The Unicorn Girl

This is volume 2 in the wonderful Hippie Trilogy, and arguably the best written of the three, but then, Kurland has become a successful writer while the other two really have not. Volume 1 is The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson, Volume 2 is this book and Volume 3 is The Probability Pad by T.A. Waters. All three are wonderful reading but this is the only book the idiot publishers have rerelased. You need to read all three for maximum effect.

This is the second book in the hippy scifi trilogy, all by different authors. Kurland is the best writer of the three, and this book hangs together better than the other two, but all three are great fun. "The Butterfly Kid" by Chester Anderson and "The Probability Pad" by TA Waters are the other two. This is the only one that has been reprinted since the 1970s, so this is the easiest to find. Both of the others are difficult and fairly expensive, at least until some intelligent publisher rereleases them, and today's publishers are usually the opposite of intelligent. Great reading, great action and great fun.

I was not yet a teenager when I read this book - more than 20 years ago - and I still love it and will buy it whenever I come across it to share with special people. I was THRILLED with the idea of other possible worlds, pleased as punch by the wit and comedy (upholding that thar banner of culture, regardless of what is on a shelf at the offices of "Crawdaddy"), impressed by the emotions (and thrilled all over again at the sex scene!).If you have an imagination, you'll enjoy this, I think.

I read The Unicorn Girl when the first edition was published -- too many years ago to mention. As a result of that experience, Michael Kurland has been on that short list of writers of whom I buy any book of theirs I see, automatically. I recommend you do the same. I haven't seen the new edition yet -- I just ordered it, so this review is from that distant memory. The book fits into that subgenre of speculative fiction about alternate timelines, and what if you could move from one alternative to another. A theme which runs common to most of M. Kurland's fiction. For examples: "The Whenabouts of Burr", "The Last President". This is an man who just plain THINKS DIFFERENTLY. His Moriarty stories -- which I also highly recommend -- can be seen as an alternate hisory of Victorian England from that cronicled by Dr. James Watson.Some of the ideas in this book still resonate in my mind decades after I read it. For example (trusting to my memory): What if you came across a grove of Seqoia Sempervirens planted in rows? If a question like that intrigues you, then you're probably going to enjoy this.