Good Night, Moon

by Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, Tim Bower (Illustrator)

Carlo Morse and Jimmy Ganzer pioneered dream-fabbing, but these days people only want to close their eyes to trashy stuff -- not the mention the kids and their fancy imported tech. It's a good thing Schwartz's Deli is still the same.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Cyberpunk

32 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 22, 2011

About the author

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre. He is best known for his Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which won Philip K. Dick awards. Presently, Rudy Rucker edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.

Reviews

[Prabhjot Kaur · Rating 1 out of 5]

They say the moon’s gone missing, that's how this story starts and I thought I will love it but soon they start talking about other things that half of those I didn't understand and the other half I didn't care about. This story is based on Kafka's Metamorphosis, which I haven't read and I think that's another reason that I did not like this story.

1 star

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alas, I did not appreciate a cyberpunk version of Kafka's Metamorphosis. The pathos of the original was replaced mostly with jargon and that distinctly 1980s flavour of cyberpunk, full of jargon, disaffected dudes, and imagery that is hard to parse. Bleh.

[Tell Tale Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent if short.

Haven’t read Rucker in a while. I always looked forward to new stories of his when I was reading the sf magazines a long time ago. This story is true to his wild imagination. Some things were not brought to close though. Maybe this was expanded into a longer work? If not, I think it should be. I definitely need to get back to reading more from this author.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nutz

Seriously nutz. Take a bunch of tech jargon and have a couple 8 year olds make sentences with it. Like a lotto machine, terms on the balls In a rolling cage. Would make about the same amount of sense.

[Yale Reardon]

Absolute classic for the kids. Always recommend this to get the young ones to sleep.

Makes for an excellent baby shower gift.

[Alistair Montague · Rating 3 out of 5]

“They say the moon’s gone missing.”

They sure know how to make an opening.
Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling team up for this short story available for free at Tor.com in a variety of formats, including an audio reading by Mr Rucker Himself.

http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/10/go...

The tradition of cyberpunk short stories as metanarrative commentary on sci-fi goes back to the very beginning, with William Gibson's own The Gernsback Continuum. The two masters at work here pull the joke to ridiculous, ludicrous extent. But I'm not spoil(er)ing your fun.
Let reality hacking begin.

Why do I keep commenting stuff that nobody's ever going to read? I'll never become popular on aNobii.

[Kimikimi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another Tor.com short story.

I hate surrealism in writing. I like some kind of sense, doesn't have to be much, but there needs to be something there. I didn't even understand half of the words, so full of jargon was this story. On top of that it's based on Kafka's Metamorphosis, which I also hated. Sigh.

[Sonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the book and it's pretty catchy.