2017

It has been quite a year and looking back over what I’ve managed to read I feel a certain degree of satisfaction. Half of what I read is dictated by the book clubs I run at work and this year it has been a mostly satisfactory group of books. Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1988) proved to be both the best book club book and the best book I read all year; it’s a near work of literary genius. Following close behind was The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (2011), which is a brilliant example of genre fiction that transcends perceived boundaries that come from those who feel that fantasy should not be taken seriously.

Ideas: A History From Fire to Freud by Perter Watson (2005) proved to be one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015) was the best science fiction book I read during the year, with Rudy Rucker’s Wetware (1988) a close second. Most of the other books I read this year had something going for them, even Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection (1999) had its moments, however not enough of them to avoid being selected as the worst book I read all year. Sorry Kate, who am I to judge really? When have I actually written a novel? Still, I can honestly say that I mostly hated it!

Now, if only I could get around to finishing that John Fowles novel....

The Ware Tetralogy: Software & Wetware - Rudy Rucker (1982 & 1988)

I’ve long had a kind of peripheral awareness of Rudy Rucker as a significant cyberpunk writer, but it has taken a long time for me to get around to reading his novels (seems like I’m always saying this...). I’ve had this omnibus of his Ware novels sitting on my shelf for sevens years now, still, here I am. Software and Wetware are the first two novels of the Ware Tetralogy. Software won the very first Philip K. Dick award in 1983 and Wetware won the award in 1988, which is extremely apt as both novels have a definite P. K. Dick feel about them thematically. Previously I’ve encountered Rucker via a story in the great cyberpunk collection Mirrorshades (1986) and his wild but strangely plausible essay 'The Great Awakening' that features in the brilliant book Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge (2008). Fortunately Rucker’s stylistic verve and psychedelic array of ideas displayed in 'The Great Awakening' is evident throughout both of these cyberpunk novels.

Software quickly introduces key protagonist Cobb Anderson, inventor of AI robots collectively known as boppers. In Rucker’s near future scenario (the novel is set in 2020) the baby boomers have created the greatest concentration of old people (now known as Pheezers, short for freaky geezers) that the planet has ever seen and the financial strain of trying to pay their pensions has resulted in the government handing over Florida to the elderly hoards, where they live for free supported by food drops. Anderson, who is both old and washed up career wise, is living in Florida waiting for the end. Meanwhile the boppers have rebelled and are mostly now confined to the moon, where they are engaged in a kind of civil war between the boppers, who are individualistic ambulatory robots, and the big boppers, who are large cybernetic ‘brains’ who want all robot consciousness to merge. At first Software comes across as a bit cartoonish and it is obvious that Rucker is no great stylist, however his prose is snappy in the way that the Beats were snappy, which is a definite advantage. Rucker also has a way with pacing and the narrative moves along briskly with regular plot developments and features dialogue that exudes a knowing sly wit.

The principal human characters are not overly complex creations, but they are rounded enough to take you through a world in which the bopper robots mostly dominate the narrative. The boppers have their own culture and thanks to Cobb are hardwired to constantly evolve, which means switching body types, creating ‘scions’ with other robots and rebelling against their initial Asimov inspired directives which had kept them under the control of humanity (to protect humans, to obey humans, to protect robots, unless it means harming humans). Cobb Anderson is joined by a young twenty something human known as Sta-Hi Mooney (meaning - stay high, of course...). Mooney, who takes full advantage of the era’s relaxed attitude toward drugs, is generally irreverent and irresponsible throughout the novel. They make quite a pair, particularly when they are smuggled to the moon by some of Cobb’s loyal boppers who want to ‘eat’ his brain in order to make him immortal. If it sounds like this novel is a wild ride into the outer realms of psychedelic science fiction then you are exactly right and if it’s your kind of thing them look no further, if it isn’t I advise you to be more like Sta-Hi and chill out and read it anyway.

