Rating: 
Summary: The best liberal cartoon of a book I've ever read...
Review: Ruff doesn't hide his politics. This in of itself would normally be cause for dread; after a recent painful reading experience (Bill Fitzhugh's "The Organ Grinders", I have a review posted), it's a relief to read a writer who can be political without being, well, annoying about it.It's this very thing that lets Ruff be gut-bustingly funny where other authors tend to fall flat. Where others just make one side saints and the other side demons, Ruff allows that us liberals aren't the only people capable of being decent human beings. Of course, a rat is a rat is a rat, and under the surface, Ruff has some rather sharp observations about America, especially when it comes to commerce and race. But first and foremost, this book is FUNNY. The "Mr. Science" scene alone, which involves a salami as a high-velocity projectile, is worth the seven bucks. Toss in Meisterbrau (read the book), Ayn Rand in a lamp, the darker side of Walt Disney, and an industrialist who finds creative sabotage of his enterprises as funny as everyone else, and you've got a great cocktail. Highly recommended light reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not his best.
Review: A humorous and entertaining story that captures ones attnetion and continues to engage until the last page. I was turned on to Ruff's books with Fool on the Hill which I enjoyed so much I had to buy this one. This story provides great charcter development, and tells a story that is unbelievable, yet makes one wonder how far away from reality it really is. A wonderful tale of adventure, comedy, and fighting for fairness, the environment, and big business.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, well plotted, but not for the right wingers!
Review: Having devoured "Fool On The Hill," I moved on to "Sewer Gas And Electric: The Public Works Trilogy" expecting more of the same. I didn't get the same, I got better. Ruff is a man who knows how to weave a plot around a multitude of characters, and give each their own distinctive voice. The voices of Abbie Hoffman and Ayn Rand can be clearly heard through their technological doppelgangers (if you know either character, or both, you will collapse laughing during one scene where Abbie is desperately trying to tell Ayn a joke). I read most of this novel during a vacation at Walt Disney World (which is ironic since Disney plays a pivotal part in the plot) and found the book more engrossing than some of the activities we undertook in the park. But be warned: if you worship Ayn Rand (there is a scathing attack on "Atlas Shrugged" within the book), believe that the environment will take care of itself, or are a racist, you will hate this book. You have been warned. Everyone else should give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: Matt Ruff hits another winner!
Review: After reading Fool on the Hill, I became a huge Matt Ruff fan. Now, after reading Sewer, Gas and Electric, I truly can see why. Ruff again created a cast of characters both outlandish and realistic (well, most of them, at least) and I found myself both flying through the book and hoping it would last longer. If you're a lover of bizarre depictions of the future, one who likes your books to come with some fun, or even an Ayn Rand fan, I think you'll like this a lot.
Rating: 
Summary: it felt so good to throw it away.
Review: i'd made it about one third of the way through this meandering exercise in eco-drivel when the pages of the paperback started peeling themselves out of the binding. very cool, thought i, the book is recycling itself; thoughtfully, the pages falling to the floor hadn't yet been read, saving me further aggravation. it turns out you can trust a cover to judge a book-in this case self destruction was the only honorable way out.
