Read Online Collected Essays by Rudy Rucker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rudy Rucker
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machine in Silicon Embrace , though there is that remote-controlled guy with the chip in his head.
Another cyberpunk theme is a desire for a mystical union with higher consciousness, this kind of quest being a kind of side-effect of the acid-head ‘60s which all of us went through. Contact with higher intelligence is the key theme of Silicon Embrace , though in Idoru it is present only obliquely, as part of the idoru’s appeal. Holy Fire ends with a thought-provoking pantheistic sequence where a human has actually turned his own self into an all pervading Nature god, with “every flower, every caterpillar genetically wired for sound.”
Cyberpunk usually takes a close look at the media; this is an SF tradition that goes pack to Frederic Pohl and Norman Spinrad. Holy Fire goes pretty light on the media, but in Idoru , the main villain is the media as exemplified by an outfit called Slitscan. “Slitscan was descended from ‘reality’ programming and the network tabloids…, but it resembled them no more than some large, swift bipedal carnivore resembled its sluggish, shallow-dwelling ancestors.” One of the heroines of Silicon Embrace is Black Betty, a media terrorist who manages to jam the State’s transmissions.
He watched the videotape, the few seconds of a former President yammering with a good approximation of sincerity in his State of the Union address—and then Black Betty stepping into the shot; stepping her video-persona into the former President’s restricted public space; taking public space back from authority, giving it back to the public, the Public personified by Betty. Tall and lean and smiling from a crystallized inner confidence…she seemed to…stare at the president from within his Personal Space: a rudeness, a solecism become a political statement.
In terms of optimism/pessimism about the future, Holy Fire is very optimistic, Silicon Embrace very pessimistic, and Idoru somewhere in the middle. In terms of political outlook, Silicon Embrace is explicitly radical, Idoru is apolitical, and Holy Fire is—well—Republican? In Holy Fire , the world is run by old people, by the gerontocracy, and this is not necessarily presented as a bad thing, it’s simply presented as the reality of that future.
Above and beyond the themes and attitudes, the single common thing about these three books is style. All are hip, all are funny, all are written by real people about the real world around us.
After all the good ink I’ve just given my peers, I can’t resist slipping you a long excerpt of my Freeware , which came out a few months after the books discussed here.
So here’s shirtless Willy under the star-spangled Florida sky with eighty pounds of moldie [named Ulam] for his shoes and pants, scuffing across the cracked concrete of the JFK spaceport pad. The great concrete apron was broken up by a widely spaced grid of drainage ditches, and the spaceport buildings were dark. It occurred to Willy that he was very hungry.
There was a roar and blaze in the sky above. The Selena was coming down. Close, too close. The nearest ditch was so far he wouldn’t make it in time, Willy thought, but once he started running, Ulam kicked in and superamplified his strides, cushioning on the landing and flexing on the take-offs. They sprinted a quarter mile in under twenty seconds and threw themselves into the coolness of the ditch, lowering down into the funky brackish water. The juddering yellow flame of the great ship’s ion beams reflected off the ripples around them. A hot wind of noise blasted loud and louder; then all was still.
[A crowd of angry locals appears and attacks the ship.]
There was a fusillade of gun-shots and needler blasts, and then the mob surged towards the Selena , blazing away at the ship as they advanced.
Their bullets pinged off the titaniplast hull like pebbles off galvanized steel; the needlers’ laser-rays kicked up harmless glow-spots of zzzt. The Selena shifted uneasily on her hydraulic
Another cyberpunk theme is a desire for a mystical union with higher consciousness, this kind of quest being a kind of side-effect of the acid-head ‘60s which all of us went through. Contact with higher intelligence is the key theme of Silicon Embrace , though in Idoru it is present only obliquely, as part of the idoru’s appeal. Holy Fire ends with a thought-provoking pantheistic sequence where a human has actually turned his own self into an all pervading Nature god, with “every flower, every caterpillar genetically wired for sound.”
Cyberpunk usually takes a close look at the media; this is an SF tradition that goes pack to Frederic Pohl and Norman Spinrad. Holy Fire goes pretty light on the media, but in Idoru , the main villain is the media as exemplified by an outfit called Slitscan. “Slitscan was descended from ‘reality’ programming and the network tabloids…, but it resembled them no more than some large, swift bipedal carnivore resembled its sluggish, shallow-dwelling ancestors.” One of the heroines of Silicon Embrace is Black Betty, a media terrorist who manages to jam the State’s transmissions.
He watched the videotape, the few seconds of a former President yammering with a good approximation of sincerity in his State of the Union address—and then Black Betty stepping into the shot; stepping her video-persona into the former President’s restricted public space; taking public space back from authority, giving it back to the public, the Public personified by Betty. Tall and lean and smiling from a crystallized inner confidence…she seemed to…stare at the president from within his Personal Space: a rudeness, a solecism become a political statement.
In terms of optimism/pessimism about the future, Holy Fire is very optimistic, Silicon Embrace very pessimistic, and Idoru somewhere in the middle. In terms of political outlook, Silicon Embrace is explicitly radical, Idoru is apolitical, and Holy Fire is—well—Republican? In Holy Fire , the world is run by old people, by the gerontocracy, and this is not necessarily presented as a bad thing, it’s simply presented as the reality of that future.
Above and beyond the themes and attitudes, the single common thing about these three books is style. All are hip, all are funny, all are written by real people about the real world around us.
After all the good ink I’ve just given my peers, I can’t resist slipping you a long excerpt of my Freeware , which came out a few months after the books discussed here.
So here’s shirtless Willy under the star-spangled Florida sky with eighty pounds of moldie [named Ulam] for his shoes and pants, scuffing across the cracked concrete of the JFK spaceport pad. The great concrete apron was broken up by a widely spaced grid of drainage ditches, and the spaceport buildings were dark. It occurred to Willy that he was very hungry.
There was a roar and blaze in the sky above. The Selena was coming down. Close, too close. The nearest ditch was so far he wouldn’t make it in time, Willy thought, but once he started running, Ulam kicked in and superamplified his strides, cushioning on the landing and flexing on the take-offs. They sprinted a quarter mile in under twenty seconds and threw themselves into the coolness of the ditch, lowering down into the funky brackish water. The juddering yellow flame of the great ship’s ion beams reflected off the ripples around them. A hot wind of noise blasted loud and louder; then all was still.
[A crowd of angry locals appears and attacks the ship.]
There was a fusillade of gun-shots and needler blasts, and then the mob surged towards the Selena , blazing away at the ship as they advanced.
Their bullets pinged off the titaniplast hull like pebbles off galvanized steel; the needlers’ laser-rays kicked up harmless glow-spots of zzzt. The Selena shifted uneasily on her hydraulic
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