Roadside Bodhisattva

Paul Di Filippo

Apr 2014 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

You can try to escape from the mundane, or, with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a short, 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 exists 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 will no longer see everyday life quite the same. Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva follows Kid A, a sixteen‑year‑old runaway, as he wanders a path laid out for him by the books of Jack Kerouac and Khalil Gibran. Searching for existential wisdom and something greater than himself, Kid A meets Sid, a veteran of life along the highway, and the two soon land at the Deer Park Kitchen motor lodge. What unfolds in Kid and Sid’s interaction with Deer Park’s colorful locals is an overwhelming mix of epiphanies and misunderstandings, insights and convictions, hope and betrayal. For Kid A and for all of us, enlightenment can be a rocky road to travel.

Ratings and reviews

#Reported

About the author

Paul Di Filippo is a prolific science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story writer with multiple collections to his credit, among them The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories, Fractal Paisleys, The Steampunk Trilogy, and many more. He has written a number of novels as well, including Joe’s Liver and Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken. 

Di Filippo is also a highly regarded critic and reviewer, appearing regularly in Asimov’s Science Fiction and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A recent publication, coedited with Damien Broderick, is Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.