Customer Reviews

Wetware

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rudy Rucker's Wetware is a must read for any science fiction enthusiast. Rucker paints a very interesting view of the future where humans and robots have colonized the moon. After being exiled from Earth, robots created cities on the moon only to be again kicked out by humans. The robots, called boppers, now live beneath the moon's surface planning their revenge. When the boppers decide to re-colonize the earth through artificially impregnating a human woman, the story begins to take wild twists and turns. Like the rest of the book, Rucker does not disappoint his readers with the story's conclusion. Although Rucker adds a lot of his own jargon to the story, it is an easy read. Reading this book has turned me on to Rucker's other books in his four-part series and on to science fiction literature in general. Wetware appeals to a wide variety of people from the science fiction aficionado to the average reader.

Sorry, but I don't understand the negative reviews. This book is so well, so completely conceived, it really has few peers. Hilarious, too. There are more projective/predictive ideas in the first chapter than in most writer's entire oeuvres. It makes perfect sense to me and I am awe at an author who has such a vivid, logical, and prolific imagination. Well written, too, in a gonzo way.

Incidentally, the boppers aren't robots, exactly. They are more like self-programmable, sentient, artificial protoplasm... with good senses of humor, no less (well, some of them).

Highly recommended.

Definitely not a book to be taking seriously. A fun-filled romp into the future that has no basis in reality which makes it so much fun. A quick easy read. Most enjoyable is the dicussion of what it means to be 'alive' or what constitutes life. The concept of artificial intelligence as another step in human evolution is interesting.

A detective is hired to find a Girl, Della. She is a lab chemists's belowed one. The detective gets an ampule of drug called merge. A trip of a lifetime: the drug will temporarily melt a human body, or bodies if taken together, and bring person to meet his creator. The petaflop robot, Berenice, get into her hands the drug and realize Christmas being in her doorsteps. An embryo is grown in Della; an experiment to later seed as many woman as possible. The only problem is that the born he, the boy man, will age one year per day (after 7 days; 7 years old). Will the robots succeed to merge with humans this time?

This is a sequel to Software, but it is not strictly necessary to know the back story; albeit it would help. The previous robot revolution failed to build super brains that would have melded human brain charts into ONE. This time robots want to become humans by tampering the genome by seeding and planting in babies in the Womb of as many women as possible. The 'wetware' explored consider the possibility of blending robot programming with the human brain, together with the entire nervous system. The book develops the idea of neurosurgery by planting small mouse into human brain to make then zombies. In neurophysiology sense Rucker plays with the mammalian brain system: touching the the voluntary and involuntary nervous system and the lateralization of the brain hemispheres. The sequels are Freeware (1997) and Realware (2000).

Three (3) stars. Written in 1988 the book won Philip K. Dick Award in the same year. The plot development and writing tone of the book has improved by a big leap since the prequel Software (1982; also the PKD winner). Fortunately this book has less messy drug humor than its predecessor. The surroundings are described in detail, the motivations behind the robots are made more tangible and overall improvements in quality of the prose can be observed. The weakest point is the dialogue between the characters who dawdle too much around without clear target. In the end one person, half of his brain sliced away, saves the world by spitting clumps around to spread organism called chipmold. If the reader can get past the slack characters, like a boy chasing girls and women and making them pregnant, following this cyberpunk robot evolution can be mildly amusing and entertaining.

This book was a lot of fun to read. I've never cared for cyberpunk novels before, but this was great. The idea of robots wanting to create a human/robot combination is unique in my reading experience. None of the characters, human or robot, are at all respectable, but they are funny. The descriptions, especially of the robots'city, are vivid and imaginative

Rucker will open up your mind with this book Wetware. The imagination Rucker has of the future is crazy yet believable enough to immerse yourself in him world. Wetware takes you to a world with self-sufficient robots living on the moon and people melting themselves for pleasure. The humans no longer control the robots; the robots are trying to control humans. If you are thinking this is just another book about robots, you are wrong. This book is not the norm in robot books. Rucker's robots come is huge variety of different shapes and sizes. They can even show their emotions though colors flashing across there bodies. Rucker gives a fresh view and some new concepts in his world of the future.

How far will AI go? How far could the human race take drugs to satisfy sexual of emotional needs? Could human actually live off earth? After you read this book, you might wonder about these same things. This book does jump around a little but is still easy to follow. Wetware has made me want to read the other books in this series, Software, Freeware and Realware. If you are a cyberpunk fan then it is well worth the read!

Rucker will open up your mind with this book Wetware. The imagination Rucker has of the future is crazy yet believable enough to immerse yourself in him world. Wetware takes you to a world with self-sufficient robots living on the moon and people melting themselves for pleasure. The humans no longer control the robots; the robots are trying to control humans. If you are thinking this is just another book about robots, you are wrong. This book is not the norm in robot books. Rucker's robots come is huge variety of different shapes and sizes. They can even show their emotions though colors flashing across there bodies. Rucker gives a fresh view and some new concepts in his world of the future.

How far will AI go? How far could the human race take drugs to satisfy sexual of emotional needs? Could human actually live off earth? After you read this book, you might wonder about these same things. This book does jump around a little but is still easy to follow. Wetware has made me want to read the other books in this series, Software, Freeware and Realware. If you are a cyberpunk fan then it is well worth the read!

A really inventive and fun book. I liked it so much I got the rest of them!

Rucker's Robotos, or bops, have decided to go in for a bit of hybridisation, so they create organic clone bodies for themselves from human DNA.

Quite a bit of silliness in these books, robot moon bases and other explorations notwithstanding, it is a bit of a look at how weird sentient machines or AI could get.

Gideon's Fall: When You Dont Have a Prayer, Only a Miracle Will Do This is a strange but intriguing novel. Written in a lyrical style that melds one to the subject matter. I enjoyed it from the first page........think of that