{"id":790,"date":"2008-11-21T12:12:36","date_gmt":"2008-11-21T20:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=790"},"modified":"2008-11-21T15:09:01","modified_gmt":"2008-11-21T23:09:01","slug":"writing-wetware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/21\/writing-wetware\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing WETWARE"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Another excerpt from my memoir-in-progress, Nested Scrolls<\/em>.]<\/code><\/p>\n

Odd as it now seems, it was only in 1986, with Wetware<\/em>\u2014my thirteenth book\u2014that I started writing on a computer. The previous dozen manuscripts were all typed, with much physical cutting and pasting. Sometimes, if I couldn\u2019t face typing up a fair copy of the marked-up and glued-together final draft, I\u2019d hire a typist.<\/p>\n


\n[Our three cyberkids.]<\/p>\n

But with Wetware <\/em>I was ready to change. Sylvia, the kids and I went up to Charlottesville and visited the only computer store in the area. I ended up with what was known as a CP\/M machine, made by Epson, with Peachtext word-processing software, and a daisy wheel printer. The system came with a Pac-Man-like computer game called Mouse Trap that the kids loved to play.<\/p>\n

Although I knew a lot about the abstract computers discussed in mathematical logic, it would be several more years before I grasped how my kludgy, real-world computer worked\u2014the whole schmear about copying software into system memory was a mystery to me. For the moment, all I knew was that I had to run two or three big floppy disks through the machine just to start it up. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While I was gearing up for Wetware<\/em>, I\u2019d started what I thought was going to be a short story called \u201cPeople That Melt,\u201d\u009d and I sent the story fragment to William Gibson, hoping that he\u2019d help me finish it, and add some snazzy Gibsonian touches.<\/p>\n

He said he was too busy to complete such a project, but he did write a couple of pages for me, and said I was free to fold them into my mix in any fashion I pleased. I think Whitey Mydol’s “ridgeback” Mohawk that extends all the way down his spine was Bill’s idea.<\/p>\n

As I continued work on the story, it got good to me, and it ended up as the first chapter of Wetware<\/em>. As a tip of the hat, I put in a character named Max Yukawa who resembled my notion of Bill Gibson\u2014a reclusive mastermind with a thin, strangely flexible head.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Once I got rolling, I wrote Wetware <\/em>at white heat. I think the actual keyboarding of the first draft took about six weeks. I made a special effort to give the boppers\u2019 speech the bizarre beat rhythms of Kerouac\u2019s writing\u2014indeed, I\u2019d sometimes look into his great Visions of Cody <\/em>for inspiration. The book was insane, mind-boggling, a cyberpunk masterpiece. A couple of years later, it would win me a second Philip K. Dick award.<\/p>\n

But no matter how fast and well I wrote, the money wasn\u2019t coming in fast enough. I was going to have to leave freelancing and get another teaching job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Another excerpt from my memoir-in-progress, Nested Scrolls.] Odd as it now seems, it was only in 1986, with Wetware\u2014my thirteenth book\u2014that I started writing on a computer. The previous dozen manuscripts were all typed, with much physical cutting and pasting. Sometimes, if I couldn\u2019t face typing up a fair copy of the marked-up and glued-together […]<\/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-790","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\/790","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=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}