Rudy Rucker

This one might be too wild for maiden aunts. Heck, maybe it's too out-there for the run-of-the-mill reader of SF.

But for the REST OF US, it's a truly wild ride that ramps up the same wild directions as Rucker has been taking us all along. Let's go crazy!

First of all, the aliens aren't ALL dead. Two-dimensional, multi-timeline-living, reality-hacking aliens. Death isn't really a big thing for these guys. Blowing up their own cities doesn't really mean much because the cities live on in all show more the other timelines. Lucky them!

So what happens when they hand over their magic wands to some of our favorite moldies and human-consciousness downloaded moldies and natural humans that lets them create.... anything out of anything?

Yeah. I'm talking about TOTAL REALITY RE-WRITES.

Oh. Shit.

Now we're talking about people who have just been upgraded from humans to robots in Software, from robots to humans in Wetware to, from everyone upgrading or refusing to upgrade into intelligent mold in Freeware, to upgrading into ANYTHING GOES in Realware. :) :)

This could turn into something really messed up and incoherent, mind you, but Rudy Rucker goes ahead and just turns it into a delightful social satire. Very much like the rest of the Quadralogy. :)

I'm just glad that Cobb got what he wanted and the aliens made their flying saucer. I love it when a good meme gets a little fun play.

But humanity? I know this isn't much of a surprise, but we're a bunch of freaking morons.

Even when given a gift like this, we still manage to **** it the **** up. Wow. And this isn't some slow morality play, either. This is a no-holds-barred ****fest.

Gotta love it. :)

Freaking perverts. show less

This book has more novel ideas and settings from one paragraph to the next then most sf&f authors manage to squeeze out in the course of an entire tome. This book is some combination of a drug induced hallucinatory vision with Alice in Wonderland, yet manages to pull off a clear hero journey's plot. In contrast to the formulas and tropes of most books I read, this 2-decade old book is fresh, original, and compellingly crazy.

Low comedy, high satire, and the question of whether personalities that are transferred from meat to robot are the same person, and whether this is the future of humanity, or whether it's a good idea at all. With rebel robots on the moon about to engage in their own internal conflict, their creator is offered a chance at immortality, but is he going to be freed from sickness and death to live potentially forever or is he going to me merged into a single vast consciusness, or is it all the show more same thing?

Very early cyberpunk has this weird characteristic of looking and sounding noting like what we think cyberpunk should, and this seems more like some sort of surreal slacker stoner beach-bum comedy, only with robots on the moon. Nonetheless it's all here if you look closely enough. show less

Nice to be reminded that my first blast of true sci fi sensawunda came from stories like these, not big bold space opera, but strange twisted, weird and often hilarious stories that could end in utter global catastrophe and still somehow feel cheerful about it.

Spanning thirty years of collaboration, these stories remain amazingly fresh and sharp and challenging and delightful, with no regard for the conventional boundaries of reality or normality while somehow remaining grounded enough in show more both to deliver satisfying coherent narratives no matter how deeply strange the stories themselves truly get. Each story features recognisable stand-ins for the author themselves in various guises, which shouldn't work so well so often, but they do.

6/4/23 Just to note my reading of another of their transreal wetware slime-mould-jelly-phone post-pandemic climate change futures, Fibonacci's Humors (sic), once again a lot of fun with the addition of a distinct Italian flavouring to its ruined-Austin setting. show less