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Postsingular #2
Hylozoic
In Rucker's last novel, Postsingular , the Singularity happened. Life on Earth has been transformed by the awakening of all matter into consciousness and telepathic communication. The most intimate moments of your life can be experienced by anyone who cares to pay attention, or by hundreds of thousands of anyones if you are one of the Founders who helped create the Singularity.
The small bunch of Founders, including young newlyweds Thuy, a hypertext novelist, and Jayjay, a gamer and brain-enhancement addict, are living a popular live-action media life. But now alien races that have already gone through this transformation notice Earth for the first time, and begin to arrive to exploit both the new environment and any available humans. Some of them are real estate developers, some are slavers, and some just want to help. But who is to tell the difference? Someone has to save humanity from the alien invasions, and it might as well be reality media stars Thuy and Jayjay. They have the problems of soap opera stars, and are still propelled through adventures in time and in other universes, a long strange trip indeed.
The small bunch of Founders, including young newlyweds Thuy, a hypertext novelist, and Jayjay, a gamer and brain-enhancement addict, are living a popular live-action media life. But now alien races that have already gone through this transformation notice Earth for the first time, and begin to arrive to exploit both the new environment and any available humans. Some of them are real estate developers, some are slavers, and some just want to help. But who is to tell the difference? Someone has to save humanity from the alien invasions, and it might as well be reality media stars Thuy and Jayjay. They have the problems of soap opera stars, and are still propelled through adventures in time and in other universes, a long strange trip indeed.
336 pages, Paperback
First published May 26, 2009
About the author
Rudy Rucker
196 books597 followersRudolf von Bitter Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre. He is best known for his Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which won Philip K. Dick awards. Presently, Rudy Rucker edits the science fiction webzine Flurb.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 27, 2013
After the events of Postsingular, not only can every human on Earth teleport and use telepathy, every bit of matter on the planet, from a stream, to the individual droplets in the stream, to the individual atoms that make it up, has its own consciousness and can be communicated with. Rocks can implore you not to move them, or they may ask to be made into a wall next to other rocks they like. But this new world has attracted the attention of other alien races, who wish to exploit the newly hylozoic planet Earth, or the human inhabitants, for their own ends. It's up to Thuy and Jayjay and Chu to save the world, if they can get over their own personal drama in the progress.
Postsingular was pretty weird, but this takes it to a whole new level. And yet, there's still a dazzling array of ideas, and he really manages to sell not only the central notion of the book, of what it would be like in a world where you could talk to anything, but also introduces the threat of two alien races, one of whom has a particularly innovative method of attack... stealing the world's "gnarl" to press-gang matter into performing their own calculations. It's hard to explain well, but it's a nifty concept that I was surprised I wound up liking as much as I did.
Unfortunately, the book suffers from the same problems its predecessor did, only moreso. First, the characters feel a little flat, with a very similar voice. Like they're all one person performing several roles with a few changes like a different accent, or a little less emotion. It's only worse when one of the plot points is these characters literally becoming more simplistic and stereotyped for short periods of time. Secondly, it seems just when we're focusing on fascinating territory, he suddenly goes off in a completely separate direction and we spend a load of time in, say, 16th century Netherlands in a parallel universe. The Hibrane is one of the concepts I liked least about the previous book, and it comes up here again, and the author is far more interested with predestination time loops and deus ex machinas than I am.
There's still some things to enjoy, and over all I did like the book, I just wanted it to be a couple notches less weird.
Postsingular was pretty weird, but this takes it to a whole new level. And yet, there's still a dazzling array of ideas, and he really manages to sell not only the central notion of the book, of what it would be like in a world where you could talk to anything, but also introduces the threat of two alien races, one of whom has a particularly innovative method of attack... stealing the world's "gnarl" to press-gang matter into performing their own calculations. It's hard to explain well, but it's a nifty concept that I was surprised I wound up liking as much as I did.
Unfortunately, the book suffers from the same problems its predecessor did, only moreso. First, the characters feel a little flat, with a very similar voice. Like they're all one person performing several roles with a few changes like a different accent, or a little less emotion. It's only worse when one of the plot points is these characters literally becoming more simplistic and stereotyped for short periods of time. Secondly, it seems just when we're focusing on fascinating territory, he suddenly goes off in a completely separate direction and we spend a load of time in, say, 16th century Netherlands in a parallel universe. The Hibrane is one of the concepts I liked least about the previous book, and it comes up here again, and the author is far more interested with predestination time loops and deus ex machinas than I am.
