Customer Reviews

Liquid Earth (Neoreality Series)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has some of the most hilarious scenes I've ever encountered in a book, and it's worth reading even just for its fight / escape scenes and its extraordinary climax. It will appeal to a vast audience, from lovers of science fiction and fantasy to futurists and serious philosophers, not to mention aficionados of fine literature and even Biblical scholars. As well as entertaining us, the author gives us serious pause to reflect on our station in life and history. In a move that would make Salvador Dali proud, Clifford Pickover lends flavor to a larger movement which he characterizes as his "Neoreality Series", introducing a scale for measuring unlikely events, referred to as "The Hawking Reality Scale" with deciReal units to "measure the intensity of reality fragmentation". With a tip of the hat to the older movement in Italian cinema, Pickover's use of the word Neoreality may very well come to be the catchword for our own age in cinema too, describing equally well such films as "eXistenZ," "Fight Club," "Being John Malkovich," and "The Matrix". Take this fantastic journey with charming girl prodigy Mink, her adorable robot kitten Carrington and the joketelling poet android Mr. Plex as they traverse through forests, jungles, ancient ruins and a small New England town, seeking refuge from extraordinary villainous creatures such as "Cheetah Killers" and Gharials in their quest to discover reality-shattering chronoplasmids. Written by the great science popularizer, math puzzler and world expert on fractals, Clifford Pickover's colorful book will appeal to older and and younger readers alike. It will make old people feel young and young people feel old! If you have enjoyed C.S. Lewis, L. Frank Von Baum and Daniel Pinkwater, you will also enjoy Liquid Earth; equally so if you have enjoyed Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and William Gibson.

In Liquid Earth, advanced robots help humans deal with a reality that melts along a calm Main Street in Shrub Oak, New York. (Some of the robots are religious and seem to enjoy exotic ethnic foods.) Max, a detective, and his girlfriend Mink have to find the source of chronoplamsids that are causing reality fractures. I love some of the funny scenes with the haiku error messages, strange methods of prophecy, and android prostitutes and police. And the bizarre portrayal of God makes one think.....

Has anyone been able to decrypt the strange symbolic code on page 128? In any case, buy this book so you can laugh and have your mind warped.

Like drinking a Big Gulp too fast, this book will give you brain freeze -- but in a good way! It begins with a strange encounter and never looks back. Cliff Pickover weaves an interesting story centered on shifting reality (Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?) caused by a growing space-time rupture. Bring along a cat, a heroine, and robot, and you have quite a crew.

Like Pickover's non-fiction books, there is plenty of science and other stuff to learn here, only this time wrapped up in an often hilarious, very entertaining sci-fi story. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading other stories in the Neoreality Series...

There are thick and heavy books whose ideas can easily fit into one sentence and there are books like this one where each sentence is the seed you can grow into a plenteous tree of thoughts. Seemingly familiar things are turned into mysterious encounters and reality inter-transforms like ice into the water. But after all who told that the reality is not governed by the same laws as the matter and can be present in gas, liquid or solid forms? Or even a couple of hundred of others which are still on the way of discovering. The same way as A. Einstein proved that time depends on speed this book proves once again that the reality depends on time of observation. Is not it a nice sequence?

A futuristic novel poised at the edges of reality

Finally! The science-fiction liquid you always wanted to dive in! The plot is delicious, weird, compelling and insane - all at the same time.
Clifford Pickover's brilliant, extraordinary imagination introduces technical and emotional surprises, and forces the reader to reevaluate his or her ordinary notions of consensus reality. Hop on board, as you ready yourself to
explore strange parallel realities in a hyper-dimensional journey along a rustic, cobblestone Main Street.

Yes, the plot is dense with details and twists. You'll encounter androids with poetic souls, and a looping, fractal Romeo and Juliet tale that teeters on the edge of this world and a world to come. But the book is not simply about odd ideas. It centers on friendship, romance, and love, which are eternal.

The themes and images will haunt and uplift you. Who knows? The reality fractures in the book might just happen anytime in your own town. They might be lurking just around the corner you pass every day when going to gym, work, school or while just enjoying shopping. Be prepared. And I can assure you -- after reading Liquid Earth, you'll pay much more attention to the ordinary- looking shopping aisles at your local supermarket. Or - more precisely - you'll never look at any grocery store in the same way ever again.

"Liquid Earth" reads like one of Pickover's on-line experiments in
collaborative writing. It is like the Internet, itself -- a
stream of collective consciousness. The book also depicts
something like a human reaction to information overload, living on
Moore's Law accelerating cultural curve. Living in a Fracturing
Reality is like experiencing landmark buildings crashing to the
ground for no good reason. The book is in fact poignantly
topical. It inspires reflection.

I have finished Liquid Earth and plan to read the other three books (that I know of) in the Pickover's Neoreality series. I haven't enjoyed a novel as much as this in a long time. The pace was brisk, the humor lively and weird, the reality distortions LSDlike. Max, a private detective, meets beautiful Mink at a fair. Chronoplasmids are threatening to destroy the rustic town of Shrub Oak, New York. Together, Max and Mink must find the source of the reality fractures before the town is destroyed. Along their journey, they meet a host of funny and frightening characters -- android poets, gharials, intelligent gibbons, data wasps... My favorite scene occurred in the hotel when Max and Mink try to fix a holodisplay that is malfunctioning in odd ways and, for some reason, likes to display a smelly Japanese fish market. I liked the various references to ethnic foods. I wasn't able to crack some of the secret codes, but I liked them in the book. My advice: buy this book! It's safer than taking LSD, and you'll laugh and have your mind stretched beyond the breaking point. The book really makes you think, and my brother's professor has selected it for discussion when school starts. Pickover has a way of getting inside your head and scrambling it. Quirky, mind-expanding, emotional, creative, fun. Dali on drugs. Pynchon lobotomized. Heinlein in hyperspace. Soar! I have just started The Lobotomy Club, another book in the Neoreality series, and find this just as fascinating. (People who like Liquid Earth will also like Heinlein's Job and Number of the Beast, and also Greg Egan's Diaspora.)

If your looking for a refreshing novel written by a contemporary author, this book is a must read. If you like alternative realities, this book is a must read. After finishing it, I had my first acid flashback in years! I look forward to reading the rest of the Neoreality series-as well as many of the other books written by this extremely prolific writer/thinker.

I thought the forward was great, and had high expectations for the book itself. However, I found it to be nearly unreadable. The author's basic storytelling skills are unfortunately non-existant. Much of the book is full of little detours that are pointless and do not add to the story. I kept waiting for something really cool to happen, and nothing did. Maybe the second half is great, but I couldn't make it.