Rating: 
Summary: This book has ADD
Review: You know how when you read certain books they hit this emotional chord and you think to yourself, quite irrationally: "I could have written that."? I mean, of course you couldn't, those books were written by Fitzgerald, or Salinger, and the reason they are the Great American Novel is because they engender precisely that emotion. And then, of course, there are those books you really enjoy but know you couldn't have possibly written, like Corelli's Mandolin, that come from a completely different voice than your own, but boy are they impressive in their own right? Well this book is the one you feel, "you know, I could have written that", and I really screwed it up. Which is to say this is written by a guy who is obviously steeped in the same postmodern tradition as most Ivy League Generation X literati; he has read Douglas Adams, and Stephenson, and Salinger, and Pynchon, and the Illuminati Trilogy, and a pile of dystopian science fiction books, and Moby Dick, and probably had a brief affair with Ayn Rand (because lets face it, she spun a good yarn) when he was a teenage Republican in the Reagan years, but rejected it later like a good Democrat at the height of the PC era at the beginning of the decade when he decided to write his second book. This is a book about being that guy. It is more interesting for all the things that are wrong with the book, than for the read itself. If you like that whole Brechtian feeling of watching a play with the lights on, this is the book for you. The flaws make it impossible to get absorbed. The book itself is distracted. The flaws are so constant that you spend most of your time noticing them: A purple and green submarine is not funny. It is referential, perhaps, to Robert Anton Wilson, and the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo, and perhaps even the Beatles Yellow submarine, but it is not funny. It is zany and madcap and postmodern, I suppose. (Brief aside: Tom Robbin's aluminum trailer made to look like a roast turkey is funny -- I don't know why, but I think you'll agree there is a difference here) But if we are being zany and madcap, then the destruction of the black race is not really appropriate, is it? That kind of thing is more appropriate to a dystopian social satire like Brazil or Brave New World. Dark and satirical is not zany. And I would argue that dystopian fiction is, or should be, pretty much immune to parody. Here is an author who loves a bunch of different genres, and has a lot of ideas, and can't focus on any of them, so he throws them all into the pot. He dabbles with historical fiction, Sci-Fi, social satire, self-conscious postmodernism, and outright parody. If you have ever eaten lobster with chocolate and macaroni and cheese, you know how well this works out. Anyway, terrific marketing. This book was terrible, but between Amazon reviews and its credentials from Stephenson, Pynchon, et al., I bought it. I recommend you don't make the same mistake.
Rating:
Summary: Re.: Ayn Rand Lamp
Review: But G.A.S. was only his second book. Though, fool on the hill is lighter reading-stuff. G.A.S. is far more sophisticated and philosophical. 5 Stars for this Book, although i havn't read it yet. (Author Bonus)
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Summary: The future by Ruff: one seriously funny place to be.
Review: Ruff's cast of characters includes among others: a fabulously well-to-do industrial tycoon; the do-gooder daughter of a leftist nun; a 180-year-old female civil war veteran, a successful pornographer turned reporter; an Hamish eco-terrorist submarine captain who happens to be one of the last black men on the planet; a shell-shocked amputee with serious race issues; Ayn Rand; a jewish techno-genius and his 4 Palestinian half-siblings; a menacing artificial intelligence that lives in Disneyland; a home-sick, orphaned Eskimo, and a highly intelligent mutant sewer shark with legs. It would take a maniacal mind to bring all of these characters into any plot. As it happens, Ruffs brings the crazy characters together into a plot that is perhaps even more insane. The storyline is quite a ride, with tons of funny stuff going on in every scene. Sub-plots are cleverly intertwined into a suitably harrowing climax. Ruff seems to display an obsession of sorts with Ayn Rand's philosophies, attempting it would seem, to debunk them throughout; although it should be said that he needn't bother, nobody ever believed her rants anyways. Some readers enjoy Science-Fiction for the author's take on what the future will be like. But Ruff's future is pure fantasy - almost retro with its robot servants (called Electric Negroes, incidentally), talking cars, and super-skyscrapers. It really seems like a vision of the future out of the Fifties. Ruff's 'Public Works Trilogy' is plenty of fun, but may be too zany for many serious Sci-Fi readers.
Rating:
Summary: Ayn Rand lamp interesting
Review: Not quite as good as his first book. I really enjoyed the Ayn Rand lamp very much. Also, Dufrense is a great character.
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Summary: A mixture of Objectivism, environmentalism, and a lot else.
Review: Ruff creates a story line in which they are miscible (as cogs in a plot, not with each other.)Everyone but "a reader from Tegucicalpa, Honduras" (A sadistic irrational evil person), seems to think that this book is hilarious. Right they are. Although Ruff obviously does not understand Ayn Rand, his humorous dialogue including her is brilliant satire. SEWER, GAS, AND ELECTRIC's brilliantly intertwining plots are a great parody of Atlas Shrugged, and it is the funniest and one of the best books that I have evr read. Its fascinatingly inter-weaving plots allow for some of the most varied interprations I have ever observed of a book. Everyone seems to have taken something different away from it than most others have. From the Ruff's interpretation of the ecentricities of New Yorkers to the "shallowness of its plot", SEWER, GAS, AND ELECTRIC has something for everyone. It is probably the only book that I have read that has made me laugh out loud more than once, and is probably the only one that has caused me to do that each of the multiple times that I have read it. -Name Irrelevant
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