The Big AHA

by Rudy Rucker

Biotech has replaced machines. Qrude artist Zad Plant works with living paint. Career’s on the skids, wife Jane threw him out. Enter qwet—it’s quantum wetware! Qwet makes you high and gives you telepathy. A loofy psychedelic revolution begins. Oh-oh! Mouths in midair, eating people! Zad and Jane travel through a wormhole. And meet the aliens. Stranger than you ever imagined. What is the Big Aha? A wild romp through the near future.

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Rudolf 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.

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rudy Rucker writes the funkiest, grooviest, trippiest, heppest SF. Like Philip K. Dick, if Dick weren't paranoid and unhappy. The Big Aha took longer for me to get into compared to some of Rucker's other novels, but it still blew my mind and made me smile.

[Giulio Prisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rudy Rucker‘s last novel, The Big Aha, is pure transreal Ruckeriana with super bio and quantum technologies, steamy technosex, nasty aliens from higher dimensions, and much more, soaked in the unique atmosphere of the magic 60s.
In the second half of this century, everything is done with biotechnology. Nurbs, genetically engineered life forms derived from animals or plants, do almost everything that we do with machines. So you can have a nurb roadspider instead of a car, but your vehicle could decide to eat you if you forget to feed it. Swarms of gnats make high resolution cameras, giant slugs clean the house, and full houses grow on nurb trees. Computer displays and wristphones are also nurbs, made of genetically tweaked squidskin...
New nurbs, starting with the prototype rat Skungy (a talking rat with uploaded human personality!) have something called quantum wetware, or qwet...

See full review (spoiler alert):
http://skefia.com/2013/12/06/the-big-...

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've met the author (a couple of decades ago, at SJ State, when I was in attendance there) - Rudy Rucker is a smart, smart guy, and quite pleasant. I've been a fan of his writing since 1982's Software: the first book in the Ware Tetralogy.

Sadly, though, this book wasn't for me. The tale of Zad, Jane, and the gubs is written in a style that didn't work for me. Most of the characters seemed pretty flat to me. That may be an artifact of the storyline that has them high (on quantum mechanics and telepathy) most of the time. The characters only care about each other or outcomes intermittently and apparently randomly. This makes it hard for me to care, too.

All of this doesn't mean you won't like it, though. If you like soap operas, and fantasy, and science fiction ... you just might like The Big Aha.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I give up. Maybe later??

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quintessential Rucker weirdness. I'd give it five stars for enjoyability, but am marking it down a star because it follows a formula he often uses. Here's how I wrote up the formula for The Hacker and the Ants: Version 2.0. This is exactly how this book works too:

He tends to have the same characters and plot: start with some slightly-or-totally slacker dude (or maybe a kid) and his more-together girlfriend or wife (or parent) and a tone of sometimes-slapstick comedy; then something math-related (usually a differently-dimensional creature) turns everything malleable, things get permanently surreal, and then the characters work with that to make their lives happier in a totally changed world, while foiling any part of the changes that would destroy the world (or whatever).

[Guy Ferguson]

Found this at Pulp Fiction last week,it was with a similar looking edition of 'Mathematicians in Love', which made me think that this also was a reprint of an 80s release.
Not so. 2013. Somehow, new house new job that year- I missed this book's release. I'm glad I read it, it shows Rudy's evolution on style and form. His books are more complete novels now. I'm guessing his manuscripts need half the editing that his Ware manuscript needed.
But there's always a tradeoff - in thermodynamics as in literature- what it's gained in form it's lost in content. The original madness is either too dilute,it perhaps I'm vaccinated with his style. Which isn't Rudy's fault.
I'd love to hear a first to E young readers review.
I enjoyed,but it's not getting filed as a Rucker classic.
G.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rudy Rucker stories always makes me feel like I'm on hallucinogens.

[A.J. Garner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Omg! I am done! Really feeling 2.5 stars, but the rising climax was good.

It should not take 250 of 384 pages to get to the event on the back of the book! Qrude.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing that hits you immediately with a Rucker book is the fun use of language. The made-up words that sound like they should be real words and the real words being used like made-up words start jumping out at you on the very first page of The Big AHA. The entertaining words ('gub', 'qwet', 'qrude', 'loofy') are half of the fun. Everything else is the other half.

I can't easily name a more entertaining first chapter of a novel off the top of my head, so this is currently my Gold Medal winner for Most Entertaining First Chapter of a Novel I've Read in Recent Memory. That's not an award I hand out lightly, you know.

Okay, so it goes without saying that this is a book of mega imagination. Lots of books start out that way but fizzle out halfway through. This does not. If anything, it starts off running and ramps up to the ending. Rucker's stamina for invention is amazing! There are multiple dimensions, biological programming, states of alternate mental reality, telepathy, and much more -- and these things are not just tacked on for fun, they're absolutely fundamental to the story. Much of it is laugh-out-loud funny. Some of it is probably pretty scary if you think about it too much.

For a self-published book, I found very, very few errors. Just a couple really minor typos. I can find little fault with this book on a whole. It's extremely entertaining. Either you're going to like this kind of story or you're not. Either it will entertain you or it will irritate you. But it's very consistent and if you like the first part, you're going to like the next part and the next. So long, qrudes!

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it, but I'm pretty sure I haven't done enough acid to appreciate the extreme weirdness here. I loved Rucker's Ware tetralogy, and I'm no stranger to weird, but this is something else. Also, the story was compelling, but the dramatic tension seemed like an afterthought.

[Jay Munsterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and crazy retro-future psychedelic adventure fueled by quantum computing and nanobots.

[Jeff Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

always give rudy five stars!

[Gabriel Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

A far out quantum hippy mess. Recommended.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd story, but quite enjoyable once you get used to the triply world....

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish this guy didn't think he could paint and hired someone else to illustrate these things. I mean, he's having fun, I guess.