Rudy Rucker's Blog, page 28

015. Reading. “The Kind Rain.” KFJC 5. Nov 8, 2005.

At radio KFJC, www.kfjc.org or 89.7 FM, with Ann Arbor, 7:20 AM, Tuesday, reading the fifth thought experiment story from my nonfiction Lifebox book. Can a rainstorm be conscious? (6.61MB. 7 min.)

014. Reading. “Terry’s Talker.” KFJC 4. Oct 25, 2005.

At radio KFJC, www.kfjc.org or 89.7 FM, with Ann Arbor, 7:20 AM, Tuesday, reading the fourth thought experiment story from my nonfiction Lifebox book. (3.93MB. 9 min.)

013. Reading.”Aint Paint.” KFJC 3. Oct 18, 2005.

At radio KFJC with Ann Arbor, reading the third “thought experiment” short-short SF story included in The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, see http://www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox. (1.12MB. 12 min.)

012. Reading.”The Million Mandalas.” KFJC 2. Oct 11, 2005.

Rudy reads at radio KFJC. A story on multiple universes, introducing Chapter Two of Rudy Rucker, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, see www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox. Intro included. (1.17MB. 7 min.)

011. Reading.”Lucky Number,” KFJC 1. October 4, 2005.

Rudy at radio KFJC, reading the story “Lucky Number” which introduces chapter one in his nonfiction book The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul. Intro included. (1.96MB. 6 min.)

Reading with Robert Shults at Borderlands

On Saturday at 3 pm, I’ll be reading my recent story “Laser Shades” at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. I’ll be appearing with Robert Shults, who recently launched his fascinating photo book, The Superlative Light. See this account of his project in the New York Times.

Here’s Robert and me at the Rosicrucian World Headquarters in fabulous San Jose, California.

My story was written to fit into Shults’s book. The book contains lovely and sinister photos of the Petawatt Laser Lab in Austin, Texas. And my story is about a guy who uses a superpowerful laser to try and raise his dead wife from the dead.

“Laser Shades,” oil on canvas, February, 2014, 24” x 20”. Click for a larger version of the painting.

While I was working on the story, I wasn’t quite sure about how to end it, and then I made my new painting as a way of previsualizing a big scene. The guy in the painting is wearing special laser-proof shades and he’s (rather unwisely) holding a fetal “egg” in the path of a yottawatt laser beam. A yottawatt is about the power of the Sun. That zapped egg is going to hatch out some kind of weird person, so look out!

I recently placed a recording of me reading this story online, so check out my Podcasts feed.

(Note that Feedburner only shows my most recent podcasts. For older audio files, see my Podcasts page, which runs back to 2005.)

But don’t just listen at home, come on out and meet me and Robert Shults. Borderlands Books Cafe on 870 Valencia Street in the Mission district of San Francisco, 3 pm Saturday, November 8.

The saucer is waiting for you.

010. Interview: Rucker’s Early Life. October 4, 2005.

Rudy interviewed at KFJC while reading stories from The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul. The question here is “Tell us about your early influences.” (6.28MB. min.)

009. Talk. Philosophy and Computers 9: Panpsychism, Undecidability, and How to be Happy, Dec 9, 2005.

y final lecture in my Philosophy and Computers class at SJSU in Fall, 2005. Based on Chapter 6 of my tome, “The Lifebox, the Seashel, and the Soul.” Includes discussion of my ambivalence about how to end the book, panpsychism, ontolgies, unsolvability, computational equivalence, unpredictability, undecidability, and my six principles on how to be happy. (56.46MB. 60 min.)

008. Talk. Philosophy and Computers 8: Hive Minds and Society, Dec 2, 2005.

Lecture on Chapter 5 of “The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul”. Flocking behaviors, how conversations can exemplify different computation classes, the hive mind of society, the nature of language, the ubiquity of social power laws. (If you want to follow the computer demos, download the “Boppers” and “CAPOW” programs from the Lifebox book site, and run these on a Windows machine.) (51.80MB. 60 min.)

007. Talk. Philosophy and Computers 7: Consciousness, Nov 17, 2005.

Lecture on the second half of Chapter Four of “The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul.” Arguing that a computer program can be conscious, and that this will happen within a hundred years. (48.27MB. min.)