Red Zen

Book excerpt: Saul Summerblend has a bizarre memory problem. And his Zen master, Bodhee, says he should travel to the dwarf planet Ceres to fix it. Along the way Saul meets a thirty-foot magic square whose diagonals and rows sum to 666, encounters a group of drunken Vikings and evil dwarves, works some campy mathematics and overhears amusing CB radio conversations, fights a visionary with a penchant for wrestling masks and flipping off cars all day on main street, invents neologisms like deemkrite and freeganidge. He also learns of a mystical book called 'Red Zen: Way of the Butterfly' and attempts to solve a few koans about kangaroos, split toe nails, and carts filled with hatchets. Will Saul fix his strange memory problem? Will he even make it back to Earth alive?