Striped Holes

Ditmar Award 1989.

A Comic Science Fiction Masterpiece! Science fiction that makes you grin, and then laugh out loud, is hard to find. With this very funny short novel, Damien Broderick joined the ranks of Robert Sheckley, Bob Shaw, John Sladek, Arthur Schopenhauer and Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

Sopwith Hammil is a popular but rather stupid TV presenter when a time machine lands in his living room. To save his life and the human race (they're turning the Sun off!), he must find a wife inside three hours. Meanwhile, 197 years later, in a world that makes 1984 look like Brave New World, beautiful Hsia Shan-Yun is fighting the future – and losing. Meanwhile, on Alpha Grommett, two married robots find their love-life has become depressingly mechanical. Meanwhile, the wacky astrologer O'Flaherty Gribble has discovered the long-lost secret of the Callisto Effect. Meanwhile, in a pact with the devil...