Mathematicians in Love

Two mathematicians vying for the same partner will change reality itself to win her love, from award-winning author Rudy Rucker.

Berkeley grad students Bela Kis and Paul Bridge have discovered the mathematical underpinnings of ultimate reality. But then they begin fighting over the same woman: the beguiling video-blogger, Alma Ziff.

First Bela gets Alma’s interest by starting the wildest rock band ever. Then Paul undertakes the ultimate computer hack: altering reality to make Alma his. But the change brings more than he bargained for: Alma is swept away into a higher world of mathematician cockroaches and cone shells—bent upon using our world to run experiments in mysterious metamathematics.

It’s up to Bela to bring Alma back, repair reality, stop the aliens, and find true love in this wild and funny tale that romps across space, time, and logic.

Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million-Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.

Rudy Rucker is a writer and a mathematician who worked for twenty years as a Silicon Valley computer science professor. He is regarded as contemporary master of science-fiction, and received the Philip K. Dick award twice. His thirty published books include both novels and non-fiction books on the fourth dimension, infinity, and the meaning of computation. A founder of the cyberpunk school of science-fiction, Rucker also writes SF in a realistic style known as transrealism, often including himself as a character. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Praise for Mathematicians in Love
“Full of quirky, charming life-forms human and otherwise and ruled by a god who’s the female jellyfish-creator of Earth . . . Rucker’s wild characters, off-the-wall situations, and wicked political riffs prove that writing SF spoofs, like Bela’s rock music avocation, ‘beats the hell out of publishing a math paper.’” —Publishers Weekly

“May well be Rudy Rucker’s best novel—funny, wise, fast, and inventive.” — Gregory Benford, author of Timescape and The Galactic Center Saga

“In Mathematicians in Love Rucker has created a love story wrapped up in a cross-cultural mystery tour that could only have happened inside the mind of a crazy mathematician. Buy a ticket. It’s well worth the price.” —SFRevu

“Percolates with off-the-wall characters and trippy extra-dimensional shenanigans. Nobody writes math-based science fiction like Rudy Rucker does . . . A definite high point in his singular writing career.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“All the pleasures of a Rucker novel come forth abundantly: playfully weird higher physics and math; bizarre conceptual psychedelia; distinctively Californian counter-cultural comedy; zany romance; doppelgangers; generally happy endings . . . Mathematicians in Love is an engaging and entertaining book, light yet thought-provoking, funny yet of some gravity.” —Locus

Praise for Rudy Rucker
“Rudy Rucker should be declared a National Treasure of American Science Fiction. Someone simultaneously channeling Kurt Gödel and Lenny Bruce might start to approximate full-on Ruckerian warp-space, but without the sweet, human, splendidly goofy Rudy-ness at the core of the singularity.” —William Gibson

“Rucker’s writing is great like the Ramones are great: a genre stripped to its essence, attitude up the wazoo, and cartoon sentiments that reek of identifiable lives and issues. Wild math you can get elsewhere, but no one does the cyber version of beatnik glory quite like Rucker. ” —New York Review of Science Fiction

“For some two decades now, since the publication of his first novel, White Light, Rucker has combined an easygoing, trippy style influenced by the Beats with a deep engagement with knotty (or ‘gnarly,’ to employ one of his favorite terms) intellectual conceits, based mainly in mathematics. In the typical Rucker novel, likably eccentric characters—who run the gamut from brilliant to near-certifiable—encounter aspects of the universe that confirm that life is weirder than we can imagine. ” —The Washington Post

“Rudy Rucker is the most consistently brilliant imagination working in SF today. ” — Charles Stross, author of The Laundry Files

“Reading a Rudy Rucker book is like finding Poe, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll, and Philip K. Dick parked on your driveway in a topless ’57 Caddy . . . and telling you they’re taking you for a RIDE. The funniest science fiction author around. ” —Sci-Fi Universe

“Rucker [gives you] more ideas per chapter than most authors use in an entire novel. ” —San Francisco Chronicle

Praise for Mathematicians in Love

“Full of quirky, charming life-forms human and otherwise and ruled by a god who’s the female jellyfish-creator of Earth . . . Rucker’s wild characters, off-the-wall situations, and wicked political riffs prove that writing SF spoofs, like Bela’s rock music avocation, ‘beats the hell out of publishing a math paper.’” —Publishers Weekly

“May well be Rudy Rucker’s best novel—funny, wise, fast, and inventive.” — Gregory Benford, author of Timescape and The Galactic Center Saga

“In Mathematicians in Love Rucker has created a love story wrapped up in a cross-cultural mystery tour that could only have happened inside the mind of a crazy mathematician. Buy a ticket. It’s well worth the price.” —SFRevu

“Percolates with off-the-wall characters and trippy extra-dimensional shenanigans. Nobody writes math-based science fiction like Rudy Rucker does . . . A definite high point in his singular writing career.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“All the pleasures of a Rucker novel come forth abundantly: playfully weird higher physics and math; bizarre conceptual psychedelia; distinctively Californian counter-cultural comedy; zany romance; doppelgangers; generally happy endings . . . Mathematicians in Love is an engaging and entertaining book, light yet thought-provoking, funny yet of some gravity.” —Locus

Praise for Rudy Rucker

“Rudy Rucker should be declared a National Treasure of American Science Fiction. Someone simultaneously channeling Kurt Gödel and Lenny Bruce might start to approximate full-on Ruckerian warp-space, but without the sweet, human, splendidly goofy Rudy-ness at the core of the singularity.” —William Gibson

“Rucker’s writing is great like the Ramones are great: a genre stripped to its essence, attitude up the wazoo, and cartoon sentiments that reek of identifiable lives and issues. Wild math you can get elsewhere, but no one does the cyber version of beatnik glory quite like Rucker. ” —New York Review of Science Fiction

“For some two decades now, since the publication of his first novel, White Light, Rucker has combined an easygoing, trippy style influenced by the Beats with a deep engagement with knotty (or ‘gnarly,’ to employ one of his favorite terms) intellectual conceits, based mainly in mathematics. In the typical Rucker novel, likably eccentric characters—who run the gamut from brilliant to near-certifiable—encounter aspects of the universe that confirm that life is weirder than we can imagine. ” —The Washington Post

“Rudy Rucker is the most consistently brilliant imagination working in SF today. ” — Charles Stross, author of The Laundry Files

“Reading a Rudy Rucker book is like finding Poe, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll, and Philip K. Dick parked on your driveway in a topless ’57 Caddy . . . and telling you they’re taking you for a RIDE. The funniest science fiction author around. ” —Sci-Fi Universe

“Rucker [gives you] more ideas per chapter than most authors use in an entire novel. ” —San Francisco Chronicle