The Mad Professor: The Uncollected Short Stories of Rudy Rucker

by Rucker, Rudy

• ISBN13: 9781560259749
• ISBN10: 1560259744
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-12-20
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

At the untamed frontiers of intelligence, consciousness, matter, and reality lies Rudy Rucker's The Mad Professor, a collection of twelve mind-bending science fiction stories that probe the outer limits of possibility. Rucker, an accomplished computer scientist and mathematician with numerous science books and novels to his credit, brings his deep and varied knowledge of the mind, mathematics, and the ever-weird and wondrous workings of the physical universe to the stories collected here. In Chu and the Nants we read of a bizarre future following a Verge Singularity, in which hyperintelligent computers have taken over the solar system. Panpsychism Proved breaks down the boundaries between mind and matter, exploring the notion that "every object has a mind." And Six Thought Experiments Concerning the Nature of Computation is an exhilarating collection of mini-stories taking us to the outrageous extremes of theoretical speculation. In The Mad Professor, Rucker deploys the full range of his writing talent and scientific knowledge to take us on a wild romp through the known, the unknown, and the awesomely peculiar.

Author Biography

Rudy Rucker, PhD, is professor of computer science at San Jose State University. He is best known for his popular books about science and consciousness, such as The Fourth Dimension, Infinity and the Mind, Mind Tools, and The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, recently issued in paperback from Thunder's Mouth Press. The author of thirteen novels, Rucker is considered one of the core cyberpunk writers and was coeditor of the famed cyberdelic how-to book, The Mondo 2000 User’s Guide to the New Edge.

Table of Contents

2+2=5	p. 1
Elves of the subdimensions	p. 15
Panpsychism proved	p. 41
MS found in a minidrive	p. 45
The men in the back room at the country club	p. 57
Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch	p. 95
Six thought experiments concerning the nature of computation	p. 115
Jenna and me	p. 141
The use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane	p. 173
Junk DNA	p. 181
Pockets	p. 229
Cobb wakes up	p. 263
Visions of the metanovel	p. 275
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.