Freeware

Ware #3

by Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker has seen the future. . .and it is extreme.The Godfather of cyberpunk--a mad scientist bravely meddling in the outrageous and heretical--Rucker created Bopper Robots, who rebelled against human society in his award-winning classic "Software.

Now, in 2053, "moldies" are the latest robotic advancement--evolved artificial lifeforms made of soft plastic and gene-tweaked molds and algae, so anatomically inventive and universally despised that their very presence on the planet has thrown the entire low-rent future into a serious tailspin. So the moon is the place to be, if you're a persecuted "moldie" or an enlightened "flesher" intent an creating a new, more utopian hybrid civilization. Of course up there, there are other intergalactic intelligences to contend with--and some not so intelligent--who have their own agendas and appetites.

This is scientific fabulation at its most brazenly inventive--funny, cutting-edge and deeply informed. No writer alive puts it all together like Rudy Rucker.Artificial life forms made of soft plastic and gene-tweaked mold and algae, moldies are evolved robots in the year 2053--anatomically inventive and universally despised. In a sleazy, low-rent future, sexual fraternization with moldies is strictly taboo--a societal sin that is of no concern whatsoever to Randy Karl Tucker. A Kentucky boy who has seriously strayed from the Heritagist religion's stern teachings about the evils of artificial life, Randy feels a definite something for Monique, moldie bookkeeper and maid at the Clearlight Terrace Court Motel But Monique1s sudden and inexplicable abduction from the planet--coupled with unsettling revelations about Randy1s own dubiousorigins--is dragging the degenerate flesher and all those around him into an ugly, conspiratorial mess. . .even as it pulls an unsuspecting humanity ever-closer to a stunning encounter with intergalactic intelligence.

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Novels, Dystopia

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

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

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still in awe with this series, and here's the plain truth: So much happens, so many huge changes to humanity and the Bobbies, that each novel feels like a completely new universe.

However, we've got a truly delicious continuation of family and an evolution of the same characters we've grown to know and love. Yes, even Stay High is still around, as is his father in a way and now we get to see all about his children. :) It's amazing how things turn out.

Especially the mold.

My god! The moldies!!! They killed off all the Bobbies. Intelligent plastics and mold that are perfect shape-changers, wiping out one whole intelligent species to make a mess of everyone else.

And yes, of course they take over the moon and become second-class citizens (and furniture) on Earth. I really like how they can be space-suits and rocket ships and flying gulls and underpaid dishwashers. But as for the story, I especially love how they can become Indian goddesses and how they laugh at human's sexual perversions.

Want mold? Do you looooove mold? *laugh*

This review can't do the book justice. Just know that some of the strangest worlds and words in science fiction comes out of Rudy Rucker's works. He's striving ahead of the post-singularity crowd even before the Singularity crowd has gathered. It's pretty amazing. Let's alter reality with each book and make a real mess of intelligent species, a complete revolution of science and life and understanding wit every generation... and we're not far past 2050!

And to make things worse, aliens are transmitting themselves to unprotected moldies on the moon! It's an invasion of smart and some rather dumb aliens! Oh, no! :) :)

Is it going to be another genocide? Something worse? Will Stay High or his son or anyone else be melted down again and cloned or turned into a robot or a moldie or some sort of standing wave function again? Who knows! Maybe all of the above, and maybe they'll have to ride a moldie's skin while sharing time with an intelligent sunspot that wants to eat the moon like a lollipop. WHO KNOWS!

This is some crazy cool stuff. When we're not getting high with all variations of drugs or mathematical transforms we're inundated with math-speak so beautiful it may as well be poetry! And it is. Poetry that is. :) It's beautiful to see and the images in the text will stay in my mind for a very long time.

This is truly weird SF. This is cutting-edge weird and this one is almost 20 years old now! How odd! :)

And totally awesome, dude. :)

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sentient dildos.

You heard me. The third novel in Rucker's "Ware" tetralogy features (heavily for the first quarter) dildos and other sex toys with a low-grade artificial intelligence (and names!). They are used....liberally.

