Roadside Bodhisattva — Paul Di Filippo

You can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a short, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast-moving, heart-warming, brain-bending stories exist across the entire spectrum of the fantastic from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you'll no longer see everyday life quite the same. Di Filippo' s Roadside Bodhisattva follows Kid A, a sixteen-year-old runaway, as he wanders a path laid out for him by the books of Jack Kerouac and Khalil Gibran. Searching for existential wisdom and something greater than himself, Kid A meets Sid, a veteran of life along the highway, and the two soon land at the Deer Park Kitchen motorlodge. What unfolds in Kid and Sid's interaction with Deer Park's colorful locals is an overwhelming mix of epiphanies and misunderstandings, insights and convictions, hope and betrayal. For Kid A and for all of us, enlightenment can be a rocky road to travel.