The short-story collection Gnarl! is a companion volume to Rudy Rucker's nonfiction essay collection, Seek! (The titles come from Rucker's self-professed motto, "Seek ye the gnarl!") Gnarl! collects all of Rucker's short stories from the last quarter of the 20th century--some 36 selections in all--ranging from a 2-page solo effort to a 44-page collaboration with Bruce Sterling. Rucker has arranged the collection chronologically and also provided autobiographical notes about each piece, making this both the definitive volume and an excellent history of his short-story career. And it's certainly been an interesting career. Rucker is a physicist by day who says he has the politics of punks and hippies, was once obsessed by pot and alcohol, and "tends to write as if women were wonderful, fascinating aliens."

Publishers Weekly called Rucker "a mathematician bewitched by the absurdity of the universe," and it shows in almost every sentence he writes. In Rucker's world people have "face holes" instead of mouths or nostrils, wasps remind him of space monsters, and planet X shares more than a few similarities with Earth. And, not coincidentally, almost all of his protagonists are physicists. Also not coincidentally, physics often plays an important role, even making it into the titles of pieces such as "Pi in the Sky," "Schrödinger's Cat," "Inertia," and "Probability Pipeline." But even though Rucker tends to write "hard SF" in the sense that most of his stories rely heavily on science, this is not the usual nuts-and-bolts stuff of, say, Hal Clement. Rather, this is cutting-edge physics extrapolated almost beyond imagination to create fascinating worlds and wonderful stories. Some traditional SF readers may be intimidated by how far off the beaten science fiction path Rucker sometimes strays, but in the end it's almost always a walk worth taking. --Craig E. Engler


From Publishers Weekly
A mathematician and computer scientist, Rucker (Saucer Wisdom) is probably best known for the bitingly satirical fiction he wrote during SF's 1980s cyberpunk revolution. Arriving on the heels of his newly collected nonfiction, SEEK! (1999), this volume--his first book of short stories to be published in 17 years--collects 36 wonderful pieces. Arranged chronologically, the volume begins with "Jumpin' Jack Flash," which, like a lot of Rucker's work, revolves around crackpot scientists, quantum reality, sexual confusion and screwed-up alien invasions. Later, "Schr?dinger's Cat" considers time machines; "The Indian Rope Trick Explained" and "Message Found in a Copy of Flatland" pay homage to Edwin Abbott's classic Victorian novel (about life in two dimensions); and "The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics" and "The Andy Warhol Sandcandle" add beat poets, Warhol and scientists like Richard Feynman into the mix. Even though his plots frequently fit the bill as traditional hard SF-- stories like "The Last Einstein-Rosen Bridge," "A New Experiment with Time" and "The Man Who Ate Himself" each imagine a bizarre device, and then recount its effect on people--Rucker's edgy prose is consistently innovative. The only disappointment in the volume is "Pac-Man"--a predictable story about video game obsession and secret government plots. Despite the broadness of range, Rucker's crisp writing and quantum wanderings keep the work fresh. Fans will treasure this immense collection; even readers unfamiliar with Rucker's work will find in these stories a multitalented, challenging author whose work stretches and distorts the oft-staid boundaries of traditional SF. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Gnarly is surfer slang for complex wave conditions. Used as a noun, it suggests a startling intricacy of detail. Gnarl! collects three dozen stories written since the 1970s by cyberpunk pioneer Rucker (Freeware). Arranged in chronological order, the stories combine hard science with a gonzo "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" sensibility. By far the best pieces are those written after 1986, when Rucker moved to California, and of those, collaborative efforts with Bruce Sterling and Marc Laidlaw are especially good. Two Rucker-Laidlaw yarns, "Probability Pipeline" and "Chaos Surfari," are among the best in the collection. Both feature a couple of physics-savvy stoners who build a surfboard using Imipolex, the weird Nazi plastic from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. "The Indian Rope Trick Explained" introduces the concept of Aether Pitons; "Soft Death" postulates immortality through software engineering; and "Rapture in Space" describes the making of the first zero-gravity sex video. Not everything is of high quality, but at his best Rucker invites comparisons with sf crossover artist Philip K. Dick or Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics. Recommended for most fiction collections and essential for sf enthusiasts.DEdward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Though he is also a mathematician, computer scientist, and essayist, Rudy Rucker is best known for his ground-breaking science fiction. The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Though he is also a mathematician, computer scientist, and essayist, Rudy Rucker is best known for his ground-breaking science fiction. The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A mathematician and computer scientist, Rucker (Saucer Wisdom) is probably best known for the bitingly satirical fiction he wrote during SF's 1980s cyberpunk revolution. Arriving on the heels of his newly collected nonfiction, SEEK! (1999), this volume--his first book of short stories to be published in 17 years--collects 36 wonderful pieces. Arranged chronologically, the volume begins with "Jumpin' Jack Flash," which, like a lot of Rucker's work, revolves around crackpot scientists, quantum reality, sexual confusion and screwed-up alien invasions. Later, "Schr dinger's Cat" considers time machines; "The Indian Rope Trick Explained" and "Message Found in a Copy of Flatland" pay homage to Edwin Abbott's classic Victorian novel (about life in two dimensions); and "The Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics" and "The Andy Warhol Sandcandle" add beat poets, Warhol and scientists like Richard Feynman into the mix. Even though his plots frequently fit the bill as traditional hard SF-- stories like "The Last Einstein-Rosen Bridge," "A New Experiment with Time" and "The Man Who Ate Himself" each imagine a bizarre device, and then recount its effect on people--Rucker's edgy prose is consistently innovative. The only disappointment in the volume is "Pac-Man"--a predictable story about video game obsession and secret government plots. Despite the broadness of range, Rucker's crisp writing and quantum wanderings keep the work fresh. Fans will treasure this immense collection; even readers unfamiliar with Rucker's work will find in these stories a multitalented, challenging author whose work stretches and distorts the oft-staid boundaries of traditional SF. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

Gnarly is surfer slang for complex wave conditions. Used as a noun, it suggests a startling intricacy of detail. Gnarl! collects three dozen stories written since the 1970s by cyberpunk pioneer Rucker (Freeware). Arranged in chronological order, the stories combine hard science with a gonzo "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll" sensibility. By far the best pieces are those written after 1986, when Rucker moved to California, and of those, collaborative efforts with Bruce Sterling and Marc Laidlaw are especially good. Two Rucker-Laidlaw yarns, "Probability Pipeline" and "Chaos Surfari," are among the best in the collection. Both feature a couple of physics-savvy stoners who build a surfboard using Imipolex, the weird Nazi plastic from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. "The Indian Rope Trick Explained" introduces the concept of Aether Pitons; "Soft Death" postulates immortality through software engineering; and "Rapture in Space" describes the making of the first zero-gravity sex video. Not everything is of high quality, but at his best Rucker invites comparisons with sf crossover artist Philip K. Dick or Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics. Recommended for most fiction collections and essential for sf enthusiasts.--Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Kirkus Reviews

paper: 1-56858-158-0 Three dozen stories—almost Rucker's entire output, 1976-99, and, except for the five most recent yarns, all previously collected in two paperback collections, The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka and Transreal! Included also are collaborations with Bruce Sterling, Paul di Filippo, and Marc Laidlaw. Featured, along with the Rucker trademarks—wacky aliens, math and physics jokes, the recurring characters Joseph Fletcher and Harry Gerber, and rather sophomoric ruminations on sex—are more seriously probing ideas: tailored diseases as an instrument of social control, or the problems of funding basic science. Not to mention cerebral, challenging explorations of the quantum universe and its paradoxes and singularities. Not to everyone's taste, but well worth browsing.