Is this relevant to the plot? Not remotely. Does it, and the increasingly bizarre sex scenes between humans and "moldies" (the organic/synthetic hybrids that came to existince in the last novel to replace the purely robotic "boppers") feel necessary? Nope. It feels more like shock for its own sake coupled with an unhealthy dose of authorial middle-aged sexual frustration.

The fact that the "moldies" are described as having a perpetually fetid odor and the humans that are sexually attracted to them are known as "cheesebags" gives the whole book a rather scuzzy vibe.

We also have a quasi-Christian religion (Heritagists) that frowns upon such cross-"species" activities as well as aliens that want to eat everything - so I guess there's a plot of sorts.

But really, sentient dildos.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

More wtf? than Wetware.

Huge parts of this book are pornographic. Now, I don't have anything against pornography, per se, and I wouldn't even have considered this as such, except that Rucker is trying so hard to make you believe that Randy Tucker is a pervert.

The problem with pornography is not (necessarily) that it's vile, but that it tends to be boring!

I doubt I'll ever bring myself to read volume 4 (Realware).

[Scot · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild ride! Rucker's science and theory just keep getting better and more interesting and each new iteration of advanced robot life is just so cool. I am excited to see how this series closes.

The characters continue to evolve through the books, and each generation of robots continues to have a wacky sense of humor.

This one follows some of my favorite characters from the first two books and the latest iteration of intelligent robots are moldies - picture sentient blue cheese smelling humanoids with the curiosity of children and the intellects of Mensa.

This series is highly recommended for lovers of futurism, zany psychedelic sci-fi with a 70's feel, and those that appreciate stories with dark humored humans and robots.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seemed more of a bridge between the moldies at the end of book 2, and the aliens in book 4. I liked the change in writing style and the narative perspective of this book, that was quite enjoyable and I am looking forward to seeing how the universe develops into the final book as well as how the series wraps up. If you are reading a review for book 3, I would sugest reading the whole series as this book is not a stand alone and the series is worth the read. This book on its own I would not bother.

Ohh yeah, not really suitable for younger readers, but that is mostly true for most of the series.

Time for book 4

[Florin Pitea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it in preparation of my Ph D Thesis. It was okay, but not up my alley.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the Boppers (intelligent but paranoid robots) were wiped out in the 2030s it wiped out most technology for a while, but its replacement tech, imipolex - malleable smart material, seemed much more amenable to control. However it began to congregate into larger lumps with more intelligence to form pseudo-organisms known as moldies, who by 2050 had found an uneasy acceptance in human society. Able to shape themselves into practically anything, moldies have a short lifespan unless they are upgraded with more imipolex, which generates a lucrative trade in the stuff, particularly among those who cater to human sexual perverts called 'cheeseheads'. However, a new form of imipolex formed in N-dimensional Hilbert space has radically altered the moldies' potential architecture and when a virus is released which can decode cosmic ray wave intelligence into physical form, humans seem likely to be for the scrapheap! Totally mind-bending cyberpunk from Rudy Rucker that will have you glassy-eyed and requiring considerable downtime afterwards! Good stuff.

[Robbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm rounding up to four stars. This was structured with nearly each chapter being a short story that gives a whole lot of back-story and then moves the plot forward a little bit. Each chapter was enjoyable, but it made the book feel like a bit of a slog to me. The most interesting parts – the explanation of tech and theory plus the bit at the end with the aliens and n-dimensional tessellations – felt like they were given short shrift in favor of the weird antics of the characters. Not that the antics weren't enjoyable, but the characters felt too much like creatures of the plot for me to get as much into their personal experiences and I'd have enjoyed thinking about the more sciencey part of the fiction more.

[Paul Nunes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up on a whim from Vinnies.

I loved this! It's so bizarre and yet Rucker is very kind and walks us through this world very kindly. The plain descriptions make what might be too odd to imagine feel ordinary, as the characters might see the world they inhabit. And even though I felt the author was very kindly and gently holding my hand, I never once felt patronised.

Awesome imagination. Really fun. Very interesting. 👍🏼

Note: I did not read the first and second books in the series, yet.

