Jim and the Flims

by Rudy Rucker

Jim and the Flims is a novel set in Santa Cruz, CA... and the afterlife. Acclaimed cyberpunk/singularity author Rudy Rucker explores themes of death and destruction, in the wry, quirky style he is famous for.
Jim Oster ruptures the membrane between our world and afterworld (AKA, The Flimsy), creating a two-way tunnel between them. Jim’s wife Val is killed in the process, and Jim finds himself battling his personal grief, and an invasion of the Flims. The process of battling the invading Flims leads him to the center of the afterworld, where the ghost of his wife just might be. Can Jim save earth with the help of a posse of Santa Cruz punks, and at the same time bring his wife back to life?

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Humor, Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre. He is best known for his Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which won Philip K. Dick awards. Presently, Rudy Rucker edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.

Reviews

[jayson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, here is my review "Wow!" ... I am just not sure how to write about this book, or that I even grasp all that there is to the story, but I loved it. Yiou really have to like Rudy Rucker's work to get into this, I am pretty sure, but if you are so inclined, it is a great work. I saw a lot of bad reviews on Amazon, that were so off base it is unbelievable that Amazon let them post em. It is as if those people read a different book. So don't read that poo. The story is not wandering all over, and strange things are not randomly popping in and out of the story. There are some strange concepts and things in there, don't get me wrong, but it is all very calculated and refined, and the story is solid. This is actually a very quick read; the story is an action adventure and it moves along at a good fast pace.

As I get older I am finding myself reading books about being old, dying, or after that, like Old Man's War for instance (one that lets us old farts fantasize about what it would be like if we could continue to live in our prime). This one presents an afterlife that is attractive and exciting. I could be quite happy as a Flim I think.

j

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A former bio-tech engineer accidentally drills a hole into an electron and discovers a portal to another world which also happens to be the afterlife. The whole story is rather dream-like and surreal, but also colorful and funny. It was not particularly thought-provoking for me, but very entertaining to read, although the ending seemed to be a little rushed.

[David Agranoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim and the Flims By Rudy Rucker
247 pages $24.99
Nightshade books

Rudy Rucker is a well know cyperpunk Scienc Fiction author and he is also well know for being mathematician and computer science professor. He is also the editor of Sci-fi's best web-zine Flurb (I may be bias because flurb published a story of mine). Fiction wise he is best known for a series of four cyberpunk books that were kicked off by the classic novel Software. ( I reviewed Software back in 2010 on my blog). To say that Rucker is a genius to me is a understatement. He writes stunningly original, funny and above all smart Science Fiction.
His observations on the craft of writing Science Fiction are well documented in interviews done over the years with the amazing Agony column podcast. One of my favorite concepts Rucker introduced in one of those interviews was the Sci-Fi Power cord. He talked about how certain tropes in Speculative fiction such as Androids, flying saucers, Alien invasions should not be looked upon negatively as cliché no more than the power cord in a AC/DC or Ramones song. Through his long career Rucker has explored these power cords always putting a unique spin on familiar topic.
I knew I wanted to read this book when Rucker said after recovering a health scare he decided to write a book about traveling in the afterlife. Rucker didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel, but was inspired to explore the idea. What we end up with is a novel that is kinda Matheson's What Dreams May Come' meets Slacker.
It is the story of surfer slacker Jim Oster a former bio-tech engineer turned mailman who accidentally cuts a hole in a electron and sets off a chain events starting with the death of his beloved wife Val. In this novel the afterworld known to it's residents as Flimsy is not above us in the heavens but all around us in each and every electron. This leads to my favorite dialogue from the novel, “Heaven is everywhere. It's a hall of mirrors, but over here only one electron has a nick, thanks to you fuckhead.”
You see, Jim created a tunnel, not only has he some of the various species of flims escaped to earth, but he is given the chance to leave his body and search for his wife in Flimsy.
This is where things get weird, really bizarro. Rucker takes us on wild adventure across flimsy, a land made up of strange creatures and landscapes. I can hardly do them justice in this review. In Flimst water flows across the sky, flying intelligent beets, blue baboons, and they travel across the land on a cruiser couch that Jim makes with his mind out of a material called Kenessce which all flimsy is made out of. Along the way the book also has has one of the most bizarre sex scenes between Jim and a woman also discovering her astral body.
Jim has to navigate the strange community of Santa Cruz surfers and flims so he can not only find his wife but of course save the earth. Rucker's strength is an amazingly bizarro creative imagination that matches his obvious intellect. Unlike many bizarro books Jim and flims finds humor with appealing to the gutter. The prose has a whimsy, that a lot of science fiction lacks, and frankly could use. It reads like a lucid dream, the kind where you wake up laughing and wondering how your brain came up with that.
So yeah, Rudy Rucker strummed this power cord with a lot of gusto and I think if you have not read his stuff before it's a excellent place to start.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of Rudy Rucker's early works and always found them fun and thought-provoking. This one is fun, too, though it doesn't have the same level of scientific speculation; it's more of a fantasy. There's a blurb on the back cover from Walter John Williams that says "Rudy Rucker writes like the love child of Philip K. Dick and George Carlin," an observation with which I can't take issue except to add, in the case of Jim and the Flims, it seems to me that William Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, and Bill and Ted (of excellent adventure fame) must have been influences. The early section of the book is set in California and is quite engaging but then the action shifts to the afterlife (or something) and the characters become nonsense-word-noun creatures doing hard-to-understand things for unclear-ends with more nonsense-word-nouns. It was fun for a while but grew a bit tedious in the long run. There's a bit of amusing California sex and drug and romance activity along the way, some interesting plot twists and pleasingly complex characters, and the whole things winds up satisfactorily... I just wish they'd have taken a little shorter path.

