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In White Light, talk about coincidences... Felix Raynor is a new assistant math professor at SUCAS Bernco, a cow college in upstate New York. But wait, Rudy Rucker was an assistant professor at SUCAS (really) Geneseo in upstate NY, 1972-78. Raynor is struggling to adapt to rural academia while working (now & then) on Georg Cantor's Continuum Problem -- as was Rucker in RL: he started writing White Light when he bogged down with Cantor. Raynor's & Rucker's lives diverge (I presume) when Raynor discovers astral projection and checks into Hilbert's Hotel on the flipside of Cimon, after getting a personal command from Jesus Christ to climb Mt. On.

As Rucker notes in his afterword, White Light has "nice visualizations of infinity, fine evocations of the time when it was written, heartfelt attempts to break through to ultimate truth, good surreal imagery, and lots of laughs." White Light has been on my to read list for years, and I'm pleased to see it available.

Is it worth the price? Ummm. Are you a serious collector/Rucker fan? It's certainly worth reading. If you happen to be new to Rucker (SF's own mad mathemagician) I'd start with Master of Space & Time (1985) which is still my favorite Rucker novel. It is a story in which the tale of three granted wishes is explored via quantum mechanics, with wonderfully bizarre results. The apotheosis of Harry Gerber... I've read Master of Space & Time at least three times and I laughed aloud each time. This is the book White Light is trying to be.

And while you're questing for it, keep an eye out for Rucker's 1983 Ace collection The 57th Franz Kafka. It's very uneven, but has his definitive 70s story, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" -- V-sex, lesnerizing & the Pure Land:

"Flow now while I'm touching you, darling," she breathed. I let my head go slack, and it began sinking down thru the collar of my shirt. Helen was fumbling frantically at our clothes... It didn't seem like she was ever going to get them off, so I reduced viscosity and flowed out of my left pant leg and onto the floor. She'd gotten her shirt and bra off, and she lay down to rub her stiff-nippled breasts across me...

Pete Tillman has been reading SF for better than 40 years now. He reviews SF -- and other books -- for Usenet, "Under the Covers", Infinity-Plus, Dark Planet, and SF Site. He's a mineral exploration geologist based in Arizona. More of his reviews are posted at www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman .