Customer Reviews

Seek! Selected Nonfiction

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Rudy Rucker is a wonderful writer, and judging from his writing, an excellent teacher. If all math professors were like him, there would be a lot more mathematicians, physicists and engineers around. And you've got to love a guy who can characterize chaotic phenomena as "gnarly".

"Seek!" is a collection of essays on various topics, published and unpublished, and therein lies one of the problems: A lot of these essays would have been better off remaining unpublished. They're just not that interesting or well done. Even some of the published essays should have stayed buried in the pulps where they were printed. The book is of course required reading for die-hard Rucker fans, but the general reader would be better off sticking with his more carefully edited books.

His history of computers, for example, is a completely unoriginal rehashing of the standard hardwware-based story. There's absolutely no point in reprinting it, particuarly as he has nothing to add to a thousand other books.

There's another problem as well. Like many very bright academics, Rucker seems to believe that skill in one area- mathematics- makes him an expert in all areas. Unfortunately there are some (history, economics, political science, psychology) where he is not terribly well read, and again, like many academics form the hard sciences he tends to view the social sciences as something you can just handle intuitively. Thus his views on matters of economics and policy tend to be the kind you get from enthusiastic college sophmores. He can't admit that someone could hold views opposed to his and still be a decent person; anyone who disagrees with him is basically evil. But that's par for course when you spend much of your life in academia.

Still, it's an interesting collection, and there are a few gems scattered amidst the dross. His A-life introduction is imaginative and particularly well done. My advice: Skip the hardcover and get the paperback.

Rudy Rucker is a mathematician and computer scientist who also writes science fiction. Unfortunately, he is so well known for his SF writings that his reputation in that area tends to swamp recognition of his accomplishments in mathematics and computer science, as is evidenced by other reviews on this page.

Rucker's mathematical writings tend to focus on the more esoteric subjects of infinity and the fourth dimension. They include: (1) "Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension" (1977); (2) "The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes" (1985); (3) "Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality" (1988); (4) "Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite" by Rudy Rucker (1995); and (5) "Software Engineering and Computer Games" (To be published in Nov 2002). That he is regarded as a serious mathematician is evidenced by the fact that "Infinity and the Mind" is published by the Princeton University Press, one of the best publishers of books on mathematics, engineering and science in the world.

In the area of software, Rucker is known for his participation in developing "Chaos" ands "CA (Cellular Automata)Lab", two highly innovative software programs that came out about 20 years ago. Cellular automata, which produce screen images that appear to be randomly generated patterns (in fact, the patterns are generated in accordance with simple rules) have been studied seriously by scientists (including Richard Feynman) interested in determining the patterns that underlie life. In fact, one of the earliest CA games was called "The Game of Life."

Like Feynman, Rucker is a free spirit, interested in virtually everything he encounters in life. Fortunately for the rest of us, he also likes to write about it. Among the topics treated in this collection of his essays are: (1) what it's like to live in Lynchburg, VA with Jerry Falwell; (2) a visit to a semiconductor clean room; (3) his beloved dog, Arf; (4) the paintings of Peter Breughel; (5) visits to Japan, where Rucker's S/F is immensely popular; (6) a live sex show in Manhattan; (7) his life as a hippie and abuse of drugs; and of course (8) thoughts on the possible uses of cellular automata.

Through it all comes the impression of a very good, very open, mind at work. I suspect that he really only writes to please himself; but fortunately he shares it with the rest of us.

Readers with more of an interest in Rucker's S/F writings should consider buying "Gnarl!", a companion volume of essays on that topic.

This collection of essays is well worth reading if you're any sort of fan of Rudy Rucker. The essays are very wide ranging, and I particularly liked the travel essays in the section "Life", which were full of interesting observations and characters (especially the moody Robert Anton Wilson and the inscrutable Terence McKenna in Portugal). The essays about Rucker's trips to Japan give a unique perspective on the mixture of old and new culture that he found there.

I found some of the earlier material on cellular automata and other mathematical curiosities to be less interesting, probably because I have never explored them, and I can't share the enthusiasm Mr Rucker has for them. On the other hand, his essay on the history of computing I found fascinating.

Overalll, I came away feeling that these essays were written by a very real person, one who has managed to enjoy the fame he has achieved largely as a writer. He is not backward in expressing his admiration for the opposite sex, and his openness and candour is sometimes startling compared to other more conservative modern essayists.

Rucker's an author whose books either leave me wanting more or leave me floored; "Seek!", the author's latest collection of nonfiction, is one of the latter, an always energetic variety of science essays, travel diary entries, meditations on The Meaning of Life and cyberculture that accomplishes much more than the sum of its parts.

"Seek!" is nothing less than a portrait of the author, and as such it is both poignant and trippy. I had a great time reading this one.

I agree with Michael Edelman (below), there are many essays in this collection that just don't merit anthologizing.

I used to have a pretty high opinion of Mr. Rucker, but reading this book took him down a few notches. His travelogues are "nothing to write home about," his self-aggrandizement gets annoying, his extravagant personal claims about cyberpunk and transreal writing are laughable, and his essays on Bruegel add nothing to art appreciation.

The companion volume of fiction, "Gnarl!" is a much better read.