Fantastic Future's Pick of the Day

Todays Pick is:

Pirates of the Universe by Terry Bisson
Earth in the 21st century, ravanged by war and left environmentally wounded, dingy and dull, depleated of oil and on the down-hill slide. Not that there aren't things that are still worthwhile, Petey skins for example, but everything worth owning is owned by Disney-Windows. The only dream available to people like Gunther Glenn and his sweetheart is to live in Disney's utopian theme park, Pirates of the Universe. When Gun lucks out and gets the chance to work for Disney as a Disney ranger, he grabs it. His last expedition hunting Peteys, twelve hundred kilomenter long space jellyfish that drift through the solar sytstem, and whose skins are used for money, goes to pieces when his colleague is sucked up into a Petey's interior. If the Petey's aren't enough to exersize your sense of wonder, there is the space station Overworld, which contains the Tangle, sealed-off nano-robot patrolled corridors with space- bending passageways.

There's a mystery associated with the Peteys and other Universes than our own are involved. By the time you get the Peteys figured out, though, you may be more concerned with Gun's obsession with the virtual courtesan, Tiffany, and with the exploits of Gun's oddball family that may just hold the fate of universes in their hands.

Bisson's whimsically surreal story keeps the suspense cranked up, and uses broad strokes of humor without ever losing that suspense or becoming a farce or losing track of the logical consequences of a truly weird and original vision of an alternative to quantum physics. Like a lot of the best Science Fiction, Pirates of the Universe is suitable for young adults without loosing anything thereby.

Pirates of the Universe is available in hardback first edition or paperback (advanced order - published March 1).

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