There's still some things to enjoy, and over all I did like the book, I just wanted it to be a couple notches less weird.
September 13, 2016
Vibby stuff. The story continues Rucker’s Postsingular where everything is awake and full of silps by the end; thus, hylozoic.
This book is full to the brim of gnarl, my kiqqies. We’ve got the Pengo tulpas trying to rune all of Earth’s atoms for themselves, to make everything more uniform, predictable, and dull. Then the hrull are there, ostensibly opposing them but really just looking for pushers they can hook on their gel. Hieronymus Bosch makes an appearance and gains inspiration for his most famous pieces.
I wish I could just teep this stuff to you but the lazy eight isn’t awakened yet. The Lost Chord has not yet been strummed. If it had, maybe i could just teek my own copy and create a metanovel like Thuy or become a Zedhead like Jayjay and think at the ten tridecillion thoughts per second level. The Planck foam in between the branes with subbies poking out, grabbing at us, would be something to see and i like the idea of being a hyperdense, ultraquick one-foot tall gnome in the hibrane.
Like i said, vibby stuff.
This book is full to the brim of gnarl, my kiqqies. We’ve got the Pengo tulpas trying to rune all of Earth’s atoms for themselves, to make everything more uniform, predictable, and dull. Then the hrull are there, ostensibly opposing them but really just looking for pushers they can hook on their gel. Hieronymus Bosch makes an appearance and gains inspiration for his most famous pieces.
I wish I could just teep this stuff to you but the lazy eight isn’t awakened yet. The Lost Chord has not yet been strummed. If it had, maybe i could just teek my own copy and create a metanovel like Thuy or become a Zedhead like Jayjay and think at the ten tridecillion thoughts per second level. The Planck foam in between the branes with subbies poking out, grabbing at us, would be something to see and i like the idea of being a hyperdense, ultraquick one-foot tall gnome in the hibrane.
Like i said, vibby stuff.
April 22, 2016
Prepare for a multi-dimensional mind-bend. Though it took some time to really get into this novel--Rucker fills the first chapters with geeky descriptions of all the cool new powers the denizens of his future earth posess, like a fan at a convention, as if to say, don't you wish you lived here?--once the plot warmed up it took off running. By the end you are a convert and an expert on teleportation, sub-dimensional navigation, and the hazards of getting hooked on Alien substances. I don't so much wish I lived there, but feel like I kind of already do. A few climax points are snarled in the trappings of the Action/Adventure form, but this makes them no less engaging. If I had any complaints, I would say he played his full hand too early, and didn't save enough of physics and mystery for the end, resorting to a god-metaphor near the end of the journey. But like discovering a new drug, I find myself eager to read more Rudy Rucker has to offer.
October 20, 2009
So much fun, super easy & quick to read, chock full of thick ideas about life, the universe, and everything. I think I enjoyed Postsingular more as a novel, but this was just as good a reading experience. I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in quantum mechanics, weird science, cosmic spirituality, occultism, aliens, nature, art, and computers. Basically if you live in the silicon valley you will 'get' this book.
October 25, 2015
I read the book mainly for the ambience rather than for the plot or the characters. I really liked the ambience of Postsingular, which is a precursor to this book because it felt cosmic, in some sense. Hylozoic too has that cosmic vibe, perhaps more so, and so I enjoyed reading it as well. My only complaint is that the last bit seemed rather compressed like as if he was in a rush to get the book completed.
May 16, 2019
Hylozoic by Rudy Rukker
I recently added about twelve books to my library. They were all bargain books, but were also authors whose work I've not yet read. Hylozoic is book two to a series, but there are enough breadcrumbs in the book to fill in any blank details necessary to bring a reader up to speed. This is a good thing because of many of the made-up words and colloquialisms. This is a book about a singularity phenomenon that takes the world by storm and makes everyone aware that all living things have awareness and allow them to Teep (telepathically) each other and inanimate objects. And it's a novel that's hard to follow; not because it's book two and not because the science is most the time hand-wavium enough to suggest that this was someone’s thought experiment that tried to manifest on paper. It's more a matter of having characters that are so disconnected despite the fact that the whole concept is supposing that they are connected with everything.