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taking a brief break between books #3 and #4- Rudy is getting way too into his mathematician side for me at this point.

So not only are there these long paragraphs of equations and conceptual quasicrystals that are not my tempo at all, it's also juxtaposed with this chaotic narrative formatting that brings it to consistent halts. It reads with a distinct stutter that makes you want it to be over rather than excited to see where it leads.

Going into the finale soonish and really hoping for something magical to get back to where it all started.

[hyper saline · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sucked. There's a blurb on the back from NYT, "This is your kind of book." I promise you it isn't. 200 pages of religious zealots having sex with amoeba robots, then in the last two chapters, aliens for some reason. Barf

[Stijn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was for me not as good as the second or first one. Many time jumps were making it feel a bit sloppy. The tech and story started out great and fun but then it didn't got to me like the first two books. Hopefully we'll finish in the fourth with a bang.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

B.

[Dana Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but a little tedious.

[Quinton Young III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stay High

[Jarred Walton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The downward trend continues with the third book in the Ware Tetralogy. It's not terrible, but it's nowhere near as entertaining as the first novel.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, some fun parts but overall not my cup of tea.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of Rudy Rucker’s pioneering Ware tetralogy that envisions an absurd world of sentient machines.

Warning: spoiler alert!!

Freeware is the third book in Rudy Rucker’s Ware tetralogy (1982-2000). Spaced out over 25 years (2020-2054), the series follows the lives of a number of west-coast, counter-cultural families, their haphazard and often accidental relationship with rapid technological change defining the narrative dynamic. Based on the idea that life and ultimately consciousness can be expressed by information, it envisions different patterns of consciousness, allowing the character Cobb Anderson who feature in all of the novels to leave his body behind and live ’life’ in different material formats: cybernetic organism, digital storage unit, computational bio-plastic, and four-dimensional space – always insisting that he is a human.

The Chipmold plague unleashed by the human resistors in Wetware (1988) rid of the Moon of boppers, but as it also gave rise to a new bio-plastic material called Imipolex, capable of running sentient machine intelligence, the boppers merely metastasised into a new lifeform called moldies. Made of computational soft plastic, mottled and veined with gene-tweaked moulds and algae, moldies are malodorous and can shapeshift at will, but otherwise display all the characteristics of previous bopper life. At this point in the narrative the plague has already run its course on Earth, which infected all computer systems and ground society to a halt. And it was only when someone came up with the idea to use Imipolex to fix the problem that computers came back online. The Imipolex-based computer fix (Designer Imipolex (DIM)) inadvertently gave rise to a whole new limpware industry, which in turn redefined the human-moldie relationship.

While moldies now live alongside humans on Earth, their rights secured in a citizen’s act, the uneasy human-bopper relationship of the previous novels is perpetuated in only a slightly different format. Moldies are typically looked down upon, performing menial tasks for humans. A new anti-moldie faction called Heritagists has sprung up, and the story kicks off when when Cobb Anderson’s grandson, Heritagist associate Randy Karl Tucker – with a fetish for moldies – uses a new DIM device called a superleech to remote control a moldie. The moldies give as good as they get though, and it is not unusual for a moldie to insert a thinking cap into human brains, bleeding them dry and using the money to buy Imipolex which they need to survive and breed.

Just as the Chipmold plague unintentionally paved the way for the moldie lifeform, so the development of a number of seemingly innocent limpware products has profound and unforeseen consequences for humanity. It is as if Rucker is saying that mankind is predisposed for stumbling along a path of progress blindfolded. He is suggesting that life, in all its complexity, is beyond human comprehension let alone control: what might start off innocently can quite easily end in disaster. Rucker’s low regard for mankind recalls Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (1980), which envisions a regressed post-apocalyptic society unknowingly on the cusp of developing gunpowder, caught in a vicious, eternally recurring cycle of repeating past mistakes.

