Books by Rudy Rucker
Frek and the Elixir
by Rudy Rucker
In the year 3003, nothing in the world is the same, except maybe that adolescents are still embarrassed by their parents. Society and the biosphere alike have been transformed by biotechnology, and the natural world is almost gone.
Frek Huggins is a boy from a broken family, a misfit because he's a natural child, conceived without technological help or genetic modifications. His dad, Carb, is a malcontent who left behind Frek’s mom and the Earth itself several years ago.
Everything changes when Frek finds the Anvil, a small flying saucer, under his bed, and it tells him he is destined to save the world. The repressive forces of Gov, the mysterious absolute ruler of Earth, descend on Frek, take away the Anvil, and interrogate him forcefully enough to damage his memory. Frek flees with Wow, his talking dog, to seek out Carb and some answers. But the untrustworthy alien in the saucer has other plans, including claiming exclusive rights to market humanity to the galaxy at large, and making Frek a hero.
Frek and the Elixir is a profound, playful SF epic by the wild and ambitious Rudy Rucker.
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Master of Space and Time
by Rudy Rucker
The real world is unbearable to madcap inventor Harry Gerber, so he uses his genius to twist the laws of science and create his own tailor-made universe. Master of Space and Time combines high physics and high jinks, blurring the line between science and magic. From a voyage to a mirror-image world where sluglike parasites make slaves of humanity, to trees and bushes that grow fries and pork chops, to a rain of fish, author Rudy Ruckertwo-time winner of the Philip K. Dick Awardtakes readers on the ultimate joyride. But once the gluons at the core of Harry's creation run out ... disaster looms for Harry and his friends.
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Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How to Be Happy
by Rudy Rucker
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,” goes the ancient saying. This concept is at the root of the computational worldview, which basically says that very complex systems—the world we live in—have their beginnings in simple mathematical equations.
We’ve lately come to understand that such an algorithm is only the start of a never-ending story — the real action occurs in the unfolding consequences of the rules. The chip-in-a-box computers so popular in our time have acted as a kind of microscope, letting us see into the secret machinery of the world. In Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, Rucker — known as the father of cyberpunk — uses whimsical drawings, fables, and humor to demonstrate that everything is a computation — that thoughts, computations, and physical processes are all the same. Rucker discusses the linguistic and computational advances that make this kind of "digital philosophy" possible, and explains how, like every great new principle, the computational worldview contains the seeds of a next step.
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Mathematicians in Love
by Rudy Rucker
Reality is never more unpredictable than when two mathematicians are in love with the same girl, and can change the world to get her.Bela and Paul, two wild young mathematicians, are friends and roommates, and both are in love with Alma, Belas girlfriend. They fight it out by changing reality using cutting-edge math. The contemporary world they live in is not quite this one, but much like Berkeley, California, and the two graduate students are trying to finish their degrees and get jobs. It doesnt help that their unpredictable advisor Roland is a mad mathematical genius who has figured out a way to predict specific bits of the future that can cause a lot of trouble¦and that hes starting to see monsters in mirrors. When Bela and Paul mess around with reality, all heaven and hell break loose. Those monsters of Rolands were really there, but who are they?This novel is a romantic comedy with a whole corkscre
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Mathematicians in Love
by Rudy Rucker
Two mathematicians vying for the same partner will change reality itself to win her love, from award-winning author Rudy Rucker.
Berkeley grad students Bela Kis and Paul Bridge have discovered the mathematical underpinnings of ultimate reality. But then they begin fighting over the same woman: the beguiling video-blogger, Alma Ziff.
First Bela gets Alma’s interest by starting the wildest rock band ever. Then Paul undertakes the ultimate computer hack: altering reality to make Alma his. But the change brings more than he bargained for: Alma is swept away into a higher world of mathematician cockroaches and cone shells—bent upon using our world to run experiments in mysterious metamathematics.
It’s up to Bela to bring Alma back, repair reality, stop the aliens, and find true love in this wild and funny tale that romps across space, time, and logic.
Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million-Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
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The Sex Sphere
by Rudy Rucker
A-bomb + a slacker prof + a sexy hypersphere = cyberpunk extravaganza in this outrageous, comic, and oddly erotic tale of true love and nuclear terrorism from Rudy Rucker.
When Alwin, a disaffected young physicist, takes a vacation in Florence with his wife Sybil and finds himself kidnapped by terrorists, he is soon wrapped up in a potentially world-changing—and utterly bizarre—plot.
