Rudy Rucker's Blog, page 59

Ware Tetralogy Online Now

A free ebook version of The Wares Tetralogy is now online at www.rudyrucker.com/wares.

The Prime Books paperback is available in stores and from online booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, and others.

Soon we'll be offering commercial ebook versions for purchase as well. But for now, go ahead and check out the free ebook version, maybe buy the paperback, and leave a comment below.

Into the light, my friends, into the light…

The Ware Tetralogy. Around SF.

The Ware Tetralogy is now in print! I have more info about it with an excerpt and a podcast on an earlier post, "Monkey Brain Feast…Southern Style."

I'll drop in some blurbs for the four component novels here:

Software.

One of cyberpunk's most inventive works.

— Rolling Stone.

Wetware.

Delightfully irreverent. This is science fiction as it should be: authoritative and tightly linked with our real lives and our real future.

— Washington Post Book World.

Freeware.

One of science fiction's w...

My Old Kentucky Home

I grew up in the countryside east of Louisville, Kentucky. I went back last week to visit with my brother Embry, to attend his dear wife Noreen's funeral, and to join in the accompanying reunion.

The ceremony was in the old St. Francis in the Fields Church where I went to school from nursery through the third grade. My brother Embry and I sang in the choir there as boys and were confirmed as well. Our father was the assistant minister there in the early 1960s. Our mother's funeral was at S...

Augmented Reality, Painting, Twitter

Bruce Sterling was in town last week, giving a keynote talk at Are2010, that is, Augmented Reality Event, 2010.

He gave an inspiring talk, although I didn't initially understand all of it. Turns out, AR is hoping to be a next big thing, a cozier and more commerce-driven cousin of the old VR, or virtual reality.

The basic idea in AR is to overlay images over video of the real world around you. Some recidivist types still dream of ultracool bulbous glasses. But it's more likely you'll be...

"My Life As A Writer." MAKERS.

I finished the proofing on The Ware Tetralogy, and got a preprint of the cover.

The four Ware novels had been scanned from the old paperbacks by bookz-pirates, and I had to correct a number of typos that had crept in. Being a writer, I can't reread something of mine without seeing things to fix, so I made a few small tweaks as well—making the novels consistent from one to the next, and smoothing the flow.

It looks good, and should be out in June. Go ahead and pre-order a copy now! It was...

Multimedia Gnarl 4 You

This weekend I had the closing party for my art show. The SF in SF group organized a reading that night as well, featuring me and Michael Shea. I read I from my new cyberpunk omnibus, The Ware Tetralogy-—consisting of my four novels Software, Wetware, Freeware, and Realware. I made a podcast of my part; I'm reading from the classic "monkey brain feast" scene from Software, and Sta-Hi Mooney's introduction to the drug merge in Wetware. Click on the icon below to access the podcast via my ...

Martin Gardner (1914 – 2010)

I'm sorry to report that Martin Gardner died on May 22, 2010. Scientific American is running some nice web pages about him. Be sure to check the links at the bottom of the Scientific American page, they have are four different pages to look at.

I'll do a bit of a Martin celebration here as well. First of all I'm posting the text of an article, "Martin Gardner: Impresario of Mathematial Games," that I wrote for a magazine called Science 81 in 1981.

Secondly, I wrote up a short note on Martin ...

Closing Party. Joan Schulze. LCD Soundsystem.

A reminder that the closing party for my art show in San Francisco is on Saturday, May 22, 2010, running from 6 to 10. Details here. I'll be selling recent art and fractal prints as well as canvases. As part of the SF in SF series, I'll be reading with author Michael Shea. My readings will be some of the gnarliest bits from my forthcoming four-novel omnibus Ware Tetralogy.

Here's a new painting that I worked on this week, I guess it's called "Insane Skate Posse." As I mentioned in my post ...

SF and Quantum Mechanics, #2

About ten days ago, on May 3, 2010, I did a post, "SF and Quantum Mechanics #1," and today's post is the follow-up. Although there really are a zillion things one might talk about in this context, in these two posts I'm focusing on six areas. I went into (1) – (3) in my SF & QM #1 post, and in the fairly extensive and interactive comments—these discussions involved possible SF stories involving (1) the Planck length, (2) many universes, and (3) superposed states. And now, in "SF & QM #2," ...

Fractalmania! With a T-Shirt!

I saw a Mandelbrot set in the sky the other day, and painted a picture called "He Sees the Fnoor." I ended up using this painting in the banner image for my new Zazzle T-shirt site…but more on that below.

The current augmentation of my obsession began with me printing out big images of the new fractals I've been working with. Full info is at my Rudy Set post, which now has a short-cut address tinyurl.com/rudyfractals.

I'll be selling some of these prints at the closing party for my art...