A statistician attempts to make sense of a world gone mad in an apocalyptic sci-fi scenario from the Hugo Award–winning author of Starship Troopers.
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Multiple Hugo Award winner Robert Heinlein earned countless fans, accolades, and honors with groundbreaking novels such as Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land. But it was shorter works like his brilliant novella, The Year of the Jackpot, that solidified Heinlein’s position among sci-fi’s greatest.
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Potiphar Breen puts his trust in numbers to make sense of the world. An unassuming, middle-aged bachelor, he has been carefully noting a rise in odd behaviors all around him in order to determine some pattern or meaning in these bizarre recent events. Then one day, he comes upon a beautiful young woman at a bus stop who is taking off all her clothes.
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Meade Barstow has no idea what compelled her to disrobe in public, and she is grateful when Potiphar comes along to save her from herself. Needing some time and a place to recuperate, she
accompanies him home. Soon, a relationship develops that is warm, mutually supportive, and sane—in dramatic contrast to the growing madness of the world outside.
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But “Potty’s” house won’t be a refuge forever. Because once Breen clearly identifies the cycle that humanity is undergoing, he and his newfound friend will have to run for their lives.
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Originally published in the early 1950s, Heinlein’s The Year of the Jackpot is a story of love, trust, and volatile human nature that still retains its wonder and unique philosophical edge.