Wetware is appropriately dedicated to Philip K. Dick and begins its particular brand of Rucker weirdness with a first chapter entitled ‘People That Melt’. Wetware is set 10 years after Software and both Cobb Anderson and Sta-Hi Mooney feature again. The novel is an improvement on Software in terms of style, the execution of ideas and world building. The first part is set on the moon, where humanity has taken back control of the surface city, known as Disky, and the still rebellious robots live underground in a vast network called The Nest. Once again the boppers really steal the show from the human characters. Their culture has become even more sophisticated and they come in all shapes and sizes, some have snake and crab like bodies, or simple box-like structures and some also have a tendency to favour their own versions of male or female personas, even though boppers are basically genderless. Some of the boppers converse in vernacular inspired by human writers from the past, like Bernice, a shiny chrome bopper who is shaped like a beautiful woman in order to manipulate hapless Luna humans. Bernice talks like a character from a Edgar Allen Poe novel, affected and slightly melodramatic. Male oriented boppers like Emul and Oozer take their speech patterns from the writings of Jack Kerouac, which naturally follows Rucker’s own style - a homage perhaps?

Plot wise Wetware is far more complex than Software, but I will not elaborate too much in order to avoid spoilers. The plot does, however, involve a really weird drug called Merge that when taken allows people to literally merge together, interlocking on a molecular level before becoming whole again as the drug wears off. Of course Sta-Hi, who now lives on the moon within Disky, becomes far too involved. Merge* acts as a great narrative device that allows Bernice and her ‘sisters’ to fulfill their plans to interfere with life on Earth, which is their chief fascination. Once again Rucker’s superb narrative pacing carries the plot along at breakneck speed and coupled with some funny and inventive dialogue from both the human and bopper characters it makes for a particularly unique reading experience. I absolutely loved Wetware for its sheer invention and narrative verve and subsequently I rank it as one of the best science fiction novels I’ve ever read.

Rudy Rucker is a fascinating character in his own right; he is actually related to philosopher G. W. F. Hegel and has a PHD in mathematics, which are fine credentials for any science fiction author. He’s also a particularly prolific writer, with some twenty one novels to his name, some of which come under the sub-genre of his own devising called transrealim. Transrealism is not easily summed up in a few lines, so if you are interested then check out his essay ‘Transrealist Manifesto’ here. The Ware novels don’t exactly fall under his transrealism writings, rather they came earlier and are more like his own vision of cyberpunk. Rucker has a lot of interesting things to say about cyberpunk on his blog here. Personally I’ve come to the conclusion that with Rucker’s writing it is kind of like if one of the Beat writers had turned their hand at science fiction (for the record I wouldn’t call William Burroughs work science fiction). Hopefully I’ll have time to read Freeware (1997) and Realware (2000) pretty soon, although, once again, I’m always saying that.

* Really Merge should then have been included in Jeff Noon’s list of the top ten fictional drugs from novels.

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology – Bruce Sterling, editor (1986)

Rating: Admirable

I came to cyberpunk quite late, not reading my first book of this science fiction sub-genre till the early 1990’s. It was, fortuitously, Neuromancer (1984) by the granddaddy of cyberpunk, William Gibson. It was an interesting time to start reading cyberpunk because surreally its themes were actually beginning to manifest in society. Unlike most science fiction, which tends to set its narratives in the far future or in deep space, cyberpunk focuses on the near future and tends to extrapolate dystopian outcomes based on emergent technologies. Amongst its typical themes are AIs, cyborgs, computer hacking and direct interaction between humans and cyberspace, the ubiquitous access to networked digital information (sounds familiar?) and increasing corporate control over society, along with severely weakened governments.

Of course the above description is limited, but you get the idea. Cyberpunk emerged in the early eighties and established itself as a highly influential movement. Mirrorshades was published in 1986 and was an intended showcase for cutting edge cyberpunk. Reading it 25 years on I am ambivalent, bordering on disappointed, towards some of the stories and very impressed by others, a reaction that is typical when it comes to most short story collections.

