Fuzzy Dice — Paul Di Filippo

“Di Filippo clowns his way through this transdimensional travelogue cut from the same cloth as Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.” -- Publishers Weekly
 
At forty-five-years-old, Paul Girard is a self-loathing clerk at an independent bookstore, having finally killed his dream of being a writer by throwing out his rejected manuscripts. Drowning in existential angst, Paul can't envision much of a future for himself -- until he meets Hans. 
 
Hans is one of the Mind Children, an artificial race that has succeeded humanity. If Paul allows Hans to copy his human essence, the key to Superspace and its infinite number of universes will be his. And even though said key is a yo-yo, Paul agrees.
 
Desperate to escape his banal reality, Paul flings the yo-yo and winds up in the singularity that preceded the Big Bang . . . a matriarchal society of women warriors . . . a realm populated by TV characters from his childhood. But Paul's frantic travels only prove one thing: wherever he goes in the multiverse, there he is. Now how does he get home?
 
“It's like Tom Robbins's classic Even Cowgirls Get the Blues recast in the hands of gonzo mathematician Rudy Rucker as a kind of ontological day trip.” -- Locus
 
“Frothing with ideas, Fuzzy Dice is one more reason Di Filippo is one of the most imaginative (and underappreciated) writers working today. . . . If humorously intelligent science fiction far beyond the madding crowd is your cup of tea, then this novel (and Di Filippo in general) cannot disappoint. . . . Great fun, great read -- almost as much as Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles.” -- Speculiction