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240 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1976
"'Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.' I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name."However, when the real adult world comes equipped with aliens undercover as a wombat and a kangaroo, even the prospect of potential never-ending student life pales in comparison.
"The hot sands had had shouted them through me all afternoon, then night’s frigid breezes had whispered the motto at the overdone lamb chop, my ear: "You are a living example of the absurdity of things."Fred Cassidy, as I mentioned above, is a perpetual student by day and an acrophiliac in his spare time (as in love of heights, or climbing tall buildings in Fred's case). Due to an apparent loophole in his not-quite-dead uncle's will he is entitled to a very comfortable life as long as he is getting a college degree full-time. For thirteen years, Fred takes full advantage of that, becoming probably the most broadly-educated man on the planet (and also acquiring very practical skills in basket-weaving, coming THIS close to completing a major in it - an a few dozen of other specialties as well).
"And if somebody has put together a course on the subject, this one has probably taken it," said Charv.Finally graduating Fred becomes almost a mission of the university officials (). But eventually the real world of this near-future ('soft sci-fi', think aliens and occasional flying cars but otherwise perfectly recognizable 20-th century world) gives Fred a rude awakening from this perpetual studentry bliss when an alien civilization artifact goes missing, undercover wombat and kangaroo interfere, and some things are in dire need of literal reversing. And we are treated to a hilarious and humorous ride peppered with smart references (Fred did NOT waste all those undergrad years, indeed!) and clever allusions. And I loved every page of it. What can I say - I'm a sucker for smart and funny gimmicky literature goodness.
"Yes. Unfortunate."
"While I seldom indulge in graffiti, verbal or pre-, I have always felt something of empathy for those who scale walls and make their marks on them. The farther back you go, the more interesting the act becomes. Now it may be true, as some have claimed, that the impulse was first felt in the troglodytic equivalent of the john and that cave drawings got started this way, as a kind of pictorial sublimation of an even more primitive evolutionary means of marking one’s territory. Nevertheless, when somebody started climbing around on walls and mountainsides to do it, it seems pretty obvious that it had grown from a pastime into an art form. I have often thought of that first guy with a mastodon in his head, staring at a cliff face or cave wall, and I have wondered what it was that set him suddenly to climbing and scraping away-what it felt like. Also, what the public’s reaction was. Perhaps they made sufficient holes in him to insure the egress of the spirits behind it all. Or perhaps the bold initiative involved was present in greater abundance then, awaiting only the proper stimulus, and a bizarre response was considered as common as the wriggling of one’s ears. Impossible to say. Difficult not to care."
"Thus, thus, so and thus: awakening as a thing of textures and shadings: advancing and retreating along a scale of soft/dark, smooth/shadow, slick/bright: all else displaced and translated to this: The colors, sounds and balances a function of these two.Zelazny dabbles in absurdity, leading me to inevitable comparisons with parts of Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", but never topples into the clearly absurdist territory. He plays with turning his prose to almost-but-not-quite-poetry with all the alliteration and metaphorical language and internal rhythm of the sentences, but does not fully go down that path, either.
Advance to hard and very bright. Fall back to soft and black...
"Do you hear me, Fred?" — the twilight velvet.
"Yes" — my glowing scales.
"Better, better, better..."
"Sunflash, some splash. Darkle. Stardance. Phaeton's solid gold Cadillac crashed where there was no ear to hear, lay burning, flickered, went out. Like me."Lovely and clever enjoyable little book, the one that will surely reread quite a few times in the future. 5
"Drifting drowsy across the countryside, I paraded my troubles through the streets of my mind, poking occasional thoughts between the bars of their cages, hearing the clowns beat drums in my temples."
Permanent student and acrophiliac Fred Cassidy (he's managed to stay in college for 13 years so far, without getting kicked out despite climbing every building on campus) gets pulled into an intergalactic thriller when an artifact shared as part of a goodwill mission between aliens and humans goes missing.And in typical Zelazny fashion, Fred and the reader are off on a wild, twisting ride to the finish line.