Spacetime Donuts

by Rudy Rucker

The birth of cyberpunk! A seaweed-smoking rebel becomes an incredible shrinking man. Under the bottom is the top--and the power to smash the Machine. After humanity becomes inextricably linked to the computers, a heroic couple makes a scale-ship journey beneath the smallest particles and through the largest cosmic structures, seeking a perfect world.

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fiction

196 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1981

About the author

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre. He is best known for his Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which won Philip K. Dick awards. Presently, Rudy Rucker edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.

Reviews

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 3 out of 5]

2001: A Space Odyssey mixed with Innerspace and crossed with The Terminator and you have an inkling of the storyline here. However, Rucker has a host of other weird and quirky side plots which are ingenious and interesting (i.e. Circular Scale which explains the title). Rucker definitely has some hidden gems and this one was pretty good.

[Sam Kuntz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spacetime Donuts is about a young man who is a rebel. He smokes something called seaweed and takes many drugs. He is somewhat dislikeable and I found myself cringing at some of the choices he made.

The book takes place in the future and almost everyone has a plug in the back of their heads. Every night when the people go to sleep they plug into a computer named Phiwhiz who shelters humans from everything dangerous.

Phizwhiz was coded to value human life above everything else. He makes sure that humans do not do anything that could even get them hurt. He does not allow creativity and science experiments.

As it comes to be, the young man meets a professor who has created a machine that allows people to shrink infinitely. The man wants to use the machine to destroy Phizwhiz and allow humans to live their lives as they choose.

The reason I have been calling the main character 'young man' or just plain 'man' is because they only mention his name once or twice and I cannot find it in the book. I am sorry.

I would have given this book more stars if it wasn't so pornographic. The first few chapters are very sexual and it frankly made me anxious to read them.

The other reason I gave this book so few stars was because of the treatment of women. They act as though the do not have any rights and are merely there to look at.

I did like the style of writing though, it is very direct and scientific.

I also enjoyed the thought process behind the idea that size is not forever, it has a end, and when you hit that end, you will grow back to the same size you were before the shrinking occured.

All in all, I did not truly enjoy reading this book. I think I would have enjoyed it a little more if there was less drugs and sex. I recommend this book to pretty much everyone who wants to have a weird experience.

-Sam Kuntz

[Joseph Gagnon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I desperately wanted to give this book more stars. The scifi story was very interesting. The author, a mathematician setting his ideas to fiction. However, the story definitely shows it’s age with it’s treatment of female characters. I was encouraged when the book mentioned most people in this future were bisexual, but all the women came off as purely sex objects. There is no true character development anywhere.

All that said, I’m glad i read it once. Definitely want more from this genre. Short, sweet, intense. If you have a single feminist bone in your body—dont read it.

Perhaps i should read Ruckers nonfiction work.

[Fábio Fernandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an awesome book! It reminded me of John Shirley's The City Come A-Walking, but a little less punk, a bit more hippie, way more math-nerd-geek and a completely amazing reading! If you want to have a full-flegded experience of true cyberpunk, look no further: this is the book. Neuromancer refined the genre and became its magnum opus, but Spacetime Donuts is a classic.

[Rach scifi.book.club · Rating 3 out of 5]

So it turns out this book is not actually about donuts. Instead, it’s about a dystopian machine-ruled totalitarian state where the masses are kept subservient through a cocktail of drugs and complete safety. Some people plug themselves into the super computer to attempt to alter it and create a more interesting world. In doing this, Vernor (our main character) gets a crazy idea that space is a donut, and you could infinitely shrink yourself, go full circle, become infinitely large, and then return to normal size. They test this out with the help of an underground scientist and a kind of shrink-ray spaceship. Whilst running away from the police.

Not gonna lie, this book was so weird. The pace is really varied - one chapter is an evening at the aquarium, the next chapter is suddenly an arrest and three years in prison. I’m not sure if that’s on purpose, but at times I got a bit frustrated that some parts were being glided over.

There’s a lot of talk about drug culture; characters order them in bars like they’re peanuts, and talk a lot about using drugs to strengthen their mind before plugging into the super computer. I’ve never plugged myself into a computer, but it must be quite a trip. There’s a sense of detachment and exhaustion throughout due to this constant cocktail of drugs.

One cool thing that I was not expecting was that this book heavily references Flatland by Edwin A Abbott. The actual book is used by Vernor to explain to others about possible alternate dimensions beyond our perception, and Vernor’s theory is inspired by Flatland and the meeting of the square and the sphere. Since I happen to read Flatland last month, I thought this was a cool coincidence.

Overall I think if you like trippy dystopian sci-fi with overmedicated populations rising up against overbearing computers and challenging their perceptions of the universe (in 300 pages) then give this a whirl. It’s quite fun.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Rucker is a bit like reading Philip K Dick. They both often used a gonzo approach to world-building. In this book, human society depends utterly on a supercomputer named Phizwiz. No one needs a job, but some people play at working. Dreamers plug into the system providing feedback to Phizwiz that is used to tweak the endless Hollows (holographic shows) that people consume. Enter the Angels, brilliant individuals that are recruited to supercharge Phizwiz, but the Angels are under the influence of the mysterious Professor Kurtowski. Vernor, one of the Angels, has spent much of his time learning mathematics, and he has some unusual ideas concerning the scale of reality that he wants to test using a device invented by Kurtowski. Vernor believes that reality has a circular scale.
If you can shrink small enough, you will eventually become as large as the universe before you shrink down again (Rucker illustrates this idea using the surface of a donut). Rucker's combination of dystopian thinking, black humor and theoretical mathematics produces an audacious and entertaining book.

