Paul Girard is a forty five year old book store clerk and wannabe writer. He has come to the conclusion that after twenty years of attempting to write and not achieving a single sale he is not going to make it.

It's at this point in his life when he is contacted by Hans, an artificial life form known as a Moreveckian, a Mind Child capable of dimension hopping. The Mind Children are the eventual result of mankind's development of robots and computers, when physical human form has become unnecessary.

He offers Paul an offer he feels he cannot decline. All Hans wishes to do is take a copy of Paul's essence to add to the Mind Children. And for this Hans will offer Paul the chance to move between dimensions and to escape the doldrums of his life. In keeping with the strangeness that pervades this book, the device Paul must use to move between these dimensions comes in the form of a yo-yo.

Paul then uses the yo-yo to leave his world and move to other dimensions. The only problem with this movement is that Paul does not know exactly how this yo-yo works and so in making his desires felt to the yo-yo in fairly general terms Paul does not find what he truly desires.

With his first wish being to get as far from his current reality as is possible he arrives at nowhere, literally nowhere. Paul has arrived in a Primal Seed, a proto-Universe and encounters the beings responsible for forming this Universe.

Moving on he arrives in a hippie world, one where America has regressed to an isolationist state, not through conscious decision of government but through overuse of drugs and a general air of "who cares?". This is an America governed by Hell's Angels, and where virginity is a high crime.

The next world on Paul's journey (as a result of his wish to go somewhere logical) is inside a computer simulation of life. In this he becomes a mathematical approximation of his prior self. And so on his journey goes.

This is an odd book, quite surreal. It's very similar (although better) than the kind of fiction Robert Sheckley was writing in the 1960's and 70's, and has similarities with the kind of out-of-left-field feel of the odder moments of Douglas Adams writing.

The main character of Paul is screwed up, he's fairly depressed at the beginning of the story and seems to think his dreams have come true with the chance to leave his homeworld and find another better dimension more suitable to his needs. The only problem with this is that Paul is still Paul in whichever dimension he inhabits.

This is a heady read, it takes place at a breakneck pace. And it's book that drags you along with it. It requires a certain amount of suspending disbelief. It does explain itself though, although true to the generally mood of the book, even these explanations are a little (to say the least) surreal.

It is a wonderful read, Paul Di Filippo's writing style is so smooth, so concisely descriptive and so very readable. When I read the previous of his books (A Year in the Linear City) I promised myself that I would read more by Paul Di Filippo. Unfortunately (with the exception of a couple of short stories from issues of Asimov's and the anthology Infinity Plus Two), I've not made time for this, well not until now.

And the book itself is an object to be praised, PS Publishing titles are usually well presented and this is no exception, in fact this book has one of the most amazing covers I have seen in a long while. It is a total mé;ange of dream-like cartoon images centred upon the central beatnik character and his bongos. Although little in this image is contained in the story itself, the pictures style does sum up the general feel of the book.

This is a wonderfully inventive, well realised totally out-there head-trip. Paul Di Filippo is a highly gifted writer.

Synposis
How badly could you screw up when granted access to infinite worlds conforming to your heart's most intimate desires? No matter how much of a botch you or I might make of such a miraculous gift, rest assured that Paul Girard, hapless middle-aged bookstore clerk, can hilariously surpass your worst fumblings and missteps.

Visited one morning by a dimension-hopping artificial intelligence named Hans, Paul is given the ability to jump instantly to any world he can envision. But without truly knowing himself, Paul soon discovers that framing a wish that gets the expected results is not as easy as it first appears. From the depths of the Big Bang to a world where hippies rule; from a land of Amazons to one of where life is a video-game; from a society where cooperation means everything to one where individual chaos rules - across these bizarre dimensions and many others, Paul races in the search for happiness, love, wealth, status - and the answer to the Ontological Pickle. Acquiring comrades and enemies along the way, our feckless alternaut reaches a cul-de-sac from which the only exit is death.

And then his adventures really begin.