Bela is roommates with a fellow mathematical scholar named Paul Bridge. Both are working toward their doctorates under the tutelage of an eccentric professor named Roland Haut. The theory all three are trying to prove—so that Paul and Bela can achieve their theses and so that Haut can aggrandize himself further in academia—is called the Morphic Classification Theorem. Bela happens to be attacking the problem by visualizing common household items from Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat. Paul—more autistic, gifted and prone to old-fashioned formulae on paper—is scribbling away. Then into their lives comes the alluring Alma Ziff. Both men fall in love with her, and the rest of the novel's actions will revolve mainly around their rivalry to claim her. Hence the title of the novel.

Oh, but this simplification discounts many, many other facets of the plot. There's the crazed president of the United States, Joe Doakes of the Heritagist Party, and the way he and vice president Frank Ramirez are leading the country to ruin. Then there's congressman Van Veeter, also a Heritagist. Veeter happens to be a millionaire computer wizard who's hot on the trail of anyone who succeeds in proving the Morphic Classification Theorem. The proof of this theory would allow Van Veeter to perfect his latest gadget, a bubble-shaped computer that relies on paracomputation: a substitute for programming that uses natural processes as models for any simulation imaginable. We also have Bela's dream of becoming a rock star with his band Washer Drop, the giant flying cone shell snail aliens that are appearing everywhere (giant cockroaches, too), the jerkiness of Alma's brother Pete and her stoned dad, rival mathematicians from Stanford—and a host of other matters microcosmic and macrocosmic.

Sound like a lot to deal with? You haven't encountered anything yet. When Paul and Bela succeed in their quest, the gates between universes are opened and something even more powerful than math enters their lives: the hierophantics of the giant jellyfish god Nataraja.

A skewed take on contemporary life

After journeying centuries back into European history in As Above, So Below (2002) and far into the future in Frek and the Elixir (2004), Rucker returns to our current era, much as he did in The Hacker and the Ants (1994, revised 2003). It's a notably fruitful zone for Rucker, since he is palpably and quiveringly tuned in to the zeitgeist and can offer cultural and scientific commentary and satire better than almost any other SF author practicing today. And if, as some have it, SF always speaks of the present, no matter what era it's set in, then Rucker has just cut straight to the chase this time, nevertheless retaining all the glorious weirdness that comes with more futuristic milieus.

Bela's home timeline is almost a character itself in this novel. I'm reminded of the loony phase-shifted realities of Ishmael Reed's The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967) and of Robert Coover's The Public Burning (1977). The slightly askew societal and political realities of Bela's home offer cutting commentary on our own times. And when we discover a certain secret about the nature of this timeline (hint: think of Vinge's organization of the galaxy into levels in A Fire Upon the Deep [1992]), our own universe—where Bela ultimately ends up, as he reveals on page one—assumes a supernal aura that beautifully illuminates Rucker's philosophy of life.

But aside from all the glories of the speculative science and math and interdimensional jaunts (and the otherworld where Bela and Alma and Paul end up, La Hampa, is a heavy trip I haven't even tried to describe), what we have here is a rollicking, roisterous, (ir-)reverent campus novel, rather like Matt Ruff's Fool on the Hill (1988). Bela is a surfer/slacker dude, torn between intellectual pursuits and carnal ones. This dynamic drives the whole book. Is Bela in love with Alma or another woman, or with math itself? When Alma gets mad and suggests that Bela and Paul should be lovers, since they're both math-fixated, she hits upon the subtext of the title, a subtext that drives all Rucker's fictions.

Bela is really finally in love with discovery and the riddles of creation. He's a Kerouackian Beat crossed with a Pynchonesque delver into gnostic riddles, as are most of Rucker's core characters. A Zen seeker like Ikkyu, he's after satori through sex and drink and personal contact. The path is fraught with danger and disappointment—but Bela, like Rucker, makes it out the other end at last.