Float the Pooch

by Mark Malamud

Disco Rigido, charismatic kingpin of black-market libidinal software, spreads mayhem throughout the world for the benefit of an ancient extraterrestrial intelligence that uses life on Earth as a substrate for procreation; while Doctor Memory, a back-alley neurosurgeon dressed as a rabbi, tries to save what's left of humanity.
FLOAT THE POOCH is an exuberant, surreal trip down the dark and squirrelly streets of the future. Turn left and you're in the gutter, looking at the stars. Turn right, you're in the stars, staring back at the gutter. And sometimes, no matter which way you go, you end up right back where you started. Seamlessly interweaving elements of an all-too-real future with mind-bending inventions and hallucinogenic flourishes, Mark Malamud has written a novel that folds back on itself. Whether prophesy, warning, or creation myth, it is mesmerizing, hilarious, and utterly original.
"Part science-fiction, part technological thriller, and part hard-boiled Yiddish theatre, FLOAT THE POOCH pits sex against life, life against meaning, and - incredibly - David Bowie against Stanley Kubrick." -Tatyana Wjekeslava
"The end of the Anthropocene is here, and it has never been more absurd." -Dr. John Hardin
"In the not-too-distant future, America is a corporate state whose cities are crumbling from the inside out, Disney is a religion whose adherents are as likely to wear Mouse ears as they are to terror-bomb Nike stores, and sex - thanks to a new drug of extraterrestrial origin - is the death of us all." - Dean Bonello
"The Millennium's first pan-galactic dystopian creation myth!" - Loup"

448 pages, Paperback

Published February 24, 2016

About the author

Mark Malamud is a tail-end baby-boomer, writer, poet, puzzle-maker, designer, futurist, former software developer, and master dogsbody. He is the co-founder and consulting inventor at Raxacoricofallapatorius, and principal and manager of busymonster, LLC, a consultancy company focused on advanced user interface and design. During his ten-year tenure at Microsoft, Mark became the company’s first user interface architect. His interests include advanced technologies, intellectual property, anti-intellectual property, synthetic observation, and cheese. Mark studied at Brown University where he received his bachelor’s degree in psychology. He holds over 700 patents, and in 2012 he was the 8th most-prolific inventor of patents in the US.

Reviews

[Michael Pronko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Float the Pooch is packed with ironic geniuses, art museum shoot-outs, sex in new forms and great one-liners. For those reasons alone, it’s a great, rollicking read, but there’s more. Scenes come fast and furious with odd narrative connections that are both unexpected and hilarious. All of that is wrapped up in Pynchon-esque absurdity, science-fiction mind-benders and loads of juicy, funny sentences. Great line-by-line writing keeps events focused sharply, and the plot moves quickly through big shifts of setting. Characters and happenings diverge, merge and turn back around like a Mobius strip with a few extra twists in it. The retro-hardboiled dialogue keeps searching for meaning but the did-that-really-happen events keep denying it’s there. That tension between hope and despair is delicious. Few other novels would dare guest star Stanley Kubrick, David Bowie and Harlan Ellison, nor put them to such great story purposes. As Disco Rigido and Doctor Memory square off over the souls, and sexuality, of humanity, the novel lays out idea after idea to reflect on, laugh with and bounce through the brainpan.