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Saucer Wisdom
Brace yourself when you open this book, for it purports to be the about the visions of neat biotechnologies one Frank Shook brings back from future times where he has been taken to by flying saucers, and gives to the writer, Rudy Rucker, who's telling the story. That's an odd way to begin a work of popular science . . . . but amusing.
Please heed the warning from the Introduction by Bruce "If you are examining Saucer Wisdom imagining that Rudy (or some fictional 'Frank Shook') has been actually logging a lot of on board saucer time, well, you can knock that off right now. Rudy Rucker made up the flying saucer part. There is no actual flying saucer. The saucer is not an interplanetary faster-than-light device. Its what we professional authors like to call a narrative device.
"I'm going to spill the beans as directly as I can Saucer Wisdom is a work of popular science speculation. Its a nonfiction book in which Prof. Rucker takes a few quirky grains of modern scientific fact, drops them into the colorful tide pool of his own imagination, and harvests a major swarm of abalones, jellyfish, and giant anemones.
"Pop-science writers didn't used to treat 'science' in this boisterous way, but there might well be a trend here, there may be a real future in this. Saucer Wisdom is a book by a well-qualified mathematician and computer scientist, a veteran pop science writer, in which 'science' is treated, not as some distant and rarefied quest for absolute knowledge, but as naturally great source material for a really long, cool rant."
Rucker, in character, describes, and illustrates with delightful cartoon sketches (the way he would use chalk and a blackboard while talking science), the world of the progressively more distant future as it is transformed by computer technology, biotechnology, and human evolution. He also describes a hell of a party in Berkeley. Popular science writing will never be the same.
Please heed the warning from the Introduction by Bruce "If you are examining Saucer Wisdom imagining that Rudy (or some fictional 'Frank Shook') has been actually logging a lot of on board saucer time, well, you can knock that off right now. Rudy Rucker made up the flying saucer part. There is no actual flying saucer. The saucer is not an interplanetary faster-than-light device. Its what we professional authors like to call a narrative device.
"I'm going to spill the beans as directly as I can Saucer Wisdom is a work of popular science speculation. Its a nonfiction book in which Prof. Rucker takes a few quirky grains of modern scientific fact, drops them into the colorful tide pool of his own imagination, and harvests a major swarm of abalones, jellyfish, and giant anemones.
"Pop-science writers didn't used to treat 'science' in this boisterous way, but there might well be a trend here, there may be a real future in this. Saucer Wisdom is a book by a well-qualified mathematician and computer scientist, a veteran pop science writer, in which 'science' is treated, not as some distant and rarefied quest for absolute knowledge, but as naturally great source material for a really long, cool rant."
Rucker, in character, describes, and illustrates with delightful cartoon sketches (the way he would use chalk and a blackboard while talking science), the world of the progressively more distant future as it is transformed by computer technology, biotechnology, and human evolution. He also describes a hell of a party in Berkeley. Popular science writing will never be the same.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
3 people are currently reading
123 people want to read
About the author
Rudy Rucker
196 books591 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 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 7, 2019
If you clipped out one long chapter near the beginning (which was not narrative in orientation) but was rather a long explanatory chapter about the future, then this story would have been very entertaining. The set up and concept was great and fun to read. But that one chapter nearly killed my desire to progress.
April 10, 2020
Basically I gave up on this book. While the premise was interesting at the start it soon turned into just silliness.
As you can guess from the title the story revolves around a fiction writer contacted by someone who claims to have had multiple trips in a flying saucer into what they claim as "paratime".
May appeal to a young audience
As you can guess from the title the story revolves around a fiction writer contacted by someone who claims to have had multiple trips in a flying saucer into what they claim as "paratime".
May appeal to a young audience
July 3, 2008
It can be said that the storyline is a bit flimsy, but I really enjoyed the ideas put forth in there. Of course, I barely grasped the technical explanations behind half of them, but it was still interesting to see all the refreshing ideas.
All the different gadgets and events he proposes would probably be enough to be the basis of at least another ten SF books.
All the different gadgets and events he proposes would probably be enough to be the basis of at least another ten SF books.
October 18, 2012
Kinda Science fiction, but super bizarro book about the future through the eyes of cyberpunk genius Rudy Rucker. So the story is a time travel comes from the future to tell Rudy all about and he is supposed to write a book about the future of science and technology. Not much of a story but it is a funny look at the possible future. Makes you think and Laugh.
September 15, 2008
The story is typical Rucker stoner meanderings but the ideas and inventions are great. Very familiar to readers of the Ware series and other Rucker novels. Learn the origins of the uvvy, alla, lifebox, piezoplastic, etc.
July 7, 2007
Funny as all get out. I loved this book not just because of the story but it had hand drawings. It was wonderful. Or I'm totally crazy.
