{"id":13743,"date":"2022-03-11T08:46:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T16:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=13743"},"modified":"2022-03-11T09:13:38","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T17:13:38","slug":"the-best-of-rudys-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/11\/the-best-of-rudys-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best of Rudy’s Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Best of Rudy Rucker Bundle<\/a> from Jason Chen includes twelve volumes. I describe the bundle on Jason’s site, and I also describe the bundle on this blog post.\u00a0 On this post, I descrbe them chronologiccally, then I excerpt some reviews.<\/p>\n

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In 1972 I wrote my Ph. D. thesis on the mathematics of higher infinities\u2014and turned it into a novel about the transfinite afterworld: White Light<\/em>. It was also an SF novel about Rudy’s my life\u2014which is something I like to do. I call it transrealism.<\/p>\n

Soon after this, on a research grant in Heidelberg with my young family of five, I stzrted my well-known cyberpunk tetralogy Software<\/em>,\u00a0Wetware<\/em>,\u00a0Freeware<\/em>, and\u00a0Realware<\/em>\u2014an early example of digital immortality. I won the Philip K. Dick Award for Software<\/em>\u00a0and for\u00a0Wetware<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You might say\u00a0The Secret of Lif<\/em>e marks my coming out as an alien. As my character faces his true nature, he takes on a series of awesome powers. He can change his face, shrink to the size of a thumb, fly around the Eiffel tower\u2014and hand out joints to everyone at his college’s annual student assembly. And this is important because government snipers are out to kill him. Why did youth rebel in the 60s? This SF transreal novel will help you understand how it happened.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Mathematicians in Love<\/em>, I return to his roots. Two young mathematicians compete for the love of two women across space, time and logic\u2014spinning out Dr. Seuss-like mathematical mumbo jumbo along the way. Berkeley grad students Paul and Bela have discovered the mathematical underpinnings of ultimate reality. Bela starts a wild rock band. And Paul hacks fundamental reality. But there are side effects.<\/p>\n

Another combo volume:\u00a0The Hollow Earth\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Return to the Hollow Earth, <\/em>one of my most demented\u2014yet logical\u2014constructs. Earth is hollow, like a tennis ball. And you’re weightless in there! The gravity cancels out. The wondrous Hollow Earth holds jungles, seas, native tribes, flying pigs, killer nautiluses, giant ants, live flying saucers, and giant sea cucumbers. In The Hollow Earth<\/em>, our young narrator Mason Reynolds leaves his farm, accompanied by Otha and the dissolute Edgar Allan Poe\u2014and falls through a thousand-mile hole in the ice of Antarctica. And when\u00a0Return to the Hollow<\/em>\u00a0Earth<\/em> ends, they’re in modern-day Santa Cruz, California.<\/p>\n

Saucer Wisdom <\/em>is the ultimate transreal extravaganza. Some nut is taking trips to the future in a UFO, and bringing back reports for Rudy Rucker to write up? Yes, I’m one of the\u00a0characters. Profusely illustrated with line drawings. And with two prefaces by Bruce Sterling.<\/p>\n

The surfing SF novel Jim and the Flims<\/em>\u00a0is set in Santa Cruz, California . . . and in the afterlife. Jim Oster ruptures the membrane between our world and afterworld, creating a two-way tunnel between them. His wife is killed in the process. And now Jim faces an invasion of the aliens\u2014who resemble blue baboons and flying beets. Aided by a posse of Santa Cruz surf-punks, Jim plunges into a mad series of adventures in the underworld\u2014where he just might find his wife.\u00a0Jim and the Flims<\/em>\u00a0is like classic myth retold for the 21st century. Except that it’s funny.<\/p>\n

Turing & Burroughs.<\/em>\u00a0What if Alan Turing, founder of the modern computer age, escaped assassination by the secret service to become the lover of Beat author William Burroughs? What if they mutated into giant shapeshifting slugs, fled the FBI, raised Burroughs’s wife from the dead, and tweaked the H-bombs of Los Alamos? Welcome to\u00a0Turing & Burroughs<\/em>,\u00a0A Beatnik SF Novel<\/em>, compulsively readable, hysterically funny, with insane warps and twists\u2014and a bad attitude throughout.<\/p>\n

The Big Aha.\u00a0<\/em>Biotech has replaced machines. Qrude artist Zad works with living paint. His career’s on the skids, and wife Jane threw him out. Enter qwet\u2014it’s quantum wetware! Qwet makes you high and gives you telepathy. A loopy psychedelic revolution begins. Zad and Jane travel through a wormhole and meet the aliens. Stranger than you ever imagined. What is\u00a0The Big Aha<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Million Mile Road Trip\u00a0<\/em>is my hilarious, and uniquely gnarly science fiction version of the classic road-trip story. When a seemingly-innocent trumpet solo opens a transdimensional connection to a parallel universe containing an endless plain divided into basin-like worlds, three California teens take a million-mile road trip across a landscape of alien civilizations in a beat-up, purple station wagon\u2014 with a dark-energy motor, graphene tires and quantum shocks. Their goal? To stop carnivorous flying saucers from invading Earth. And, just maybe, to find love along the way.<\/p>\n

Complete Stories<\/em>. Every one of my science-fiction stories, a trove of gnarl and wonder, from 1976 through 2022. Includes collaborations with Bruce Sterling, Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, John Shirley, Terry Bisson, and Eileen Gunn. Ninety-six tales in all.<\/p>\n

And\u2014Juicy Ghosts<\/em>. Telepathy, digital immortality, gossip molecules, and artificial ghosts, set amid a pitched battle to oust the evil forces of the nanopercenters, the Citadel Club, the Top Party, and the falsely elected President Ross Treadle. Rudy’s wildest world yet.<\/p>\n

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For StoryBundle<\/a>, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format\u2014WORLDWIDE.<\/p>\n