It’s not just that the terrorists are building an atomic bomb, which they want Alwin to help with, and it’s not just that he is desperately attracted to one of his captors. It’s that they have trapped a weird, four-dimensional creature of hypermatter who happens to resemble, well, a spherical naked woman. And who absolutely oozes mind-clouding, desire-inducing pheromones . . .
Before they know it, Alwin and Sybil are both discovering the pleasures and curiosities of the sex sphere, while on the run from the various forces chasing them. But what is the sphere itself, really? Why is it stuck in our dimension? And what does it want in the end?
Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
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The Secret of Life
by Rudy Rucker
A 60s college student learns he’s a saucer alien in this hilariously intelligent tale of adolescent angst and romance from Rudy Rucker.
Conrad Bunger is one of those wild guys you think won’t make it to legal drinking age. But, thanks to the strange powers he manifests in times of crisis—he can change his face, shrink to the size of a thumb, fly around the Eiffel tower, and hand out joints to everyone at the student assembly—not even the most ghastly mishaps interrupt his quest for visions, beer, and love.
Gradually, Conrad awakens to his true identity as an energy being from outer space. As if he hadn’t suspected it all along. Now, as he faces his true nature, he learns his ordained purpose: to proceed incognito and to reach the ultimate prize—the Secret of Life.
Problem is, he’s having too much fun to keep it together. Even with the government out to kill him . . .
Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
Copies
No copies available.
Asimov's Science Fiction, January 2008
by Tanith Lee, Rudy Rucker, Marc Laidlaw
From New York Times bestseller and Hugo Award-winner, John Scalzi, a gleeful mash-up of science fiction and Hollywood satire
The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish.
So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal.
Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster.
Other Tor Books
The Android’s Dream
Agent to the Stars
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
1. Lock In
2. Head On
The Interdepency Sequence
1. The Collapsing Empire
2. The Consuming Fire
Old Man's War Series
1. Old Man’s War
2. The Ghost Brigades
3. The Last Colony
4. Zoe’s Tale
5. The Human Division
6. The End of All Things
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Million Mile Road Trip
by Rudy Rucker
One of the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog's Best of May 2019!
One of The Verge’s 10 New Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Check Out in May!
In his first new novel since 2013, cyberpunk pioneer Rudy Rucker offers his own smart, hilarious, and uniquely gnarly science fiction version of the classic road-trip story.
When a seemingly-innocent trumpet solo somehow opens a transdimensional connection to Mappyworld, a parallel universe containing a single, endless plain divided by ridges into basin-like worlds, three California teens find themselves taken on a million mile road trip across a landscape of alien civilizations in a beat-up, purple 80s wagon . . . with a dark-energy motor, graphene tires and quantum shocks, of course. Their goal? To stop carnivorous flying saucers from invading Earth. And, just maybe, to find love along the way.
Million Mile Road Trip is a phantasmagoric roller-coaster ride—mind warpingly smart and wildly funny, with a warmly beating heart.
Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
Copies
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Spacetime Donuts
by Rudy Rucker
“Ricker stands alone in the science fiction pantheon as some kind of trickster god of the computer science lab…. He is a peerless genius.”—SF Site
Rudy Rucker’s early cyberpunk novel mixes a unique vision of a future with hippie humor, true love, and gonzo sensibilities.
In the future, society is run by a computer, Phizwiz; America is simply Us, a collection of Users known as Drones and Dreamers, near-automatons whose every need is provided for. But Phizwiz lacks creativity, and its vapid entertainment is becoming unfulfilling, especially for curious young Vernor Maxwell.
Seeking to add a creative soul to Phizwiz, a hard-partying elite has learned how to plug their minds into the computer. Joining them, Vernor finds a way to build a scale-ship—and becomes an incredible shrinking man. He soon tunnels down below the atomic level and finds himself at the intergalactic top—with the power to smash the machine, once and for all. . . .
Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
Copies
No copies available.
The Big Aha
by Rudy Rucker
An artist in a wild biotech future confronts aliens from another dimension—and finds a new way to get high—in this rollicking, psychedelic SF novel from Rudy Rucker.
Biotechnology has replaced machines, and genetic modification is commonplace. At the forefront of this revolutionary change is artist Zad Plant, who works with living paint, lives in a talking home grown from plants, gets around on a giant roadspider, and has a sentient rat—complete with Kentucky accent—as a sidekick. Unfortunately for Zad, his career’s on the skids, and his wife Jane has thrown him out.
Enter qwet—quantum wetware—that changes Zad, making him cosmically high and giving him telepathy, and soon enough, a psychedelic revolution begins. Yet when mouths begin appearing in midair, eating people, Zad and Jane must travel through a wormhole to learn how to save their world. . . .
Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
Copies
No copies available.