What I am reading

Science Fiction - "Software" by Rudy Rucker

This is a book I read long time ago and re-read it recently because we'll be discussing it in my SF reading group. The plot of the story involves intelligent robots, who live on the Moon, and their creator Cobb Anderson. At the start of the book Cobb is old and retired, spending his last days in a retirement community in Florida. He is a "pheezer".

But his robots, who have rebelled against humans have better plans for him. They want to transfer his "software" - that is his conciousness and memories from his brain into the computer brain of a large robot. Too bad the process destroys the brain and the body.

Cobb makes the jump and is given a new, mechanical body. The cool thing is that once your mind is converted to "software" you can back it up. So, if your current mechanical body is destroyed the software is just loaded into a new one.

This book is written in the "cyber-punk" style and it was one of the early novels of the cyber-punk genre. It was still fun to read. It's not very long and the open ending invites sequels. I believe that Rucker wrote follow up novels, but I haven't read them.

posted by richieb @ 7:21 PM