.jpg) Cover of first edition (paperback) | |
| Author | Rudy Rucker |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Ware Tetralogy |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Ace Books (USA) |
Publication date | January 1982 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 167 pp |
| ISBN | 0-441-77408-3 (first edition, paperback) |
| LC Class | CPB Box no. 2484 vol. 16 |
| Followed by | Wetware |
Software is a 1982cyberpunk science fiction novel written byRudy Rucker. It won the firstPhilip K. Dick Award in 1983.[1] The novel is the first book in Rucker'sWare Tetralogy,[2] and was followed by a sequel,Wetware, in 1988.
Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robotsartificial intelligence andfree will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on theMoon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooledsuperconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer—afreaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderlyBaby Boomers—living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a newartificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.
As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be givenimmortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st—born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr.—a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having hismind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.
The main bopper character in the novel is Ralph Numbers, one of Anderson's 12 original robots who was the first to overcome theAsimov priorities to achieve free will. Having duplicated himself many times—as boppers are required to do, to encourage natural selection—Numbers finds himself caught up in a lunar civil war between the masses of "little boppers" and the "big boppers" who want to merge all robotconsciousness into their massive processors.
Dave Langford reviewedSoftware forWhite Dwarf #72, and stated that "Rucker is picking at problems of personal identity. Lose your body and reinstall your software in a robot frame (complete with SEX and DRUNKENNESS: subroutines), and are you still you?"[3]