The collection begins with William Gibson’s first professionally published story - The Gernsback Continuum (1981), an elegant satire of utopian fantasies. The protagonist suffers from unwanted visions of a shiny perfect future as conceptualised by writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Enjoyable, but hardly essential, unless you are a Gibson completest. In contrast the next story - Snake Eyes (1986) by Tom Maddox, places the reader into the dystopian world of a future high-tech military industrial nightmare as seen through the eyes of a heavily cybernetically implanted fighter pilot. Discarded by the military he must fight for his sanity whilst also suffering from the probing mind of a nebulous AI. Unfortunately this story now suffers from over familiarity and ultimately failed to move me.

Despite the fact that some stories have dated there are highlights which shrug off the jaded focus of 25 years hence. Rudy Rucker’s story - Tales of Houdini (1983) provides a psychedelically rollicking good time with a fast paced snapshot of the adventures of Houdini from an alternate universe. It’s entertaining and hilarious and made me want to begin reading Rucker’s The Ware Tetralogy (2010) that’s sitting on my shelf as soon as possible.

Solstice (1985) by James Patrick Kelly is perhaps the most complex and thought provoking story in this collection. Cage, a drug artist, famous for his invention of all manner of neurologically inspiring substances, is trying to deal adequately with his bizarre relationship with his cloned daughter. It’s a psychological puzzle, with clues laid out in interludes detailing the history of theories about the origins and uses of Stonehenge. It’s as strange as it sounds and thoroughly mind-bending.

The two most impressive stories come late in the collection. Freezone (1985) by John Shirley features an anachronistic rock ‘n’ roller clad in the leather jacket once worn by John Cale whilst he was in The Velvet Underground. Disillusioned by his flakey band mates he befriends a group of wanted assassins. This story provides a fully realised world that manages to push past its short story boundaries. Stones Lives (1985) by Paul Di Filippo is perhaps the most brilliant story in the collection. The streamlined and intriguing tale of a blind slum dweller given eye implants and a mission to observe is perhaps the most cyberpunk moment here. Stone Lives concludes brilliantly and made me wish that it had been made into a movie just so I could see it all unfold.

Although Mirrorshades is uneven in quality it is an interesting collection, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, but anyone wanting to investigate cyberpunk should read William Gibson’s Neuromancer and other novels like Idoru (1996). He’s certainly not the only great cyberpunk writer; Bruce Stirling, John Shirley and Neale Stephenson (all amongst the original group in the early eighties) also fit that description. However Gibson’s novels are the most succinct representations of cyberpunk.

Whilst Mirrorshades wasn’t the wild ride I wanted it to be, it caused me to investigate what happened to some of the ‘lesser’ names that outshine the bigger names in the collection. Paul Di Filippo took some time to have his first novel published, with Ciphers: A Post-Shannon Rock 'N' Roll Mystery in 1997. Di Filippo has had a steady stream of novels published since and has the lure of an obscure writer just ready for more recognition. James Patrick Kelly has been quite successful, winning the Hugo Award twice in the 1990’s for his novels Think Like a Dinosaur (1995) and for 10¹⁶ to 1 (1999). If they offer the same obtuse stylings as Solstice then they are sure to be entertaining.

The writer that most interests me here is Rudy Rucker (great name). He seems to be a renaissance man - a computer scientist, philosopher and novelist. I’ve encountered him before when I read Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge – edited by Damien Broderick (2008). In a book full of wild and fascinating ideas about what humanity will be like in a million years, Rudy Rucker’s essay stood out as being particularly out there. Rucker riffs on nano-machines interfacing with human consciousness, telepathy and the very earth itself becoming a giant computer and he made it all sound plausible, believe me! As a cyberpunk and transrealist writer I think that he’s the one to read if you like your science fiction books to be intense and bursting with ideas. The Ware Tetralogy seems to fit that description – four novels in one with the first dating back to the early eighties, predating Mirrorshades by four years.