About this item
Ginger must save her high-tech hometown from robots gone rogue in this hilariously quirky science fiction novel from National Book Award-winning author Pete Hautman.Welcome to Flinkwater, Iowa, home of the largest manufacturer of Articulated Computerized Peripheral Devices in the world. If you own a robot, it probably came from Flinkwater. Meet Ginger Crump, the plucky, precocious (and somewhat sarcastic) genius who finds herself in the middle of a national emergency when Flinkwater's computers start turning people into vegetables. Mental vegetables, that is. In Ginger's words, they've been "bonked." When Ginger's father is bonked, she recruits her self-declared future husband, boy genius Billy George, to help her find the source of the bonkings. Soon they're up against a talking dog, a sasquatch, and a zombie, while Flinkwater is invaded by an army of black SUVs led by the witless-but-dangerous Agent Ffelps from Homeland Security. Can Ginger get to the bottom of the bonkings, or will computer chaos reign forever?
About the Author
Okay, here's some miscellaneous personal info. I'll try to be as brief as possible. I was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California, or so I am told (I don't really remember) . At age five I moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota and eventually graduated honor-free from St. Louis Park High School. (This is so tedious. Why do you keep reading? ) For the next seven years I attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. Contrary to recent news reports, I did not graduate from either institution. After college I worked various jobs for which I was ill-suited, including sign painter, graphic artist, marketing executive, pineapple slicer, etc. Eventually, having exhausted other options, I decided to write a book. My first novel, Drawing Dead, was published in 1993. Since then I've written thirty or so books, and won awards for a few of them. Today, I live with mystery writer and poet Mary Logue in Golden Valley, Minnesota and Stockholm, Wisconsin. We have two small dogs (are you still reading? ) named Gaston and Baudelaire (Bodie) . I have four brothers and two sisters, my favorite color is clear, and I like mushrooms. There you have it. Half a century compressed into a few sentences. Feel free to copy and paste for your book report, but don't tell anybody I suggested it. Need to know more? Check out the FAQs page on my website at http://www.petehautman.com.