[Emmalyn Renato · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science fiction / cyberpunk. It's a wild gonzo ride through the philosophy of science and one of the first ever cyberpunk novels. It really helps that the author is a professor of mathematics and author of several popular science non-fiction books. Originally written for the 'Unearth' magazine, the first two parts were published in 1978 and 1979. The magazine then was forced to stop publishing before the third and final part could appear. It's certainly a product of it's age. The tagline on the cover of the 1981 Ace paperback that I read was "Free drugs! Easy sex! No Job hassles! Some people just don't know when they are being oppressed!" It was influenced by the writings of Kurt Godel, the music of the Rolling Stone and Frank Zappa and the year 1972.

[Katelyn]

Very cyberpunk, very Miss Frizzle taking you deep into the miniaturized frame of mind, very technical and yet also dumbly human. Still sort of reeling from it. Not sure entirely if I liked it or just felt like it hooked me long enough to pull me into its orbit enough to finish it. Did make me think of college astronomy class and studying black holes and the concept of many alternate universes - bubble theory! - in a somewhat familiar way.

[Ziva Tether · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is sci-fi but a little too scientific and "trippy" for my tastes. The story was kinda interesting though.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to Mike Sumbera, I’m another novel towards completing my Rucker collection. A weird one from Rucker, but then, that’s kind of an oxymoron; everything from the mind of Rucker has a weird stance. This one posits the idea that space/time is a continuum, and circular in nature. That is, if one was to increasingly make oneself smaller and smaller, after passing through the various levels (atomic, subatomic, etc.) one would then start progressing through space (universe, galaxy, solar system, etc.). Like Robert Anton Wilson’s “Schrodinger’s Cat” trilogy, Spacetime Donuts posits the theory, then fits a story around what it might be like if that theory were true. Rucker’s writing style, at least in this early novel, is most similar to the early novels of Philip K. Dick, but whereas Dick was focused on the nature of reality from a psychological and philosophical viewpoint, Rucker comes at it from a mathematical and physical view.

[Kitap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Space exploration had been dead for years. They'd sent a few squares out to the planets and back... and that was it. People lost interest in it. One of those astronaut types would come back from Mars... "How was it, Colonel?" "Well, Mr. Straight, it was unpleasant. We had forgotten to bring steak with us and the lighting was poor. I wasn't able to shave for two weeks. My principal feeling when I stepped onto that planet was one of gratitude to the Us government for making this possible. We saluted the flag there, although the dust storms made it difficult. On the whole I'd say that it was worthwhile sending me since I've gotten so much pussy ever since my return." "Thank you, Colonel." (159)

[Arielle Masters · Rating 3 out of 5]

First read this in high school; again in or just after college. I haven't yet re-read it as a mature adult. I mostly remember it being about shrinking (the quantum kind, not the cold-water kind) and sex. The science part was fascinating. But maybe the sex was from a different book - Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...). Could be from either/both. I read them around the same time. Need to re-read them to straighten things out...

[Guy Ferguson · Rating 3 out of 5]

His first book, although published second. I think he was earlt 20s. Kant, Godel, infinity, 4th dimension. All the later focusses are here in book one. And fresh characters, raw and anti-gov.
Smash the state.
Rucker on.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read, a fresh breath of air. I am really glad that I chose to read this as an introduction to steampunk sci fi. Truly like nothing else I have ever read.

[Petri Mikael]

Tubular

As frivolous a flowering of the hermetic axiom as I ever saw. Does what it says on the tin and the tin has a tiny black hole inside.

[Barbara Holford · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was very weird

[Koji · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ignored the learning from my experience and tried math sci-fi again.
I prefer it to White Light, but it was neither math sci-fi nor hard sci-fi. I have to seek a math sci-fi again.

[Vijay Fafat · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is set in a chaotic setting (it's a Rucker novel!) of an all-providing-but-oppressive society. The society is controlled in large parts by a supercomputer, PhizWhiz, and its political masters. But PhizWhiz is all algorithms and no spark of imagination, which leads to its one large goal - achieve a melding with a human mind to initiate the trait of personal creativity. The problem is that only a few human minds are capable of withstanding the information on-slaught a melding with PhizWhiz unleashes. Vernor Maxwell is one such genius.

Vernor is a Physics student who theorizes that the universe operates on a circular scale. That if you went small enough, you would ultimately become larger than the universe and a continuing "shrinking" will bring you back to your original size (shades of T-duality in String Theory and Escher's perpetual waterfall!). The novel is a description of how he, with the help of his friends and a mysterious professor (Kurtowski, author of "The Geometrodynamics of the Degenerate Tensor"), dupes PhizWhiz into helping him discover the circular scale in reality.

The description of the ultra-small regime as they shrink in size is very nicely done, though Rucker spoils it many times with needless and quite crude language, as is his hallmark. Mathematical references are spread throughout the book (analogies to flatland, the universe as an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, etc). He does a very good job of explaining how such a state of affairs can arise, using the analogy of a continuously shrinking ring wound around the doughnut-hole of a doughnut. Excellent stuff there.

However, the idea that you can keep expanding and then shrink back to the original size to find yourself back on earth at the *same* place in the *same* time era is not explained in anyway except for plot convenience. At one point, the professor muses that perhaps the shrinking process is really a movement into the fourth dimension, which can explain how, from the perspective of the shrinking person, everything seems to be receding. That, I think, is a stark and unforced error since Rucker describes the ever-magnifying details of the surroundings as the protagonists shrink (e.g. the details of a cabbage patch at various magnifications), which implies an "in situ" shrinking, not a movement away from the three dimensions.

That said, it is an entertaining book and Rucker's books are always full of great ideas.