Venus on the Half-Shell
About this ebook
When a massive flood wipes out Earth and spoils his date, lone survivor Simon Wagstaff finds refuge in an abandoned Chinese spaceship, the Hwang Ho. Accompanied by three new companions—a dog, an owl, and a beautiful robot—and his electric banjo, Wagstaff sets off on an extraterrestrial adventure. He travels from planet to planet, seeking the definitive answer to the ultimate question: Why are we created if only to suffer and die?
Of course, after he drinks an elixir granting him eternal life, the real question is what to do for the rest of eternity after he answers his first question . . .
“Lively and inventive and goes by faster than a holiday weekend.” —The Washington Post
“A comedy of sexual mores, an investigative search for Love, a lampoon of people who require answers to imponderable questions.” —Science Fiction Review
“Not only a science-fiction epic of the most incredible proportions, but it is also a satiric-fantasy, a clever parody of its own genre.” —The Daily Eastern NewsAbout the author
His first published novella, “The Lovers” (1952), earned him the Hugo Award for best new author. He won a second Hugo and was nominated for the Nebula Award for the 1967 novella “Riders of the Purple Wage,” a prophetic literary satire about a futuristic, cradle-to-grave welfare state. His best-known works include the Riverworld books, the World of Tiers series, the Dayworld Trilogy, and literary pastiches of such fictional pulp characters as Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. He was one of the first writers to take these characters and their origin stories and mold them into wholly new works. His short fiction is also highly regarded.
