Rudy Rucker's Blog, page 71

“Pig Surprise.” Plastic Man.

I finished a new painting today, “Pig Surprise,” 40 inches by 30, acrylic on canvas. I started out with random blotches of paints, and then I started seeing some images. At first I had the picture rotated 180 degrees from this, and the yellow stuff was fire, and the red disk was a setting sun. But that looked dull. So I turned it the other way, got a claw…and added pig snout and ears. Pig Surprise!

Actually I got the title because when I went to Big Sur last week, my daughter Isabel was teasing

The Rhetorics of Fantasy

After a lifetime of being an SF writer and reader—and somewhat skittish about fantasy, I’m slowly coming to accept that my new novel, Jim and the Flims, is closer than ever to fantasy. It’s like I’m tired of making up scientific explanations of things. I just want to go straight for the surrealism without having to incant the by-now-rather-stale rhetoric of quantum-this and dark-matter-that.

So now I’m getting interested in theories about what fantasy literature is and can become. (By the way,

First Reading from “Jim and the Flims”

I did my reading for the EFF benfit in San Francisco, Monday night. It was a really nice event in a good space—the 111 Minna Gallery—with Charlie Jane Anders, Annalee Newitz, and Cory Doctorow reading as well. Here’s a picture of the audience. You can click on the picture to see a bigger image.

And I made a podcast of what I read, which is the first chapter of my novel-in-progress Jim and the Flims. You can click on the icon below to access the podcast via my Feedburner podcast station.

While

Big Sur. Jim and Flims.

My wife and I spent a couple of nights in Big Sur this weekend—a getaway for my birthday. Today I’ll post some of the pictures I took, interleaving them with material excerpted from my latest notes towards my novel-in-progress, Jim and the Flims.

I put in a bit about Jim carrying a digital camera and taking pictures. Actually I did it to justify his knowing the concept of “clipping” in a computer graphical sense, so as to apply this word to his mental state when very high. But then I was think

Yellow Vines

[Reminder: I’m in a group reading in San Francisco on Monday, March 23]

I finished a new painting today, “Yellow Vines,” acrylic, 18” by 24”.

I’m thinking about these alien beings, the jivas, from a world called Flimsy, and the jivas have very long tails. But this is in fact a more or less accurate nature painting, based on a really big vine I saw on an oak tree at the far end of the Lexington reservoir.

I took a picture of it last month on a rainy day, and I was struck by the contrast between the

EFF Reading with Doctorow, Rucker, Anders, Newitz

On Monday, March 23rd, 2009, the Electronic Freedom Foundation is holding a fundraising event featuring Cory Doctorow, Rudy Rucker, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders reading from their latest works.

The event is at 7pm at the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Admission is $25 (because it’s a fundraiser), but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Expedition to Boulder Creek

Last week I paid a visit to Nick Herbert, the sage of Boulder Creek. I always like to talk to Nick when I’m starting a book. He has such a unique way of looking at the world that I can usually glean some inspiration. The photo here shows him with his ghost partner from the alternate world.

When I took this picture were looking at the raging waters at the “Turkey Foot” where three streams meet: the San Lorenzo River, Bear Creek and Boulder Creek. “The existence of liquids is so surprising and

Flurb #7

The new issue of Flurb is out.

Check it out at www.flurb.net!

Go there now, and return here to comment!

By the way, as of March 9, FLURB #7 has had over ten thousand unique visits. Thanks to the wonderful writers who helped make this possible.

LitPunk and Zickzack Tech

I was part of a reading called LitPunk last night, organized by John Shirley, whose image is posterized above. The reading was a mixed bag, as some of the readers weren’t so much writers as punk musicians or other kinds of SF undergrounders.

Rain Graves writes poems, often in a dark vein, she read some good stuff. Great name for a writer, too.

Charlie Jane Anders read a great psychedelic UFO story that may appear in the next Flurb.

This character Charles Gatewood mainly takes kinky photographs.

Zickzack, or, Hyperdimensional Origami

I should mention that on Saturday night, Feb 27, I'll join the LitPunk reading at the MakeOut room in the Mission in SF, in a show running 7:30-9:30...I'll only be reading for about five minutes, but the whole lineup looks good. LitPunk info link.
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I would like to have some very different kind of technology in this alternate world Flimsy that I’m writing about, or something that’s not even like technology at all. Various kinds of—empowerment. In other words, the flims (that is, the residents