We start the story with newlyweds Jayjay and Thuy trying to put together their new home in what almost sounds like a secluded area where they can literally commune with nature. The biggest conflict seems to be with the nearby stream named Gloob who is not excited about new neighbors moving rocks and other features away from his pleasant flow. There’s a good thirty five pages of setting things up, which for a new reader is good because it helps realize what you're getting into.
For the most part the science sounds like magic and it acts a lot like it also. But there are rules and Jayjay has a potential for getting too into things when dealing with Gaia so he has to avoid it like an addict, which is probably the first noticeable conflict. But this is a slow moving story and even after he slips off the wagon on his honeymoon night leaving Thuy to go to bed alone, it takes even longer before the reader begins to realize that Jayjay's habit has led to the first step in an alien invasion.
As to the magic world, I was almost ready to draw comparisons to Diane Duane’s Wizard series; but this story contains too many elements that sound more like Bill and Ted’s Awesome adventures. Mix that with Charles Stross Singularity and banal mentions of body functions and slowly add in some disturbing underage sex elements it becomes apparent that though it reads like Young Adult it quickly becomes something I wouldn't suggest to my grandchildren.
There’s a story in here somewhere and I made it all the way to the end. It is about alien invasion. Two races; the birdlike Pengo and the stingray like Hrull are enabled access to Earth through the process that brought the singularity. While the Pengo are after our world with the thought of driving us to extinction, the Hrull want people who can Teep to help push them through the universe. And the Earth is left with the most unlikely group of people to save it; although they have already saved the Earth once. But it's difficult to sort out what the real conflict is in the story and at one point this reader almost thought it might be a matter of who the father of the baby was, but I don't want to spoil the story so I'll leave it at that.
If you're looking for something that is strictly fantasy in a world of Telepathic, Teleporting Magic that is explained through technology derived of the singularity (which makes it mostly inscrutable to us mortals) this is the book for you. I want to call it SFF, but it’s really mostly meant for Fantasy readers; though there might be some put off about having too much fascinating but strange science in their fantasy.
J.L. Dobias
I recently added about twelve books to my library. They were all bargain books, but were also authors whose work I've not yet read. Hylozoic is book two to a series, but there are enough breadcrumbs in the book to fill in any blank details necessary to bring a reader up to speed. This is a good thing because of many of the made-up words and colloquialisms. This is a book about a singularity phenomenon that takes the world by storm and makes everyone aware that all living things have awareness and allow them to Teep (telepathically) each other and inanimate objects. And it's a novel that's hard to follow; not because it's book two and not because the science is most the time hand-wavium enough to suggest that this was someone’s thought experiment that tried to manifest on paper. It's more a matter of having characters that are so disconnected despite the fact that the whole concept is supposing that they are connected with everything.
We start the story with newlyweds Jayjay and Thuy trying to put together their new home in what almost sounds like a secluded area where they can literally commune with nature. The biggest conflict seems to be with the nearby stream named Gloob who is not excited about new neighbors moving rocks and other features away from his pleasant flow. There’s a good thirty five pages of setting things up, which for a new reader is good because it helps realize what you're getting into.
For the most part the science sounds like magic and it acts a lot like it also. But there are rules and Jayjay has a potential for getting too into things when dealing with Gaia so he has to avoid it like an addict, which is probably the first noticeable conflict. But this is a slow moving story and even after he slips off the wagon on his honeymoon night leaving Thuy to go to bed alone, it takes even longer before the reader begins to realize that Jayjay's habit has led to the first step in an alien invasion.
As to the magic world, I was almost ready to draw comparisons to Diane Duane’s Wizard series; but this story contains too many elements that sound more like Bill and Ted’s Awesome adventures. Mix that with Charles Stross Singularity and banal mentions of body functions and slowly add in some disturbing underage sex elements it becomes apparent that though it reads like Young Adult it quickly becomes something I wouldn't suggest to my grandchildren.
There’s a story in here somewhere and I made it all the way to the end. It is about alien invasion. Two races; the birdlike Pengo and the stingray like Hrull are enabled access to Earth through the process that brought the singularity. While the Pengo are after our world with the thought of driving us to extinction, the Hrull want people who can Teep to help push them through the universe. And the Earth is left with the most unlikely group of people to save it; although they have already saved the Earth once. But it's difficult to sort out what the real conflict is in the story and at one point this reader almost thought it might be a matter of who the father of the baby was, but I don't want to spoil the story so I'll leave it at that.