September 22, 2024
I have been trying to remember for ages which weird book I read when I was younger had a scene advertising genetically engineered tongues as a better alternative to personal grooming than soft robotics.
And here it is.
And here it is.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 21, 2022
Whimsical, optimistic, original. Slightly uncomfortable at times, in a good way.
Read
May 24, 2023Look, this book is fine. There's nothing wrong with it.
It's just super not my thing in the least. Like, at all. Not even a little bit. There's very little hard sci-fi that I enjoy.
It's just super not my thing in the least. Like, at all. Not even a little bit. There's very little hard sci-fi that I enjoy.
February 21, 2010
This is probably my favorite bk by Rucker yet. It gave me a new respect for him. Its framing device is that he meets a man named 'Frank Shook' who has a technique for traveling thru "paratime" w/ 'saucer' creatures who teach him about future developments that he then informs Rucker about. In addition to an impressive quantity of tech ideas, there's plenty here to make the plot twisty & multi-leveled.
For one thing, Rucker & Shook & co go to a Mondo 2000 party. Rucker uses this passage to both praise Mondo 2000 (a magazine that once promoted an event of mine - thusly aiding the quantity of participation enormously) & to humorously describe why he won't write for them anymore. This touch added immensely to the purported autobiographical approach - as did Rucker's attempts to withdraw from alcohol (although I have no idea whether Rucker, in 'real' life has had a problem w/ booze). Like everything else I've read by him so far, this is a very California novel - filled w/ New Age, Hippie, Stoner, Silicon Valley, & Surfer culture. Interestingly, the back cover says: "File Under Science/UFOs" & the inside copyright, etc, page has this:
"The right of Rudy Rucker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988"
Is this a clever way of making the 'Frank Shook' story more believable? An actual requirement of the publisher to try to prevent claims on the work? Whatever the case may be, Bruce Sterling's Introduction contests the believability that there's really a 'Frank Shook' person behind it all. It seems unlikely to me too.. but not completely impossible! Regardless, the 'Shook' frame makes the story that much richer.
My friend Jona Pelovska reads Rucker's science bks, wch I've never read. "Saucer Wisdom" (the title of wch I don't particularly like) motivates me to read everything I can find by him - including the science stuff wch I might not ordinarily be that interested in.
Maybe the only thing that keeps me from giving this bk a "5 star rating" is the writing style. Rucker's writing is a very straight-forward 'pulp' style that makes for easy reading but, even though he plays w/ that in some interesting ways & even though there're other 'pulp' writers who have an astounding 'poetic' feel for language, it always seems to never really flow the way that 'pulp' greats like Hammett & Chandler do.
An interesting coincidence, for me at least, is that when I came to the "Devil's Tower" part of the story I was sitting 5 feet away from a VHS copy of a National Park movie about Devil's Tower that I'd had sitting around for a mnth or so. I stopped reading long enuf to check out the movie. I love that kind of synchronicity.
For one thing, Rucker & Shook & co go to a Mondo 2000 party. Rucker uses this passage to both praise Mondo 2000 (a magazine that once promoted an event of mine - thusly aiding the quantity of participation enormously) & to humorously describe why he won't write for them anymore. This touch added immensely to the purported autobiographical approach - as did Rucker's attempts to withdraw from alcohol (although I have no idea whether Rucker, in 'real' life has had a problem w/ booze). Like everything else I've read by him so far, this is a very California novel - filled w/ New Age, Hippie, Stoner, Silicon Valley, & Surfer culture. Interestingly, the back cover says: "File Under Science/UFOs" & the inside copyright, etc, page has this:
"The right of Rudy Rucker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988"
Is this a clever way of making the 'Frank Shook' story more believable? An actual requirement of the publisher to try to prevent claims on the work? Whatever the case may be, Bruce Sterling's Introduction contests the believability that there's really a 'Frank Shook' person behind it all. It seems unlikely to me too.. but not completely impossible! Regardless, the 'Shook' frame makes the story that much richer.
My friend Jona Pelovska reads Rucker's science bks, wch I've never read. "Saucer Wisdom" (the title of wch I don't particularly like) motivates me to read everything I can find by him - including the science stuff wch I might not ordinarily be that interested in.
Maybe the only thing that keeps me from giving this bk a "5 star rating" is the writing style. Rucker's writing is a very straight-forward 'pulp' style that makes for easy reading but, even though he plays w/ that in some interesting ways & even though there're other 'pulp' writers who have an astounding 'poetic' feel for language, it always seems to never really flow the way that 'pulp' greats like Hammett & Chandler do.
An interesting coincidence, for me at least, is that when I came to the "Devil's Tower" part of the story I was sitting 5 feet away from a VHS copy of a National Park movie about Devil's Tower that I'd had sitting around for a mnth or so. I stopped reading long enuf to check out the movie. I love that kind of synchronicity.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews