Tài liệu The Men in the back room at the country club ppt

The Men in the back room at the country club

Rucker, Rudy

Published: 2005

Categorie(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories

Source: http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/

men_in_bracc.html

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About Rucker:

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (born March 22, 1946 in Louisville, Ken￾tucky) is an American computer scientist and science fiction author, and

is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of

both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware

Tetralogy, the first two of which (Software and Wetware) both won

Philip K. Dick Awards. Rucker is the great-great-great-grandson of the

philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. (Cf. the family tree of his mother's brother,

Rudolf von Bitter.) Rucker attended St. Xavier High School before earn￾ing a B.A. in mathematics from Swarthmore College, and a Master's and

Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University. He taught at various uni￾versities, including Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg,

Virginia from 1980-1982, before settling at San José State University in

1986, from which he retired in 2004. A mathematician with serious philo￾sophical interests, he has written The Fourth Dimension; Geometry,

Relativity and the Fourth Dimension; and Infinity and the Mind. Prin￾ceton University Press published new editions of Infinity and the Mind

in 1995 and in 2005, both with new prefaces; the first edition is cited with

fair frequency in academic literature. As his "own alternative to cyber￾punk," Rucker developed a writing style he terms Transrealism. Trans￾realism, as outlined in his 1983 essay "The Transrealist Manifesto," is sci￾ence fiction based on the author's own life and immediate perceptions,

mixed with fantastic elements that symbolize psychological change.

Many of Rucker's novels and short stories apply these ideas. One ex￾ample of Rucker's Transrealist works is Saucer Wisdom, a novel in which

the main character is abducted by aliens. Rucker and his publisher mar￾keted the book, tongue in cheek, as non-fiction. Thanks to a grant from

the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Rucker taught math at the

Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, 1978-80. His earliest Transrealist

novel, White Light, was written in Heidelberg. This Transrealist novel is

based on his experiences at the State University of New York at Geneseo,

where he taught from 1972 to 1978. Rucker often uses his novels to ex￾plore scientific or mathematical ideas; White Light examines the concept

of infinity, while the Ware Tetralogy (written from 1982 through 2000) is

in part an explanation of the use of natural selection to develop com￾puter software (a subject also developed in his The Hacker and the Ants,

written in 1994). His novels also put forward a mystical philosophy that

Rucker has summarized in an essay titled, with only a bit of irony, "The

Central Teachings of Mysticism" (included in Seek!, 1999). His recent

non-fiction book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly

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Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning Of Life ,

and How To Be Happy summarizes the various philosophies he's be￾lieved over the years and ends with the tentative conclusion that we

might profitably view the world as made of computations, with the final

remark, "perhaps this universe is perfect." Source: Wikipedia

Also available on Feedbooks for Rucker:

• The Ware Tetralogy (2010)

• Postsingular (2007)

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