Rudy Rucker Books In Order

Publication Order of The Hollow Earth Books

Publication Order of The Next Wave Books

Publication Order of Postsingular Books

Publication Order of Ware Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Year's Best SF Anthology Books

Publication Order of PM's Outspoken Authors Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (Rudy Rucker), born March 22, 1946 in Louisville, Kentucky, where he grew up. Rudy is the great-great-great-grandson of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

He attended St. Xavier High School before she earned a BA in mathematics from Swarthmore in 1967. He also got an MS (in the year 1969) and a PhD (in the year 1973) degrees in mathematics from Rutgers University.

From 1972 until 1978, Rudy taught math at the State of University of New York at Geneseo. Despite being liked by students and publish several papers and a book, many of his colleagues took offense at his long hair and his convivial relationships he had with philosophy and English professors amid some looming budget shortfalls. And as a result of this, he failed to get tenure in the department.

Because of a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Rucker taught at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg from 1978 until 1980.

He is a two-time winner of the Philip K. Dick Award (“Software” and “Wetware” which both won Best Book) and is a world-class mathematician. Rudy is one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre.

In addition to writing popular mathematics books and science-fiction, he has co-written many software programs, including a freeware flicker-cladding sim called CAPOW! and an adaptation of James Gleick’s Chaos. He teaches computer science at San Jose University.

Rudy writes the “Ware” series and the “Postsingular” series, as well as some stand alone novels. His debut novel, called “White Light”, was released in the year 1980. He also writes non-fiction books on infinity, fourth dimension, and the meaning of computation.

“The Secret of Life” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 1985. The book tours the sixties with Conrad Bunger, the alter ego of Rudy Rucker. Almost suicidally reckless, he doesn’t seem destined to ever reach legal drinking age. Although, thanks to the supernatural powers he manifests when in crisis, not even the worst of mishaps interrupt the quest he is on for enlightenment, booze, and women.

From Catholic high school and into college, he slowly awakens to his secret identity as the energy being from outer space. His one solemn commission to go incognito and come back with the ultimate prize. Knowledge on the Secret Life. Trouble is, he is having too much fun to keep it all together.

These books are tons of fun, and the action is all fast paced and the story line stays interesting the entire way through. The novel is very enjoyable and an oddly satisfying book.

“Software” is the first novel in the “Ware” series and was released in the year 1982. Cobb Anderson is the creator of the ‘boppers’, which are sentient robots that wound up overthrowing their human overlords. Cobb is only an aging alcoholic who waits to die, and the big boppers threaten to absorb the little boppers, and eventually all the humans. Right into one melded, huge consciousness.

A few of the little boppers are not very keen on this idea, though, and a full-scale robot revolt has started on the moon, where all of the boppers live. At the same time, Ralph Numbers wants to give Cobb immortality by allowing a big bopper to slice up his brain and tape all his ‘software’. It sounds like a good idea to Cobb.

Rudy delivers an idea lover’s book and it is written quite well, and takes you away into a great pot-dream, with a ton of zany action and stoned philosophizin’ going on in this. This novel is funny, fun, and wild and readers like how this kicks off this series. Readers like the two main characters, Sta-Hi and Cobb, and enjoyed the ending quite a bit.

“Wetware” is the second novel in the “Ware” series and was released in the year 1989. In the year 2030, bopper robots in their own lunar refuge have found a way to infuse DNA wetware with software code of their own. The result is a brand new life form: the meatbop. After all, fair is fair. Humans built boppers, and now the bops build humans, well, kind of.

This is all part of an insidious plot that is about to ensnare Della Taze, who does not believe she has murdered her lover when she was a drug-induced ecstasy. Although, she cannot really be too sure. It is certainly catastrophic enough to call in Cobb Anderson, that pheezer that started it all, out of his cold-storage heaven.

The book packs quite a punch and leaves the mind of the reader scurrying down the endless potential paths of what could happen next in this world. Readers like that intelligence is intelligence in this book, no matter what the housing is, as it makes mistakes and kicks off all kinds of mischief, no matter what.

“Freeware” is the third novel in the “Ware” series and was released in the year 1997. Artificial life forms that are made of soft plastic and some gene-tweaked algae and mold. Moldies are evolved robots in 2053, and are universally despised and anatomically inventive. In a sleazy, low-rent future, sexual fraternization with moldies is entirely taboo, a sin that is not a concern to Randy Karl Tucker at all.

He is a Kentucky boy that has strayed seriously from the Heritagist religion’s stern teachings on the evils of artificial life, as he feels a strong something for Monique, a moldie maid and bookkeeper at the Clearlight Terrace Court Motel.

Her sudden and unexplainable abduction from the planet, along with the unsettling revelations about Randy’s own dubious origins, drags the degenerate flesher and those around him into a conspiratorial and ugly mess. Even while it pulls an unsuspecting humanity even closer to a shocking encounter with intergalactic intelligence.

Each of these books is something different with new focus, ideas, and plots, but follow from the previous ideas and continue the same history, all in a cohesive manner. This book was much more complicated and more technical than the first two in the series. All of Rucker’s world building and ideas are interesting.