Description

---

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.

About the Author

---

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…

---

Praise for Jim and the Flims

“Jim and the Flims offers Rucker’s delightfully eccentric and transrealist approach to what turns out to be a kind of modern-day Orpheus tale. It’s often silly and lighthearted, but it’s buoyed by the emotional weight of Jim’s quest, and also by the often beautiful and moving view of life and death.” —Karin L. Kross, Tor.com

“I love Rudy Rucker. The guy is simply incomparable when it comes to writing science fiction, managing to seamlessly blend highly intelligent existential and scientific speculation with wildly satirical and insanely imaginative plotlines.” —Paul Goat Allen, BarnesandNoble.com

“Rudy Rucker's weirdest, craziest, colorfulest book yet? That's saying a lot, I know. But when it is at its most bizarre, it is also most hilarious. Nobody else writes like Rudy.” —Marc Laidlaw, author of The 37th Mandala and Dad’s Nuke

“Jim and the Flims is just as quirky and enjoyable as everything else he's written . . . a perfect showcase for Rudy Rucker's ability to craft a story that is both totally familiar and absolutely like nothing you've ever read before.” —Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column

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 Jim and the Flims

“Jim and the Flims offers Rucker’s delightfully eccentric and transrealist approach to what turns out to be a kind of modern-day Orpheus tale. It’s often silly and lighthearted, but it’s buoyed by the emotional weight of Jim’s quest, and also by the often beautiful and moving view of life and death.” —Karin L. Kross, Tor.com

“I love Rudy Rucker. The guy is simply incomparable when it comes to writing science fiction, managing to seamlessly blend highly intelligent existential and scientific speculation with wildly satirical and insanely imaginative plotlines.” —Paul Goat Allen, BarnesandNoble.com

“Rudy Rucker's weirdest, craziest, colorfulest book yet? That's saying a lot, I know. But when it is at its most bizarre, it is also most hilarious. Nobody else writes like Rudy.” —Marc Laidlaw, author of The 37th Mandala and Dad’s Nuke

“Jim and the Flims is just as quirky and enjoyable as everything else he's written . . . a perfect showcase for Rudy Rucker's ability to craft a story that is both totally familiar and absolutely like nothing you've ever read before.” —Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column

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