{"id":4869,"date":"2013-09-01T18:40:10","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T02:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4869"},"modified":"2013-09-01T19:27:37","modified_gmt":"2013-09-02T03:27:37","slug":"timeline-for-my-transreal-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/01\/timeline-for-my-transreal-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"Timeline for My Transreal Novels"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I often say, I\u2019ve written many of my SF novels in what I call a \u201ctransreal\u201d\u009d style. This means that, although the novels deal with science-fictional scenes, the characters and situations in the novels are to some extent modeled on me, the people around me, and events I\u2019ve experienced in my life. I had this idea back in 1983, very early in my career. You can find \u201cA Transrealist Manifesto\u201d\u009d <\/a>as part of my Collected Essays<\/em>, which I recently put online.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always thought that, in a loose sense, my transreal novels could be thought of as parts of a single extended work, and back in 1990, I made up a table for six of the novels, trying to show how the books might fit together. (You can find that table in the very first answer in my compilation All the Interviews<\/em><\/a>, which is, as of today, 382 Q & A <\/b>pairs long.)<\/p>\n

This week, my friend Paul Di Filippo happened to send me a link to an article <\/a>about Jack Kerouac\u2019s thirteen-novel cycle, the Duluoz Legend<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So I spent August 30, 2013, making up an extensive…<\/p>\n

Timeline for Rucker’s Transreal Novels<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Book Title<\/strong><\/td>\nR’s “Name”<\/strong><\/td>\nR Life<\/strong><\/td>\nR Activities<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Frek and the Elixir<\/em><\/td>\nFrek Huggins<\/td>\n1956-59<\/td>\nBoyhood in Louisville<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Secret of Life<\/em><\/td>\nConrad Bunger<\/td>\n1963-67<\/td>\nCollege, engagement<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Spacetime Donuts<\/em><\/td>\nVernor Maxwell<\/td>\n1968<\/td>\nBeing a hippie<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Master of Space and Time <\/em><\/td>\nJoe Fletcher<\/td>\n1969<\/td>\nNewlywed, grad school<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mathematicians in Love<\/em><\/td>\nBela Kis<\/td>\n1972<\/td>\nGetting a Ph. D. in math<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
White Light<\/em><\/td>\nFelix Rayman<\/td>\n1972-78<\/td>\nMath professor at Geneseo<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Sex Sphere<\/em><\/td>\nAlwin Bitter<\/td>\n1978-80<\/td>\nOn a grant in Heidelberg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Hollow Earth<\/em><\/td>\nMason Reynolds<\/td>\n1984-86<\/td>\nLynchburg, Virginia<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Hacker and the Ants<\/em><\/td>\nJerzy Rugby<\/td>\n1989-91<\/td>\nProgramming at Autodesk<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Spaceland<\/em><\/td>\nJoe Cube<\/td>\n1991-94<\/td>\nThe Silicon Valley scene<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Saucer Wisdom<\/em><\/td>\nRudy Rucker<\/td>\n1995-97<\/td>\nBeing a writer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Jim and the Flims<\/em><\/td>\nJim Oster<\/td>\n2008<\/td>\nBrain hemorrhage, near death<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Big Aha<\/em><\/td>\nZad\/Lennox Plant<\/td>\n2009-12<\/td>\nRemembering Louisville<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

And I even came up with thirteen novels to put in. Note that some of the correspondences are more of a stretch than others. And some of the novels incorporate elements from more than one period of my life, and could have been positioned at different points on the timeline. Given a choice, I’ve tried to order the table in what seems to make for the best flow.<\/p>\n

I chose not to include my six specifically cyberpunk novels in he transreal timeline table. These are the four Ware<\/em> novels, and the pair Postsingular<\/em> and Hylozoic<\/em>. My cyberpunk novels do include characters and situations drawn from my life, but they are so purely science-fictional that they don\u2019t really match with specific periods of my life.<\/p>\n

I also left out my beatnik SF novel Turing & Burroughs<\/em>, and my historical As Above, So Below: Peter Bruegel<\/em>. These novels are, at least in a fanciful sense, biographies, and thus are less readily seen as transreal, although there are, as always, transreal elements.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I\u2019m finishing the second draft of The Big Aha <\/em>today, and I\u2019ll be sending it to my copy-editor\/proofreader. I\u2019d kind of forgotten how much work it is to write a novel. Who knows, this might be my last one.<\/p>\n

The end of the Ruduoz Legend<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Well, once I\u2019ve had eight months or a year off, I\u2019ll probably want to jump back in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I often say, I\u2019ve written many of my SF novels in what I call a \u201ctransreal\u201d\u009d style. This means that, although the novels deal with science-fictional scenes, the characters and situations in the novels are to some extent modeled on me, the people around me, and events I\u2019ve experienced in my life. I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4869"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4891,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4869\/revisions\/4891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}