If you're looking for something that is strictly fantasy in a world of Telepathic, Teleporting Magic that is explained through technology derived of the singularity (which makes it mostly inscrutable to us mortals) this is the book for you. I want to call it SFF, but it’s really mostly meant for Fantasy readers; though there might be some put off about having too much fascinating but strange science in their fantasy.
J.L. Dobias
February 18, 2022
Rucker, Rudy. Hylozoic. Postsingular No. 2. Tor, 2009.
Hylozoism is an ancient Greek doctrine that held that all matter had life. Gaia is a goddess that personifies the Earth and everything it contains as a single, unified organism. What the Greeks did not add to the picture was that it was all the result of human evolution and nanotechnology. For that, you need Rudy Rucker and the singularity that makes everything sentient and telepathic. Rucker’s Gaia “presented herself as fat Earth globe wearing a cartoon face.” Hylozoic begins with JayJay and Thuy on their honeymoon in a world in which privacy is no longer possible and where if you trip over a rock, it will tell you that you should watch your step, and if you are using a rock to build a wall, it will tell you what rock it would like to cuddle up with. JayJay doesn’t mind. He likes communing with nature as, Rucker tells us in his lengthy writing notes (Notes for Crazy Mathematicians (rudyrucker.com)), he is “open to paracomputation.” But the Hylozoic age does not stay halcyon for very long. The singularity, it seems, has brought us to the attention of highly evolved aliens from other stars, not all of whom are friendly. There are some birdlike creatures that say they got rid of all the nasty furries in their biosphere millennia ago and would like to do the same for Gaia. Then some dimensional time travel happens, and JayJay and his friends help Hieronymus Bosch realize his visions, which may or may not be those we find in our museums. 4 postsingular stars.
Hylozoism is an ancient Greek doctrine that held that all matter had life. Gaia is a goddess that personifies the Earth and everything it contains as a single, unified organism. What the Greeks did not add to the picture was that it was all the result of human evolution and nanotechnology. For that, you need Rudy Rucker and the singularity that makes everything sentient and telepathic. Rucker’s Gaia “presented herself as fat Earth globe wearing a cartoon face.” Hylozoic begins with JayJay and Thuy on their honeymoon in a world in which privacy is no longer possible and where if you trip over a rock, it will tell you that you should watch your step, and if you are using a rock to build a wall, it will tell you what rock it would like to cuddle up with. JayJay doesn’t mind. He likes communing with nature as, Rucker tells us in his lengthy writing notes (Notes for Crazy Mathematicians (rudyrucker.com)), he is “open to paracomputation.” But the Hylozoic age does not stay halcyon for very long. The singularity, it seems, has brought us to the attention of highly evolved aliens from other stars, not all of whom are friendly. There are some birdlike creatures that say they got rid of all the nasty furries in their biosphere millennia ago and would like to do the same for Gaia. Then some dimensional time travel happens, and JayJay and his friends help Hieronymus Bosch realize his visions, which may or may not be those we find in our museums. 4 postsingular stars.
April 13, 2022
In this sequel to Post-Singular many of the same characters handle new problems in their post-post-singularity lives. It's better written than the previous entry, but the human characters still don't completely behave like humans. More Alice in Wonderland with lots of interesting ideas coming faster than they can be explained or dealt with. I started wondering if the male main character was being punished for the sins of the author. Go easy on the guy. It hasn't been easy for either of you.
Quick read. Telekinesis, telepresence, teleportation, subdimensions, hot aliens that smell like broccoli, and best of all, quality time with a version of Hieronymus Bosch. I liked it.
Quick read. Telekinesis, telepresence, teleportation, subdimensions, hot aliens that smell like broccoli, and best of all, quality time with a version of Hieronymus Bosch. I liked it.
December 17, 2021
My dislike of this book reminds me of the dislike I have for rap music: it is too quick, too different, maybe I feel like I'm missing the point. Is it a thing that should resonate with me except that I'm too old to "get it?" It feels glib. It doesn't have rich descriptions or action sequences that grab me up. The book creates a world where every atom can have a consciousness, and has the opportunity to weave a story of vast social significance, but it declines to do so. This is not a book I am likely to read again. It was hard enough to finish it the first time.
