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Rudy Rucker

The Ware Tetralogy Paperback – October 1, 2013

by Rudy Rucker (Author), William Gibson (Introduction)

115 ratings

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An omnibus of Rudy Rucker's groundbreaking series [Software, Wetware, Freeware, and Realware], with an introduction by William Gibson, author of Neuromancer.

Print length

752 pages
Language

English
Publication date

October 1, 2013
Dimensions

6 x 1.7 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1607012111
ISBN-13

978-1607012115
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rucker's four Ware novels--Software (1982), Wetware (1988), Freeware (1997), and Realware (2000)--form an extraordinary cyberweird future history with the heft of an epic fantasy novel and the speed of a quantum processor. Still exuberantly fresh despite their age, they primarily follow two characters (and their descendants): Cobb Anderson, who instigated the first robot revolution and is offered immortality by his grateful "children," and stoner Sta-Hi Mooney, who (against his impaired better judgment) becomes an important figure in robot-human relations. Over several generations, humans, robots, and society evolve, but even weird drugs and the wisdom gathered from interstellar signals won't stop them from making the same old mistakes in new ways. Rucker is both witty and serious as he combines hard science and sociology with unrelentingly sharp observations of all self-replicating beings. This classic series well deserves its omnibus repackaging, particularly suitable for libraries.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prime Books (October 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 752 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1607012111
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1607012115
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.15 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.7 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,131,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,223 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #109,053 in American Literature (Books)

Customer Reviews:
115 ratings

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Rudy Rucker

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Rudy Rucker has written forty books, both pop science. and SF novels in the cyberpunk and transreal styles. He received Philip K. Dick awards for for the novels in his "Ware Tetralogy". His "Complete Stories," and his nonfiction "The Fourth Dimension" are standouts. He worked as a professor of computer science in Silicon Valley for twenty years. He paints works relating to his tales. His latest novel "Juicy Ghosts" is about telepathy, immortality, and a new revolution. Rudy blogs at www.rudyrucker.com/blog

Customer reviews

5 star		62%
4 star		22%
3 star		7%
2 star		7%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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A. Alper

Tetracycline for Terminally Steamy Punks.

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2020

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This author is one of the ones we should keep giving money to.

The remarkable thing about these novels is how good each one is, apart from its fellows. The storytelling integrates many fantastic ideas, that, like all good fiction, point back to real world truth, and Rucker’s characters are so well realized, that the math hating chef is entirely believable, even though the writer is a mathematician, who probably also hates math, but may not be a great cook!

He really brings the “more” back into polymorphous perversity as well. I’m going to read all of his books now.

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2014

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This is one of the most profoundly weird things I have ever read, and I mean that in the best way. For me, the beginning of each book was slow, but worth sticking to for the moment halfway through when it all picks up speed and takes flight into the truly bizarre and yet utterly inevitable. I kept setting it aside because it was so long (and the beginnings would drag so much for me -- and I had a very difficult time with the dialects at first) and then being drawn back to it like a magnet. Unlike many reviewers, I liked the fourth book quite a bit and found it easier going than the first three, but I am not usually much of a sci-fi reader so my tastes are probably a bit different from most readers of "Ware." There are a lot of drugs and sex, but I didn't read that as trying to be "edgy" for the shock value alone (which I hate); I read it more as a commentary on Baby Boomers getting older (and how funny it would be if they were living the 60s when they WERE in their 60s), a commentary on poverty and cultural decline and escapism, and a commentary on how every new technology gets used for sex, violence, and altered mental states before just about anything else.

I will probably read this again after letting it percolate in my brain a while. SO. PROFOUNDLY. WEIRD.

5 people found this helpful

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Tom Museth

Three out of four ain't bad

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2014

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Edgy, nuts, and thoroughly entertaining - that's the Ware Tetralogy. If Kerouac wrote sci fi after way too many whiskies and reefers, this is what it might have turned out like. The series blends dimensional mathematics and physics with crazed counterculture hedonism and throws some truly innovative and bizarre ideas about consciousness and mortality out there.

There are caveats; the first two books are amazing, the third lots of fun, but the fourth is a real drag, sadly. Realware is a totally unnecessary addition that meanders and dawdles along without the frenetic pace or abstract sense of purpose of the first three books. On top of that, Rucker's writing style isn't that developed - and while the beat-style babble rides well alongside his earlier plots and themes, without anything to anchor it in Realware, the final instalment feels like it's written for a high school creative writing assignment.

My advice: read the first three, enjoy the hell out of them, and stop at the end of Freeware.

7 people found this helpful

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Wade

Great books, great value

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2011

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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.

10 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

russ bower

Psychedelic anarchy wants your babies.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2017

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Read software several times when I was a lad.loved it..but never got to do the next books .so was really pleased to find this ..visionary work..well crafted..reads like a fever dream of burroughs and Gibson's love child's twisted savant twin...

2 people found this helpful

Maureen Wang

The afterword written by the author is really good. I read the books when they were originally ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 15, 2016

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The afterword written by the author is really good. I read the books when they were originally written and look forward to trying them again. Great stuff.

J. Westwood Chandler

iconic but not my fave

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

iconic but not my fave, a credible read, but i prefer William Gibson

Neil McLeish

An off-the-wall, multi-dimensional masterpiece.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2017

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I loved it. Leave your perceptions of reality at the door, as Rudy Rucker twists and turns your imagination in a myriad directions, in more than three dimensions.

Lupo

Mathematics and madness

Reviewed in Italy on January 1, 2017

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Rudy Rucker is a cyberpunk genius. Unlike William Gibson, he knows IT and is a higher mathematician, so, when you encounter strange terms in his books, it's probably not gibberish: for example, you can check what a quasicrystal is, and learn something interesting about non repeating tessellation.
Anyway, his books describe humanity in a near future, where humans have managed to create semi-intelligent systems and then let them evolve into self-conscious beings. Thus were the Boppers born, not-quite-friendly intelligent robots who don't place the welfare of humanity on top of their list. They are not evil either, let's say that they behave selfishly, just like humanity, and so conflicts are bound to ensue. No space opera material here, no space wars or lasers in the void. It's just a mind-blowing picture of a possibility for evolution beyond what we consider possible, written to stimulate intelligence and imagination, full of funny characters who are very far from typical SF heroes.
Four great books at a budget price, impossible not to recommend.

One person found this helpful

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