[Snakes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t mind the unusual and the straight up weird, but it can’t feel gratuitous. And frankly some of Rucker’s books are even stranger, but some of those are definitely better. This one was just average for me.

[Bill Philibin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.0 Stars)

This book is entertaining, but... well, weird.

There is something called Hard Science Fiction -- where the "Science" and physics are mostly at least plausible. Then there is Soft Science Fiction -- which is more fanciful and fantasy based. Then there is this. If I had to put a name on it, I'd call it "Stoner Science Fiction". Not (necessarily) because of any drug content, but because I could see someone coming up with this story while stoned out of their mind.

Rudy Rucker is a good story teller and a very interesting person, this book takes advantage of both those characteristics. I listened to the audiobook version and the narrator did a great job.

[Varbra Hines · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a very strange book. But it kept my interest. Unlike anything I normally read. I am on the fence about this book. It was good and it wasn't. Reason for the 4 stars. It held my interest through out. But I HATE endings when they are rushed.

[Grundlepuck]

4

[Karl Fischer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. It started out promisingly: an unusual character with some unusual friends, a love tragically cut short, metallic hydrogen needles - I thought I was in for a treat. Unfortunately, as the book progressed, I grew irritated. I couldn't even say why at first - maybe it was Rucker's off kilter narration (never read a Rucker book before), maybe it was the slow pacing, maybe it was the feeling that I already knew where it was all heading and that I was needlessly having my time wasted. None of those things helped. Ultimately, what made me put the book down was our protagonist, Jim: an unremarkable gadabout lacking emotional weight. This was supposed to be the Orpheus myth retold and it's biggest emotional hook - the loss of Jim's wife - was simply abandoned in the first third of the book. Jim moves on and "falls in love" with other female characters. Nuts to his dead wife and dreams of fatherhood, he's got a kooky, supernatural ladyfriend to bone - then later a dead surfer chick.

Of course, his dead wife is reinserted once he learns that he can go into the afterlife, but his sudden "urge" to see her again rings kind of hollow. And why should I even care? Jim certainly doesn't - he's busy chasing tail and being wishy-washy about the whole project. The point is, nothing ever feels at stake because our main man is too flaky for his own good. Plus, he's not even in control of his own plot. He just kind of goes along with whatever weird circumstance is handed out to him. I'm sure others might find Jim to be a realistic or even likeable character, but I couldn't get behind him or his "quest." There was some really great imagery and Rucker definitely has a talent for painting intimate moments, but the book as a whole just didn't work for me.

