Customer Reviews

The Ware Tetralogy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Though I own every book of this tetralogy, I think I'm going to buy them collected as they are here because out of any living author I can think of, Rudy Rucker deserves my money (plus at 16 bones this is a STEAL).

When I first read Software (the first book in this collection) I flipped: it has become one of my favorite books ever. The series follows the rise and development of artificial intelligence on Earth and the Moon. Maybe that sounds vaguely interesting to you or maybe you think it sounds stupid and boring or simply over done, but Rucker approaches the whole story with a playfulness and irreverence and creativity that has left me only ever wanting more. The 'ware series is educated and does speculative fiction in a refreshing, funny and even gritty way. Rucker tackles topics like mathematics and spirituality but you would be hard pressed to ever called him pretentious or contrived. Great characters like Sta Hi Mooney, a young drug frenzied loser punk, and Cobb Anderson, an alcoholic old man ex-scientist ex-human (!), color the story with Rucker's unique charm. This is a winner for Philip Dick and Stanislaw Lem fans, though I think even readers that don't like science fiction will enjoy Rucker.

In the first three books of his `live robots' series, Rucker is so brilliant on so many levels it is sometimes hard to realize that he was writing to be read for fun.

In the first three books of his Tetralogy, Rudy Rucker shows himself to be one of the rarest and brightest lights that science fiction produces; a science fiction writer who knows what he's talking about in terms of the science involved; and one who makes it happen in prose that an adult will find entertaining-even, and perhaps especially, an adult who has read something other than science fiction.

His books are like looking at an onion in cross-section: you can stay close to the surface layers if you like, or you can look deeper and try to go to see what he does and how he does it. Rucker always lets you go deeper but no matter where you stop looking, it's still a wonderful onion.

Some highlights:

Rucker's central scientific premise works by getting around the limit of artificial intelligence established by Marvin Minsky's observation that a system cannot create another system as complex as itself.

Rucker's plots involve conflict between machines and machines and between machines and humans. What comes from it creates some wildly entertaining reading involving comedy, drama, war ("how about a nice laser-blast?") and intrigue-and sometimes all three at once.

Rucker's use of language is like no one else's. He's been compared to Phillip K. Dick, but only because too many people have read Phillip K. Dick. Rucker's language is all his own and it is just *better*-often better than mainstream fiction writers whose broader audiences allow them to be paid a lot more for a lot less.

The books are a breeze to read and Rucker comes up with gems of language that demonstrate not only that he can pound typewriter keys but that he has the rare gift of understanding that each member of his audience is another mind and playing with that fact with every word.

I am delighted that they are republishing the trilogy as an omnibus edition. I loved the first three books and it will be as if I'm getting the fourth one for free.

I recently re-read the 4 books and the first 3 are just great. Clever, inventive and laugh out loud funny. Really great Science Fiction. The 4th book is a disappointment and very tedious. It was written years after the first 3 and Rucker didn't get better. However, the first 3 are FABULOUS.

I have read a lot of SF over several decades -- not much lately because the shelves seem to be filled with books by vampire, "fey" and fantasy writers that basically don't give a crap about science or the future and copy each other to death.

This tetrology actually is based upon an interesting future/science idea -- what is now referred to as the "singularity", that is, when our intelligent machines achieve consciousness and self-direction, what next? The plot had promise, but 4 volumes of this stuff is just too much. Fortunately I bought the Kindle edition, so no innocent trees were murdered in vain. Some electrons may have been damaged, though.

The trouble with this series is that the characters are cardboard, the science is bogus (as in "Cap'n, the dilithium crystals are overheating, she's gonna blow!) and there is a desperate need for an editor to tighten and pare all this stuff down. Additionally, the author evidently decided that this series would be the next "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein) and threw in a LOT of 'edgy' drugs/sex/violence into the plot to the point where it becomes irritating and eventually depressing. It's really hard to shock anyone these days, so the effort is wasted -- there's just not going to be a literary buzz, it's just tiresome.

There's no legitimate comparison here with Philip K. Dick -- who is revered because he developed many plot lines that were completely original and startling when first published.

I highly recommend the Ware series to anyone who likes finding sci-fi with a genuinely different take on the future. The Ware series focuses on the rise and evolution of artificial intelligences side-by-side with humans. The books explore the differences between biological intelligences and electronic ones and asks the question - is there a difference at all? You'll encounter human minds copied into software that runs in robotic bodies, artificial intelligences biologically encoded into DNA and born into human bodies and even more.

The books in this series were written in 1982, 1988, 1997 and 2000 and the earlier ones still hold up quite well. Rucker's style is humorous (sometimes darkly so), fun and generally fast-paced. If there's a downside, it's an over-use of future slang that occasionally interrupts the flow of the story as you try to figure out what a new word means (or how a normal word is being used). This is only a minor quibble, however, and overall the quality is excellent. The characters are varied, unusual and have depth that's often lacking. Even characters that only have minor roles are very different and well-drawn.

Finally, this collection is a great value - the print length is 700+ pages, so unlike all too many Kindle "novels" of roughly 100-200 pages that they try to sell for $6, you're getting a ton of great reading for your money.

It's a passable sci-fi story about a not-too-distant future dystopia where robots become sentient. But not sentient robots in the Asimov, Foundation/Robots sense - the books read more like a slightly less cartoon-y version of Futurama, with a lot of drug and counter-culture humor. Some parts come over just a little preachy, and throughout the whole thing I had the sense that there was an undercurrent of humor that I just wasn't catching on to, like the author was having a little joke at my expense. All in all, it's a book I'm happy to have read, but that said, I'm unlikely to read it again. If you like your sci-fi a little bit "out there" like the Illuminatus! trilogy or are into the Church of the Sub-Genius, you'll enjoy this collection.

Not having read any of his books before, I loved the way the characters evolved along with the technology. I also enjoyed how Rucker poked fun at society by extrapolating current and past trends. Is cannibalism OK if the flesh is from a lab? If you are looking for hard science fiction, this book does stretch things a bit, so you have to leave your sense of reality suspended. But the characters, the action, and the ideas are alway new and fresh.

This is really good sci-fi. The ware books have the added bonus of evolving technology; from robots to biotech, we see how technology progresses, and both changes and is incorporated into culture. My problem with it? No heroes. all of the main characters are tragically flawed and commit unforgivable acts ranging from murder and betrayal to (arguably) genocide. Is this just a side effect of a great post-modern set of novels? hard to say. But it would be nice to have a protagonist to cheer for, or at least a clear antihero, not just one that hangs out in the middle. Definitely a good read, but you might not feel good about mankind by the end.

Great book (all 4). Starts with Asimov's laws of robotics and runs in the most unpredictable directions. Loved it cover to cover. But if you read in bed, I reccomend cutting it in half, or you'll bruise your sternum!

Excellent concept. I ripped thru the first two volumes (of five) without any real break other than life stuff. However, upon identifying Volume 3 to be more of the same, I wore down. Recently, I've been reading Joe Haldeman and Lucius Shepard (Sp?). Machines that evolve rapidly, ways for people to adapt machinery genetically, drugs that let lovers literally melt together, AI civil rights, all are great stuff. And of course nothing could go wrong with any of that, right? Rucker considers a vast mindscape of the possibilities, the gains and losses from all this nearly surreal material. But five volumes all at once is too much for a straight-forward readthrough. I will return to this later, perhaps.