NPR

Buckle Up For This 'Million Mile Road Trip'

We're trying not to make the "long, strange trip" joke about Rudy Rucker's new novel, but it's about three teens in a beat-up purple wagon with a dark energy motor, traveling across dimensions, so ...
Source: Night Shade

There's an alien under the bed and another on the lawn. Zoe Snapp has a pearl in her pocket that's really a transdimensional gateway, opened solely by playing a particular riff on her trumpet. A few blocks away, Villy (who is maybe, kinda, Zoe Snapp's boyfriend) and his younger brother Scud are arguing about hamburgers, the replacement of spark plugs and the road trip Villy and Zoe have planned.

Five minutes later, the second alien is gonna arrive. He's a mechanic, stoned, a slacker, with a toolbelt full of marker birds and pancakes. He's gonna make, with quantum shocks, graphene tires and a dark energy motor. Thanks to the timely arrival of Yampa and Pinchley, the aforementioned transdimensional aliens, The Road Trip (capped here, as befitting a noble quest) is suddenly a jaunt across realities, across planets, and Villy, Scud and Zoe are, apparently, the heroes, destined to scrap with alien gods and flying saucers, and to save the earth from same.

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