Rudy Rucker

American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Rudolf von Bitter Ruckeris an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of whichboth won Philip K. Dick Awards.

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About the Rudy Rucker

Rudolf von Bitter Ruckeris an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of whichboth won Philip K. Dick Awards. He edited the science fiction webzine Flurb until its closure in 2014.

25 Quotes by Rudy Rucker

  1. 1.

    Some ideas you have to chew on, then roll them around a lot, play with them before you can turn them into funky science fiction.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  2. 2.

    Lately I’ve been working to convince myself that everything is a computation.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  3. 3.

    Selling a book or story has never become absolutely automatic for me.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  4. 4.

    Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  5. 5.

    But how does it feel to plug into a system that’s say, a million times as smart as a person.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  6. 6.

    Now, being a science fiction writer, when I see a natural principle, I wonder if it could fail.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  7. 7.

    If all else fails, there’s always print or web zines.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  8. 8.

    I think dry nanotechnology is probably a dead-end.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  9. 9.

    I like to do things that are surprising and different.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  10. 10.

    Traditional science is all about finding shortcuts.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  11. 11.

    The hard fact is that not everyone does get published.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  12. 12.

    In any case, A New Kind of Science is a wonderful book, and I’m still absorbing its teachings.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  13. 13.

    At present, however, I don’t think the Net is a very good medium for books, books should really be inexpensive lightweight paperbacks you can bang around.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  14. 14.

    I like a book better if I can’t predict what’s going to happen.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  15. 15.

    Electronic distribution is more of a fall-back strategy for putting out a book that isn’t deemed profitable enough to print. You hardly make any money publishing an electronic book.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  16. 16.

    It’s soothing to realize that my mind’s processes are inherently uncontrollable.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  17. 17.

    One of the nice things about science fiction is that it lets us carry out thought experiments.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  18. 18.

    All living things are gnarly, in that they inevitably do things that are much more complex than one might have expected.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  19. 19.

    Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it’s done, keep sending it out for quite awhile.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  20. 20.

    If we suppose that many natural phenomena are in effect computations, the study of computer science can tell us about the kinds of natural phenomena that can occur.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  21. 21.

    If you think of your life as a kind of computation, it’s quite abundantly clear that there’s not going to be a final answer and there won’t be anything particularly wonderful about having the computation halt!

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  22. 22.

    Unfortunately our nation, nay, our world, is run by evil morons.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  23. 23.

    It’s tedious to watch something very obvious being worked out, like a movie that’s not particularly good and after about half an hour you know how it’s going to end.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  24. 24.

    Computations are everywhere, once you begin to look at things in a certain way.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

  25. 25.

    A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules.

    Rudy Rucker

    American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher