Alpha Max: An Existential Romp through an Absurd Multiverse by Mark A. Rayner
Amazing Stories says: “Snarky as Pratchet, insightful as Stephenson, as full of scathing social commentary as Swift or Voltaire, and weirdly reminiscent of LeGuin, Alpha Max is the only multiverse novel you need this month, or maybe ever.”
Chapter 1: Unitards All the Way Down
There was a fat man wearing a silver lamé unitard standing in his living room. The interloper had flaming red hair and a beard to match. To Professor Maximilian Tundra’s horror, the intruder looked just like him.
Max couldn’t decide what was more astonishing – the fact that he had an identical twin, or how terrible he looked wearing that metallic jumpsuit. He almost dropped the tumbler full of bourbon he had hoped would calm him down, he was so amazed. He had a sip of alcohol and realized that he would never recover from how humiliating that other Max looked. Like Max himself, his unwanted guest was a big man, about one hundred and eighty centimeters, just under six feet, which helped him carry a lot of extra weight. A lot. Max’s doppelganger had the same wild red hair that Max struggled with every morning. The same full beard, a shade darker than his hair. The silver onesie was a nightmare of shiny folds and rolls. It was as though Patrick the Starfish had a drunken fling with a machine that extruded tinfoil, and then put on a red wig. Surely this new and silvery nightmare Max was fatter than him? Please?
“It took you long enough to get here, old boy. I say, do you mind if I borrow some togs from you? And where do you keep your scotch?”
Max was nonplussed, but said: “Scotch? Nobody’s had scotch since the war.”
