Red Zen: A Novel of Extreme and Bizarre Adventure In Which a Mystical Book on Buddhism Changes the Hero's Life (Paperback)

by Jason Earls (Author)
Key Phrases: red afro wig, memorizing digits, second dwarf, Jason Earls, Red Zen, Fountain of Youth (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Saul Summerblend has a bizarre memory problem. And his Zen master, Bodhee, says he should travel to the dwarf planet Ceres to fix it. Along the way Saul meets a thirty-foot magic square whose diagonals and rows sum to 666, encounters a group of drunken Vikings and evil dwarves, works some campy mathematics and overhears amusing CB radio conversations, fights a visionary with a penchant for wrestling masks and flipping off cars all day on main street, invents neologisms like deemkrite and freeganidge. He also learns of a mystical book called 'Red Zen: Way of the Butterfly' and attempts to solve a few koans about kangaroos, split toe nails, and carts filled with hatchets. Will Saul fix his strange memory problem? Will he even make it back to Earth alive?

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: Pleroma Publications; 1st edition (May 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430320176
• ISBN-13: 978-1430320173
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,863,034 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Math Fiction Review, May 29, 2007

By	jcearls - See all my reviews

Review by Alex Kasman who runs the 'Mathematical Fiction' website (he also reviewed If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan Turing == TRUE) { ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.1361015212836455566789110512013615..., see his website for details):

A man travels to another planet in an attempt to resolve a bizarre memory problem in this absurdist science fiction novel. As in his other works, Earls includes tidbits of computational number theory. For instance, the protagonist encounters a magic square whose row sum is 666 and he attempts to memorize the decimal expansions of transcendental numbers such as 22*Pi+4*e considering it part of his Buddhist religion. (Presumably, this is a pun on the mathematical and spiritual meanings of the word "transcendental"!)

It may seem as if these are rather trivial bits of mathematics (not important theorems or useful new definitions). Rather, it is what the author calls "recreational" mathematics. In fact, the book says

(quoted from Red Zen)
'Math can be beautiful. But I like it better when it is campy or cheesy. The mathematical concepts and objects a real mathematician would think of as useless or silly are the ones I like best. Later I will give you examples of what I mean by campy math.'

Later examples of such campy math is finding primes in the decimal expansion of 1/89 or a square array of digits which spells out "Red Zen" when the 9's are colored differently than the other digits and is used to build a prime number. (In an appendix he promises to build such a "textual prime" to make any picture or phrase that you might want.)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Like It When the Zen Goes Into Me, May 26, 2007

By	burlpony - See all my reviews

A review from Tyrone Morgan:

Dear author of Red Zen,

I read your book and I liked it.
It was very "novel" and interesting.
I liked the 888 Christ number,
in the first part
and how Bodhee could arrive at it
from manipulating other numbers.
Also the neologisms
and cataclysmic events
that almost ended the universe,
in Chapter 8
were good too.

Saul dropping to the ground
from his memory attacks,
yes, those were funny,
but I didn't understand that
part about a hallucination
inside the mind of a butcher,
don't know how that would work
exactly.

This book has a lot of Zen Buddhism.
I liked the koans and the
explanations of
enlightenment.
People suffering and grasping for
the edge of a toenail
that no longer exists.
The part about life energy
passing to-and-from,
in-and-out of
different entities,
that is deep,
very deep. I can see how
the energy in me now,
isn't only mine,
but it is universal energy
that could pass on
to someone else
after me;
and the part about how
past and future
are never as important
as NOW, living for NOW,
acting right NOW.
Life is only for a moment
and then the moment is gone.

Is there really a mystical
branch of Zen Buddhism?
Probably not.
But that is an interesting
concept.
And the book 'Way of the Butterfly'
with its final almost impenetrable
mystical section.
Cool.

But the ending,
I have a question about the ending,
except I don't want to spoil it
for people
who haven't read the book yet, so I won't
ask it here.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For lovers of zen and maths, August 29, 2007

By	Lamberto García del Cid (Zaragoza, Spain) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I do not know what induced me to buy Red Zen. Not certainly the cover, little appealed. Something in the book description draw my attention: the unusual mixture of zen philosophy and maths. Being a lover of both subject I ordered it. And I read it almost without a pause. And I enjoyed it.