Book excerpt: The author with “a humanity worthy of Dickens or Hardy” delivers a novel of alternative currency and the price of wealth (Publishers Weekly). You can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a brief, 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. For most people, as they say, money makes the world go ‘round. For Rory Honeyman, it’s a different story. Having inadvertently and, almost without noticing, invented a new form of cash cow, money makes Rory’s world go strangely pear-shaped and out-of-control. He has an endless supply of blank checks that never bounce but he’s being guided by an albino, hustled by a saline-snorting sandwich-obsessed gourmet, manipulated by a devious banker and befuddled and bemused by a never-ending assortment of attractive and baffling women. And, for reasons unknown and unknowable, after racing from the Great Plains to Mexico City to Canada to Europe, he’s stuck in Hoboken and there appears to be no way out. Originally published: 2004