[Fred Pierre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rudy Rucker writes a unique blend of science fiction and surfer fantasy. His strangely talented, beach bum, surfer characters find solutions to outlandish problems with smarts and persistence. Rucker takes science fiction concepts and runs them through his fantasy blender to reveal odd worlds in other dimensions with different physical laws.

The closest comparisons might be to Frank Baum's Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (vegetable people try to convert Dorothy to fertilizer and underground bears have powers of invisibility), or Piers Anthony's Xanth (full of magical creatures) in its full-fledged world creation. Rucker creates a world filled with flims, jivas, yuels, kessence and a horde of ghosts, mummies and zombies. Plot twists abound for a careening ride along an action-driven plot. Rucker is a storyteller first...a mad scientist storyteller.

Content in this book may not be age-appropriate for kids because of romantic themes, cussing and pot smoking, but it's all employed for humor, and humor is also at the core of Rucker's storytelling. The main character is full of contradictions and foolishness, but he wants to do the right thing for everybody and that lends reality and humor to his interactions with various nefarious villains, who come in many shades of grey.

Imaginative, speculative, and humorous this book requires your participation in suspending disbelief. The writing is solid, unique and you will laugh at some point, just from the absurdity.

[P. Kirby]

Despite its inclusion on my Did Not Finish shelf, I don't think this is a bad book. If this book were a guy, and we were having "that talk," I'd say, "It's not you, it's me."

This is the kind of wacky SF that relies on the use of a protagonist who is perpetually confused, and who transfers that confusion to the reader. If you like that sort of thing, a kind of story-on-an acid-trip approach to story telling, you will love this book. If you like goofy, made-up words, like "yuels," "kessence," "jivas," "teep," "zickzack," and you don't care if you ever get a coherent definition for those terms, then this is the book for you. Despite my tone, I think this is probably an entertaining read. For the right audience. (Or possibly with the right infusion of weed and booze.)

I'm just not that audience.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy cow, what a book! It is the literary equivalent of an acid trip (or, at least, how I imagine an acid trip might be). I liked this book, but felt a little lost at times. In that way, I identified with the protagonist. However, given the creativity and story telling power of the author I think I'm going to look into some of his other books!

Here's a representative line from the book to give you an idea of what reading it is like:

"I felt light on my feet, lively and strong. My jiva had come with me. I could feel Mijjy's movements within me, as she firmed up a zickzack skeleton within the kessence form that I'd drawn from Ween's supply."

[David Marshall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although it starts quite brightly, it rapidly grows monotonous and boring. I suppose some may like this non-stop quirkiness, but this odd tone completely undermines the mood in what could have been quite an effective weird story. This is strictly for the Rudy Rucker fans.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2011/0...

[Berrendsci]

This is exactly like when your friends who do psychedelic drugs excitedly (and in disjointed detail) describe their trips to you. It is hard to pretend you are interested or care after the first five minutes. I sympathized with the dog, who didn't deserve to be named Droog, who slept through as much of this 'trip' as he could...lucky dog.

[Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jim pokes a hole in an electron and the whole world is endangered. Jim has to go through a snail to another dimension/world/whatever to try to rectify his mistake and rescue is dead wife. This book is Alice in Wonderland on acid. Very strange.

[Josh Vogt · Rating 2 out of 5]

The over-the-top quirkiness and random "dream-like" scenes make this story difficult to understand and enjoy.

[Todd Mayville · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts on this fun read: http://tometraveling.blogspot.com/201...

[Nicholas Frota]

as always rucker explain an entire ecology, now of dead people. i love the weird powers.

[Norm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rudy is revisiting higher dimensional topography he's already covered in previous novels. A good read, with plenty of chuckles and some wild descriptions but I kept feeling like I had read it before.

[Guy Ferguson]

Perhaps most similar to 'Frek & the Elixir' - explores the idea of a universe inside every electron.

[Mike W · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 and a half stars but I'm rounding up for the inventive weirdness