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Given Rudy Rucker's previous dependence upon Penrose tiling in the Ware Tetralogy, it was surprising that it was only mentioned once, obliquely, when a building was described as having an irregular pattern of triangles. However, readers of Postsingular would benefit from an understanding of Cantor dust, reversible computing, quantum computing, entropy in the context of bitstrings, public key cryptography, timing attacks, nanobot gray goo scenarios, Planck units and the untestable pseudo-science of superstring theory.

The extensive writing notes are available and provide character background information, deleted scenes, book promotion details and interaction with publishers and literary agents. The latter may may of particular interest to lesser-known science fiction authors. The writing notes also reveal that Postsingular was heavily influenced by Charles Stross' Accelerando and the attempt to build and differentiate from this work may explain why Postsingular errs more towards Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon rather than the Ware Tetralogy.

Postsingular has numerous plot holes. For example, it is never explained why a telepathic race retains speech. Nor is it explained how a quantum shielded building remains unmapped when nanobots freely pass in and out of the area. There is also a pointlessly grating book-within-a-book which is being written by a needlessly exotic character. Furthermore, the book-within-a-book becomes an increasingly belated account of an event which would have experienced by every potential reader. By far, it is not the best example of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.

The climax is less satisfying than any of the Tetralogy books because allegiances switch freely and the final line-up of "good guys" win through superior firepower rather than moral imperative. Postsingular could have explored folklore, religion, memes and imagery in much more detail. Instead, it concentrated a rogue hacker saving the world, a corrupt politician, San Francisco counter-culture, an indifferent/malevolent AI, a boy genius and an evil genius with tertiary transsexual characteristics. I'm vaguely surprised that there wasn't an antagonist with an evil hand. Although Postsingular is inferior to Snowcrash and Accelerando, it is superior to Cryptonomicon, the Difference Engine and REAMDE. Despite much silliness, it is thoroughly enjoyable.

Postsingular is available under a restrictive Creative Commons licence. However, HTML and PDF versions may by truncated. An EPub [PKZip of XML] with SHA512 fafc56c94f71969535b5e568582cdfb3bcbbb951b7b00f6518492012c7b5488b82d580a77c6ecfdaf03b3b2af7ae0c100a461063dc65202c3766b41c87474d1c may be preferable. The sequel, Hylozoic, is available under commercial license.

Original Submission

The Ware Tetralogy forms part of a virtuous circle of science fiction. In addition to the first two books each obtaining the Philip K. Dick Literary Award, the books build upon some of the core ideas from Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. However, it explores placement of self-preservation ahead of subservience in the form of the Three Laws Of Robotics. This leads to an initially inexplicable question of why robots in a ruthlessly Darwinian free-market anarchy would display their internal state so vividly. However, this is all part of a progression of technology and intelligence which progresses over a number of computational substrates.

This is pro-sex, pro-drug trans-humanism. Although, for a mathematician accustomed to abstract thinking, Rudy Rucker writes the most cringeworthy, heteronormative, sex scenes from a cisgender, masculine point-of-view. This is not helped by over-use of "fractal", in particular, when describing pleasure from the increased surface area between two entities which are not on a mammalian substrate. Likewise, one of the many drugs, Merge, is toony enough for it form the basis of a Futurama episode. Thankfully, this is one of Rudy Rucker's more experiemental ideas and it can be ignored without adversely affecting the plot. To get the most from these books, it may be useful to have an understanding of backoff algorithms (such as RFC1191 and TCP Cubic), fractals, Penrose tessellation, cellular automata (and associated use as a computational substrate), Conway Life Gliders, N-dimensional space in the context of Flatland and pop-culture understanding of Lewis Carroll's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Of these, the literary references are most beneficial.

Some locations have familiarity: a beach-front hut, a sleazy speak-easy, a grand cavern, a lunar dome and marginal accommodation which could be taken from Total Recall, The Expanse or Babylon5. However, this is vastly preferable to some of the needlessly exotic locations found in an Iain Banks novel, an Eoin Colfer novel or a typical James Bond film.

The structure of each book peaks with one satisfying climax, although, perhaps Book 3 starts slow and finishes fast. It is gripping to the extent that I read Book 1 and 2 in one sitting and was unable to progress significantly into Book 3 due to the exhaustion of reading more than 100,000 words. Book 1 and 3 gain from perculation of the most original ideas but I would happily read another two books which only followed the existing characters and did not introduce further characters or concepts.

Whereas Vernor Vinge's bobbling is explained with some hand-waving about Walsh functions, Rudy Rucker's work has a more rigorous grounding in Penrose tessellation and this is used repeatedly for various plot elements. Although many regarded this a science-fiction fantasy, the subsequent discovery of quasi-crystals gave additional interest and weight to the work. The Ware Tetralogy is of general interest to anyone seeking background considerations about smart structures, IoT, robotics, artificial intelligence and/or sentience. However, Rudy Rucker's direct experience of computers was extremely limited when he began and therefore it should be read mostly in the context of widely disseminated ideas in the popular consciousness.

The Ware Tetralogy with SHA512 of 8a7c87845e207b13a34e8d265f94bdaa6e72242280c356b8bd71ea8e91c78e18f85462eb40b6c8ad36cfc752fe83c52ebf6b8ba469347bd1cd94605b1d966353 is available under a restrictive Creative Commons licence which, under the circumstances of commercial fiction, is extremely generous.

Original Submission