Where Hoban is the tragicomic, Rucker is the absurdist. The invention of Imipolex begets a series of consumer industries and consumer products, ranging from internal surgery devices to interactive sex toys. It also gives rise to a new product line of pet toys called Silly Potters: small Imipolex based creatures that are sentient but not nearly as intelligent as moldies. Combined with a four-dimensional VR philtre called Perplexing Poultry, which can be connected to a uvvy device, a kind of communication and VR device worn by most people, the talking Silly Potters all of a sudden start to decode and channel the digital personality waves of alien intelligence from all over the universe, including the alien Quuz who wants to gobble up all the moldies, the Earth and Moon. So quite apart from setting the scene for the last instalment of the Ware tetralogy, Freeware, along similar lines to Greg Egan’s Permutation City (1994) and Diaspora (1997), introduces consciousness in its purest digital form, adding an additional layer to the conscious lifeforms explored in the series.

[Felix Zilich · Rating 4 out of 5]

В финале предыдущего романа эволюция на планете делала совершенно непредсказуемый шаг. Созданный концерном IDSL вирус-чипоид не только уничтожил на Луне за пару дней всех роботов-бопперов, но при этом еще и оказался главной причиной эволюционного скачка экспериментальной биомассы, служившей раньше только для создания “плащей счастья”.

Спустя 20 лет после этих событий человечество почти смирилось с существованием своих новых соседей по разуму. “Молди” способны принять любой облик, но они не в состоянии избавиться от своего гнилостного запаха и мерзкой репутации. Эти существа давно стали частью повседневной жизни, выполняя в мире людей только самую грязную и самую черную работу. Никто не любит этих тварей, кроме самых законченных извращенцев. Особенно не любят их за то, что они с легкостью могут взять под контроль любого человека, установив ему всего лишь один мозговой колпачок. Этот неприятный факт, а также его последствия, стали причиной появления новых пуристов, готовых ради этической чистоты пойти на любые жертвы.

Молодой скинхед Рэнди Карл Такер послан своим партийным начальством в Индию, чтобы выяснить подробности разрабатываемого там устройства для контроля над “молди”. Добыв это устройство, Рэнди отправляется в Калифорнию, где начинает заниматься нелегальным отловом своих расовых врагов и насильственной их депортацией за пределы Земли. В процессе погружения в местную среду скинхед узнает о том, что является, на самом деле, сыном скрывающегося до сих пор на Луне программиста Вилли Тейза, а, следовательно, и внуком легендарного изобретателя бопперов Кобба Андерсона

В это время в нескольких милях от его нового обиталища обдолбанный гений Тре Диез, создающий для мэра Стэна Муни новые 3D-модельки, случайно изобретает способ расшифровки путешествующих по космосу в виде энерговолн инопланетян. При его невольном содействии, они начинают вторгаться на Землю и захватывать тела молди…

Нормальному человеку может сорвать репу уже одно описание событий этой книги. Даже я сам, перечитав минуту назад первые три абзаца, тихо ужаснулся и все же вычеркнул пару фраз про “ебать слизь” и “архивировать пришельцев” – пожалуй, это уже слишком даже для меня. Несмотря на все эти тонкости и на тотальную запутанность вполне вменяемого, казалось бы, сюжета, “Freeware” - лучшая часть “железной” тетралогии. Во-первых, писателю удалось по максимуу скрутить в один узел все свои любимые аллюзии – социальные, культурные и теоретические. Тем паче, что сделал он это на густом индийском колорите, приправленном обильными дозами нетрадиционного секса. Но и это мелочи. Пытаясь поднять с каждым романом уровень сложности собственного концепта, Рюкер наконец достиг предела собственного воображения, на котором стоило бы поставить точку.

Рюкер этого не сделал. Он написал четвертую книгу. Жаль.

[Josh T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it! These books just get more and more far out! To begin... my complaints... I will say this one had a different "vibe" to it than the first two. I found the out of sequence non-linearity of the first half+ to be a bit disorientating. It was difficult to follow the timeline because of it's constant jumpings into future/past past/future past/past... etc... despite the chapters being labeled by date...About 2/3 of the way through the book it finally cuts out that non-sense and returns to linearity. It began in medias res so to speak, which I'm generally okay with, and is often considered advisable. But... with this... I was thrown off by it too much.

This story could easily have been made linear. All Rudy Rucker did by going non-linear was confuse me. This book was also a more complex read than the first two, more technical. Sometimes I would read paragraphs and have no clue what the hell I was reading. He would throw in a thousand mathematical and scientific terms I've never even heard of (or perhaps he made up). This made some parts hard to chew through.

Aside from non-linearity, and technicality of writing style, my last complaint is the uncharacteristically long chapters. I loved the short chapters of Software and Wetware. You jump into book 3 and it's, technical, hour long reads per chapter, non-linear. Made for a very awkward reading experience.

HOWEVER!! ALL OF MY COMPLAINING ASIDE.... WHAT A GOOD BOOK!! Yes... despite it's flaws, this was a fun read. Last night I spent over 7 hours during a 12 hour period of time reading a good majority of this book. So despite the chapters being long, the book being more technical, the non-linearity confusing the hell out of me... I enjoyed it in the end. I'm probably going to have to go back and skim through the book though, because there were a LOT of characters, confusing family trees, and my brain just didn't absorb everything on the first read. I should have taken my time with this book, but I really wanted to plow through it last night and move onto the last one. So I suppose that speaks to the quality of it.

I don't really want to say much about this book... I mean... I do... but I'd spoil everything... and if I put spoils in here, who'll read this? Then again, is this huge rant even worth reading? Just my thoughts I guess.

So what can I say... well... this book delved into some farrrrrrr outtttttt ideas that I never would have conceived of. Each book has been like this so far... crazy ideas I have never heard tell of being used before (and I'm a huge science fiction fan, so I like to think I've been exposed to a lot of ideas). All I can say is... I've never read anything quite like these books before.

A dash of humor. A long diatribe of complex science talk. Some crazy twists. Throw in some farrr out ideas... and you got yourself a cool book.

[Christoph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rucker is back again in the third part of this tetralogy. This go around, the moldies, a funambulist life-form that, although superior to humans, are living out a mostly subservient life on Earth while a large colony of them are self-exiled deep within the moon. Meanwhile, a fundamentalist religion has arisen opposing their mere existence on Earth blaming them for the debaucherous habits of humans, called cheeseballs, who like to use them for masturbatory purposes. These mysterious Heritagists are seemingly hatching a unimaginable conspiracy to annihilate them once and for all using a virus transmitted through a psychic phone called a uvvy. Or is it a moldie conspiracy to rise up and destroy the Earth once and for all? It all goes down on Halloween 2053, and then things start getting REALLY WEIRD.

This is just a fun little read, the whole series is so far. There are some moral symbolisms in the inhibited civil rights of the different species and different gender/sex lifestyles of the folks who populate these books, but ultimately its just a wild story. Rucker has invented characters, species, and even a patois all his own in this series that is basically, at its best, cyberpunk on acid. At its worst, the graphic sexual scenes between different lifeforms can be a bit weird to the level of harlequin romance but it serves a purpose in the story. Also the narrative does sort of have a sophomoric tone and plot sometimes becomes stretched thin or squished to fit a timescale but it all just lends itself to the Rucker style. If you read the first two and liked them, this one is sure to please!

[MykÆ G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overly long and creepy (in the sexual predator kind of way). Rucker overstays his welcome here. The story is slow and 60% flashbacks all of which explore the boring and rapey backstories of his unlikable characters.

The ideas and worldbuilding are interesting, but Rucker's imagination fails to capture the implications of any of his many technologies outside of fucking and getting fucked up.

Oddly Deleuzian - there is a pedophile-ish character named Cory Rhizome, among other explicit references - this book yearns for a kind of pure / smooth space libertarianism, but instead embodies that fascistic tendency within the "becoming a body without organs" that Deleuze and Guatarri warn against in One Thousand Plateaus. Everything moral, spiritual, or artistic is uncoded and recoded as a space to rape and exploit.

I wanted so much more from this. Rucker is creepy and perverted in his previous work but it seemed to amount to something, to express something, but this book tastes bad. I would recommend potential readers stop at Wetware if they can even stomach that books rapey vileness.

[KMO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's the review I posted to Amazon:

I loved this book. It's light in style and narrative structure, and Rucker doesn't take himself at all serriously. Rudy Rucker is a brilliant mathmetician and science fiction writer, and his protagonist, Randy Karl Tucker, is an uneducated redneck, whose primary passion is for sex with artificial life forms that smell of cheese. Other characters include a down-to-earth California surfer girl who, along with her stoner mathmatician husband, runs a fleabag sea-side resort in the autonomous nation of California, the head of a corporate empire who made his fortune selling burgers made from the cloned flesh of his half-human wife, and a delighful host of "moldies," artificial life forms with the power of gods, short lifespans, and generally no other ambition than to buy enough of the expensive high-tech goo of which they're made to form a child to perpetuate their own software.

This book is an absolute gem.

[Natasha Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book I read when I was able to check out the "Adult Books" in the library and one of the first Sci-Fi novels that stirred my fascination with the weird and uncommon. I enjoyed the complexity of the story plot, and even though I read this book before reading the first two, this book did what most books in a series can't. It could've been a stand alone novel.

Rudy Rucker explained things I might have missed through action and dialogue and didn't waste my time with long paragraphs of exposition. His word play and ability to describe the world was the best part of the book. I embarrassingly enjoyed his description of being inside a biological android. He elicited emotion from me and taught me how to do the same in my writing.

Since it's been a good ten plus years since I've read this, I think I'll start the series again and take a time machine back to 17.

[Eran · Rating 4 out of 5]

While these books are not amazing, I like how each book is something different with new concepts, plots, and focus, but still following from previous ideas and continuing the same history in a cohesive manner.
Quite a lot of cool tech ideas that are rather well thought out: the moldies themselves (I especially liked the description of how a moldie-bus ripples to get passengers to the back and clear room for new ones), the philters and the ideas of programming the perception of reality (and the use of Wscher and Penrose kind of math), perceiving 2D time, and alien life from that are ascended being decrypted back. So much originality in one book, and despite all the sci-fi it's still mostly comedic and slightly cartoonish (though that is also a slight disadvantage, it gets away with being light, but could also have been amazing delving seriously into any of these ideas).

[Markus Jevring · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was absolute garbage. I quite liked the first book in the trilogy. I had my reservations. The second one was also quite ok, but then for the third, this book, he pulled out all the stops and everything turned to shit. This is one of the few books I have had the dissatisfaction of actually not finishing. It's that bad. Avoid this book if you can. Because of this book, I will never again read Rudy Rucker. If you want to still like Rucker, stop at the first book, Software.

[Susan Rainwater · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to describe Rucker's Ware books? They are engaging, vulgar, addicting, offensive, entertaining, can't put down astonishing, twisted. I can't get away from the twin reactions of "why am I reading this offensive crap" and "I can't wait to see what happens next."

If you are a reader of delicate sensibilities who needs trigger warnings, don't read these books. Have a nice sit down with Jane Austen.

If on the other hand, you are a cyberpunk fan with a sense of adventure, Rucker's Ware tetralogy is for you.

[Scott Holstad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read the first three books of this series and have tried so hard to get into them, but none of them do a damn thing for me. I almost feel guilty because I know people who like them and I generally like cyberpunk, but these have never gripped me in the way that a Gibson or Stephenson often have, let alone many other writers in the genre. Maybe it's simply a subjective matter of tastes. I'm not going to recommend it, but I won't say avoid it either. But if you're not into this particular sub-genre, I would probably stay away...

[Angela Randall]

Rudy Rucker has reprinted the series as a complete set: The Ware Tetralogy. As a bonus, he's also released the whole Tetralogy as a free PDF available on his site.

[Mark Schomburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great first half. Then starts picking up the pieces of the earlier novels and gets blocky. Odd that the undersea creatures of one chapter don't also receive the moldie treatment - a little inconsistent, which changes the overall tone of the book, jarringly by its sudden naturalism. The reader shouldn't be temporarily removed from such a strange world as this, because it disrupts the unreality onslaught.