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Rudy Rucker

White Light Paperback – April 16, 2001

by Rudy Rucker (Author), John Shirley (Introduction)

4.2 45 ratings

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Felix Rayman spends the day teaching indifferent students, pondering his theories on infinity, and daydreaming. When his dreams finally separate him from his physical body, Felix plunges headfirst into a multidimensional universe beyond the limits of space and time — the place of White Light.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Four Walls Eight Windows
Publication date

April 16, 2001
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

156858198X
ISBN-13

978-1568581989
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Four Walls Eight Windows; 3rd edition (April 16, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 156858198X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1568581989
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,725,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #197,453 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #216,032 in Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 45 ratings

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Rudy Rucker

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Rudy Rucker has written forty books, both pop science. and SF novels in the cyberpunk and transreal styles. He received Philip K. Dick awards for for the novels in his "Ware Tetralogy". His "Complete Stories," and his nonfiction "The Fourth Dimension" are standouts. He worked as a professor of computer science in Silicon Valley for twenty years. He paints works relating to his tales. His latest novel "Juicy Ghosts" is about telepathy, immortality, and a new revolution. Rudy blogs at www.rudyrucker.com/blog

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4.2 out of 5

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atciii

Trippy Math Humor!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 22, 2020

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This book is a hoot! I found it a short, quick read, channeling Philip K Dick mixed with math humor. The main character effectively goes to "Math Heaven" and has to do with all sorts of absurd problems with infinity. Rucker's writing improves with later books, but this (his first novel) is a delight.

One person found this helpful

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B. Macmillan

Tough book to put down

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 10, 2017

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I stayed up way too late at night reading this book. Read it back in 1982 when RR was a professor at my college...loved it then, but got so much more out of it now, 35 years later. Fun read, good visuals, can't wait to read it again!

3 people found this helpful

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W. Chandler

Recommended to me by a friend

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 18, 2014

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Recommended to me by a friend, to try to help me expand my literary horizons past non-fiction educational books. I'm glad I read it. Not exciting in the same way a Lord of the Rings adventure may, but much more interesting.

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Andrea F

Super weird and yet awesome

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 4, 2016

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Found this via boingboing and gave it a shot. Math, dreams, death, aether, mountains, bloogs, professors and it just holds together.

4 people found this helpful

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Charles

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 28, 2016

Mindblowing.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 1, 2002

It is obvious to me that mankind has a built-in desire to expand - in any and every way. Today, virtual worlds of various scope and quality are common (mostly, as games) and interconnected via the internet. I am coming to believe that the impetus for these creations must lie deep within us - it seems instinctive and critical to us in some way. The dream of the Buddha? Or, some aspect of evolution?
Before the existence of the current virtual worlds came to be so common, William Gibson imagined and coined the term "cyberspace". Gibson and other writers like Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson wrote stories of "cyberspace" and its relation to the human spirit and evolution. I think, however, it was probably necessary for computer technology to advance to a certain level before imagining these stories was possible. Or, was there synergy? Did the desire, inspired by cyberpunk authors, to create these worlds further drive the development of computer technology once it had achieved a level that inspired the authors? Ah, now I have a headache.
Well, before the computer technology was such as would inspire the concept of "cyberspace", there was a similar concept out of which the concept of "cyberspace" also likely grew. That concept involved a higher plane of reality that could be experienced by achieving "enlightenment" or having and out-of-body experience, sometimes with the assistance of drugs and/or sensory-deprivation tanks. This is the time and place that (I think) probably inspired the book "White Light" by Rudy Rucker. If you consider it a while, you can also see how these concepts extend in many ways into human history. These all obviously have a relationship to our current concepts regarding virtual worlds and a potential next evolutionary step for mankind - the synthesis of man and a machine of his own creation that will allow him to exist both in this world and worlds of his own creation. Ah, the headache is worse, now.
In "White Light", Rudy Rucker tells the story of an out-of-body experience. Felix Rayman, the main character, is a math professor who is frustrated in many aspects of his life. His job is unfulfilling and his relationship with his wife, the mother of his toddler child, is not good. Somehow, he wills himself out of his body and into a strange realm that he struggles to understand. It is very reminiscent of the land of Oz or the Wonderland experienced by Alice with a lot of abstract mathematics added. The story is filled with discussions of abstract mathematics - infinity, infinities of infinities, the point/place/whatever where infinity and absolute zero come together. This makes the story intellectually and philosophically stimulating. I especially enjoyed the irreverent humor involving well-known figures - mathematicians, philosophers, cartoon characters, and even deities and demons. I enjoyed this work of Rudy Rucker for the same reasons I have enjoyed some of his other works. He takes me places that I have never been - in literary style, imagination, and contemplation of the nature of reality and man's current and future role in it.
If you would like to experience an absolutely lunatic and irreverent comic story that is wonderfully entertaining, intellectually stimulating, and likely a direct ancestor of the cyberpunk genre, Rudy Rucker's "White Light" is it.

12 people found this helpful

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Joseph Pellerin

Challenging and Surreal - Not for Everyone

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 27, 2006

I read somewhere, once, that Rudy Rucker was the original and actual father of cyberpunk, and that White Light was his seminal work. I'm not sure I really buy that, but I can say this - Rudy Rucker is certainly one of the most unique authors of his generation, and White Light is a unique work among unique works. Sort of Alice in Wonderland meets The Phantom Tollbooth, it is the story of a free-spirited mathematics professor who stumbles upon an extra-dimensional, parallel universe - where he embarks upon a journey to attain the ultimate truth; the White Light.

White Light is many things at once - so many things, in fact, that it hovers on the fulcrum between challenging and disturbing, between brilliantly complex and maddeningly random. At the end, I'm not certain whether I've read a work of coherent genius, so much as I am impressed by Rucker's ability to introduce so many surreal concepts, and maintain even the slightest impression of control over the story.

Definitely not a linear work, White Light is more like a vast dreamscape, or intense acid trip, where Rucker casts up a cacophony of bizarre characters, dead geniuses, and new age mysticism oddly blended with abstract mathematical theory. And while it is not a dense literary work, it is also not an easy read - it takes work to get through it. In the end, I found the effort worthwhile - but Rucker is definitely not for everyone. If you're up for a surreal intellectual challenge, though, I'd recommend it strongly.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Martin Roberts

Brilliant, and Imaginative writing!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 15, 2018

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There’s a lot of amazing passages in this novel, weird and wonderful bursts of a brilliant imagination at work... I would have given a higher rating if the story itself matched up to the individual parts.

Lynne

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 23, 2015

Verified Purchase

Good condition , very happy

karen nelson

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 1, 2015

Verified Purchase

brilliant book, excellent read.

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White Light Paperback – April 16, 2001

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