Peter Bruegel's paintings---a peasant wedding in a barn, hunters in the snow, a rollicking street festival, and many others---have long defined our idea of everyday life in sixteenth century Europe. They are classic icons of a time and place in much the same way as Norman Rockwell's depictions of twentieth-century America. We know relatively little about Bruegel, but after years of research, novelist Rudy Rucker has built upon what is known and has created for us the life and world of a true master who never got old.
In sixteen chapters, each headed by a reproduction of one of the famous works, Rucker brings Bruegel's painter's progress and his colorful world to vibrant life, doing for Bruegel what the best-selling Girl with a Pearl Earring did for Vermeer. We follow the artist from the winding streets of Antwerp and Brussels to the glowing skies and decaying monuments of Rome and back. He and his friends, the cartographer Ortelius and Williblad Cheroo, an American Indian, are as vivid on the page as the multifarious denizens of Bruegel's unforgettable canvases.
Here is a world of conflict, change, and discovery, a world where Carnival battles Lent every day, preserved for us in paint by the engaging genius you will meet in the pages of As Above, So Below.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
"Whether he's investigating the fractalized cutting edge of science and math theory, or traveling through Tonga and Tokyo, it's hard to think of a more genial, or more well-informed, tour guide. And like his idol Kerouac, Rucker's a hell of a reporter."
American Book Review
"This is Rudy Rucker having fun, the purpose of life. In Seek! he's picked a brilliant bunch of his columns, essays, and interviews, a travelogue of discovery from cellular automata to his 'transreal' fiction. So this is how to be a professor of computing science, write acclaimed nonfiction, become a hit with the cyberpunks, and have an excellent time."
