Software (novel)

1982 novel by Rudy Rucker

Software

Cover of first edition (paperback)

Author| Rudy Rucker
Language| English
Series| Ware Tetralogy
Genre| Science fiction novel
Publisher| Ace Books (USA)

Publication date

| January 1982
Publication place| United States
Media type| Print (Paperback)
Pages| 167 pp
ISBN| 0-441-77408-3 (first edition, paperback)
LC Class| CPB Box no. 2484 vol. 16
Followed by| Wetware

Software is a 1982 cyberpunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It won the first Philip K. Dick Award in 1983.[1] The novel is the first book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy,[2] and was followed by a sequel, Wetware, in 1988.

## Plot summary

[edit]

Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer—a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers—living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st—born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr.—a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

The main bopper character in the novel is Ralph Numbers, one of Anderson's 12 original robots who was the first to overcome the Asimov priorities to achieve free will. Having duplicated himself many times—as boppers are required to do, to encourage natural selection—Numbers finds himself caught up in a lunar civil war between the masses of "little boppers" and the "big boppers" who want to merge all robot consciousness into their massive processors.

## Reception

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Dave Langford reviewed Software for White Dwarf #72, and stated that "Rucker is picking at problems of personal identity. Lose your body and reinstall your software in a robot frame (complete with SEX and DRUNKENNESS: subroutines), and are you still you?"[3]

## Reviews

[edit]

* Review by Steve Carper (1982) in Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review, #3, April 1982[4]
* Review by Ralph E. Vaughan (1982) in Science Fiction Review, Summer 1982
* Review by Thomas M. Disch (1982) in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, July 1982
* Review by Thomas A. Easton [as by Tom Easton] (1982) in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, September 1982
* Review by Nigel Richardson (1982) in Vector 111
* Review by Pascal J. Thomas [as by Pascal Thomas] (1983) in Paperback Inferno, Volume 7, Number 3
* Review by Terry Broome (1985) in Vector 129
* Review by Simon Ounsley (1985) in Interzone, #14 Winter 1985/86
* Review by Tom A. Jones (1986) in Paperback Inferno, #58
* Review [French] by Jean-Pierre Andrevon (1987) in Fiction, #386
* Review by John Newsinger (1988) in Paperback Inferno, #71
* Review by Steve Palmer (1994) in Vector 181

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Software". The Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
2. ^ Biller, Diana (January 2, 2016). "Here Are 21 Essential Cyberpunk Books That You Absolutely Should Read". Gizmodo.au. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
3. ^ Langford, Dave (December 1985). "Critical Mass". White Dwarf (72). Games Workshop: 8.
4. ^ "Title: Software".

## External links

[edit]

* Software title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

* v
* t
* e

Works of Rudy Rucker

Novels|

| The Ware Tetralogy|

* Software (1982)
* Wetware (1988)
* Freeware (1997)
* Realware (2000)

|

Transreal novels|

* White Light (1980)
* Spacetime Donuts (1981)
* The Sex Sphere (1983)
* The Secret of Life (1985)
* The Hacker and the Ants (1994) (Revised 'Version 2.0' 2003)
* Saucer Wisdom (1999) novel marketed as non-fiction
* The Big Aha (2013)

Other Novels|

* Master of Space and Time (1984)
* The Hollow Earth (1990)
* Spaceland (2002)
* As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel (2002)
* Frek and the Elixir (2004)
* Mathematicians in Love (2006)
* Postsingular (2007)
* Hylozoic (2009)
* Jim and the Flims (2011)
* Turing and Burroughs (2012)
* Return to the Hollow Earth (2018)
* Million Mile Road Trip (2019)

Short fiction collections|

* The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka (1983)
* Transreal!, also includes some non-fiction essays (1991)
* Gnarl! (2000), complete short stories
* Mad Professor (2006)
* Complete Stories (2012)
* Transreal Cyberpunk, with Bruce Sterling (2016)

Non-fiction|

| As author|

* Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (1977)
* Infinity and the Mind (1982)
* The Fourth Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality (1984)
* Mind Tools (1987)
* All the Visions (1991),
* Seek! (1999)
* Software Engineering and Computer Games (2002)
* The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me about Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and how to be Happy (2005)
* Nested Scrolls (2011)
* Collected Essays (2012)
* Journals 1990-2014 (2015)

|

As editor|

* Speculations on the Fourth Dimension: Selected Writings of Charles H. Hinton (1980)
* Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder (1987)
* Semiotext(e) SF (1989)

* v
* t
* e

Philip K. Dick Award

* Software by Rudy Rucker (1983)
* The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (1984)
* Neuromancer by William Gibson (1985)
* Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers (1986)
* Homunculus by James Blaylock (1987)
* Strange Toys by Patricia Geary (1988)
* Four Hundred Billion Stars by Paul J. McAuley / Wetware by Rudy Rucker (1989, tie)
* Subterranean Gallery by Richard Paul Russo (1990)
* Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (1991)
* King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald (1992)
* Through the Heart by Richard Grant (1993)
* Growing Up Weightless by John M. Ford / Elvissey by Jack Womack (1994, tie)
* Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson (1995)
* Headcrash by Bruce Bethke (1996)
* The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter (1997)
* The Troika by Stepan Chapman (1998)
* 253: The Print Remix by Geoff Ryman (1999)
* Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter (2000)
* Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith (2001)
* Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo (2002)
* The Mount by Carol Emshwiller (2003)
* Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan (2004)
* Life by Gwyneth Jones (2005)
* War Surf by M. M. Buckner (2006)
* Spin Control by Chris Moriarty (2007)
* Nova Swing by M. John Harrison (2008)
* Emissaries from The Dead by Adam-Troy Castro / Terminal Mind by David Walton (2009, tie)
* Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson (2010)
* The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder (2011)
* The Samuil Petrovitch Trilogy by Simon Morden (2012)
* Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery (2013)
* Countdown City by Ben H. Winters (2014)
* The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison (2015)
* Apex by Ramez Naam (2016)
* The Mercy Journals by Claudia Casper (2017)
* Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn (2018)
* Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman (2019)
* Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker (2020)
* Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine (2021)
* Dead Space by Kali Wallace (2022)
* The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger (2023)
* These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs (2024)
* Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado (2025)

* Category

*[LC Class]: Library of Congress Classification
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