (Olympia WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fractal Paisleys (Di Filippo, Paul) (Hardcover)

You need to read this book. If you don't, you should just go back to living in a cave of your own self-imposed isolation. Di Filippo manages to take crazed, madman thoughts and make brilliantly constructed views of the human mind. Reading them is easy as they are rock and roll on the printed page, but at the same time they will stay with you for generations.