August 21, 2018
The book starts off great, but Rucker piles on more and more stuff as things progress, by the middle I got overwhelmed and by 2/3rds it became unbearable. There are no rules in Hylozoic Universe and almost anything can and does happen. The characters behave unpredictably and it's hard to sympathize with them - they are just devices to pull more and more rabbits out of hats.
One of the rare instances when I could not finish the book.
One of the rare instances when I could not finish the book.
June 8, 2017
Awful book. Postsingular was worth reading but this one wasn't.
December 15, 2021
what a wild rollercoaster..so much FUN. always a pleasure to read another Rucker :D
March 7, 2014
When I saw this story was set in a post-singularity world, I was bracing myself for a horrible nerdy wankfest. But this book manages to avoid that! The author makes good use of their setting and produces a pretty original and interesting sci-fi universe.
The big weakness of this book is the character interactions. The author has a tin ear for human dialogue, every character (from teenagers to aliens) sounds exactly the same, and some interactions simply don't make sense.
The book is also weirdly paced, and rarely does it ever feel like there are any great challenges the characters have to overcome. The climax of the story comes and goes so quickly that you'll barely notice it.
Read this book if you're looking for some science fiction ideas that you probably haven't encountered before, not if you're looking for a well-paced story populated by relatable characters.
The big weakness of this book is the character interactions. The author has a tin ear for human dialogue, every character (from teenagers to aliens) sounds exactly the same, and some interactions simply don't make sense.
The book is also weirdly paced, and rarely does it ever feel like there are any great challenges the characters have to overcome. The climax of the story comes and goes so quickly that you'll barely notice it.
Read this book if you're looking for some science fiction ideas that you probably haven't encountered before, not if you're looking for a well-paced story populated by relatable characters.
June 17, 2014
I couldn't finish it. I went to a bookstore and the guy working was super friendly but they didn't have what I was after. I forget what title I was looking for that day but I told the guy I like hard scifi like Asimov and the like for some reason he recommended this to me and yeah, it opens with a reality show of some sort... not exactly hard scifi. And it's not the authors fault in the least I just didn't enjoy any aspect of the book within the first dozen pages or show. It felt very tween and it felt like it was trying to hard to be relevant to our time. But that is just my opinion I'm sure it's a great book. Just not the kinda thing I want to read from my initial impression. I'm sure I'll come back to and when I do I will update my review, until then I consider this book 1 star.
Read
July 28, 2011Hylozoic manages to build on the characters and situations in Postsingular in such a way that it increased my enjoyment of the first book. However, I got the sinking feeling 30 pages from the end that I was reading a mid-trilogy book. I couldn't really see how he was going to manage to wrap it up before I hit the back cover, but he manages to pull it off and the story comes to a satisfying conclusion.
To paraphrase the final paragraph: "It's all tangled up, It dosen't make enough sense, but it is what it is, and he dosn't have to write the third one."
To paraphrase the final paragraph: "It's all tangled up, It dosen't make enough sense, but it is what it is, and he dosn't have to write the third one."
Read
February 25, 2016Reading now. A follow on from Postsingular. Across his collection of works, Rudy Rucker has comprehensvely described a world on every level, from the sub-quantum Hi-Braners, to the universe spanning lifeforms who spin up to universe size to travel across the 'verse. He's taken Abbot's Flatland and postulated life within a super-rich, multi-dimensional world. One day I hope physicists will tell their children about the visionary that wrote of their findings centuries before they were made real in dry scientific papers. I hate the word visionary, but Rudy is amazing.
June 3, 2009
Zany fun, as usual. This is a sequel to Postsingular.
September 14, 2009
More fantasy than science fiction really, but still terrifically wild
March 27, 2010
This is my favorite Rudy Rucker novel.
Read
December 29, 2010A quick and enjoyable read, refreshing after my last book which a bit of a slog. I love me some Rudy Rucker!
July 23, 2010
great book Rudy Rucker is the best!
April 26, 2011
It's bananas.
July 10, 2013
I guess this book is not a standalone like I thought it was. Oh, well. Hylozoic is so awful I couldn't make it past chapter four, so I don't care what I might have missed in the earlier book.
April 14, 2016
Amusing.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews