Rucker doesn't take himself too seriously, and the result is wacky and inventive and eye-rolling and troubling and imperfect and good fun. ( )

Re-read of this cyberpunk classic, I read it long before joining goodreads. Great story about sentient robots, old age, transmigration of the soul. All SF fans should give this try, especially if you enjoyed William Gibson's "Neuromancer" or Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash". ( )

The ideas here are nifty. The writing leaves me completely cold. ( )

(EDIT: There's one genuinely interesting bit of speculation in this book that I forgot amidst all the insanity when first writing this review. I'm talking about the manner in which co-protagonist Cobb made the first intelligent, conscious robots, and most importantly how he arrived at his approach. We know they're conscious because the story portrays them that way, of course, not because of an explanation or further interesting speculation.)

This book is on a list of best cyberpunk on Goodreads. I find this a bit mystifying, because there is almost nothing in common between this book and any meaningful definition of cyberpunk. It does not take its own themes very seriously. The closest to the kind of "high tech, low life" we see in cyberpunk that it gets is a character who's such a stoner he changed his name to Sta-Hi.

I gave it a tag of "sf" for "science fiction", but I'm not sure that's really accurate. This isn't really sci-fi so much as sci-fry in the sense of "this is your brain on drugs". If it was a movie, it would be one part Cocoon, one part I, Robot, and three parts Pineapple Express. (I walked out of Pineapple Express. Well, I drove out; it was the second film of a drive-in double feature.)

The only characters who came close to being relatable were a bumbling, humorless cop who managed to get himself killed by a protagonist; and one of the "diggers" -- a type of intelligent robot on the Moon, but apparently one of the least intelligent types of robot up there, which is pretty bad for a "race" of intelligent robots who all act like cartoonishly drug-addled idiots. One of the things that made those characters somewhat (minimally) relatable is the fact that they actually took an existential threat to their respective "people" somewhat seriously, though to achieve that in a story written like this they had to become pretty one-dimensional characters.

In a way, the fact women got the short end of the characterization stick in this novel is a blessing in disguise, because they ended up being more tolerable people in some ways than all the other characters.

The only themes of the story I find it reasonably easy to identify and support in this book seems to be:

1. the idea that perhaps "evil" is often largely accidental, banal, and haplessly normal, but still entirely too successful in some half-assed way

2. the question of the nature of human consciousness and whether "upload consciousness" by merely copying the brain/mind from material sources is immortality or a farce (but a more serious farce than this book)

Unfortunately, I doubt the question of evil was a conscious theme of the author's, and if the question of consciousness is like an Amazon delivery dropping off the puzzle game you ordered, this book's treatment of the theme was more like kids playing "doorbell ditch" to annoy the neighbors. If you're very unlucky, maybe the kids left a flaming paper bag full of dog feces in front of your door. If you want a better treatment of human consciousness themes, try PKD's [b:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1|6545414|Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1 (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, #1)|Philip K. Dick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1307477425l/6545414._SY75_.jpg|23588207], Greg Egan's [b:Learning to be me|53144942|Learning to be me|Greg Egan|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|79926872], or William Gibson's Winter Market (the story can be found in [b:Burning Chrome|22323|Burning Chrome (Sprawl, #0)|William Gibson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349075772l/22323._SY75_.jpg|2457086]), all of which deserve the label "classic", and two of which are actually very much cyberpunk stories. Off the top of my head, I don't have a good example right now of a book addressing a major theme of the banality of evil, but considering I don't even think that was intentional on the author's part in this story I think you can safely ignore it here.

I feel like the author was in the middle of a four-month bender when he wrote this. Many of the characters are caricatures, but not very good caricatures. I'm disappointed.

It was (barely) entertaining enough for me to read through to the end in hopes it would redeem itself, but it was not to be. Ultimately, I gave it two stars for the hints of value in it. It's just not quite as bad as an actual one-star book, and that's about the best thing I can say about it. ( )

Totally crazy fun. I haven't had this much sheer delight in crazy robot action in ages. The boppers are a blast.

Get this: turn the whole meme of eating brains into a gigantic robot enterprise to upload meat people into imperishable robot bodies, turn the moon into a robot paradise fueled by program evolution, add a serious stoner meat-person to join in the fun up in the moon, and make sure we've got a lot of funny and light and subversive dialogue, and we've got SOFTWARE.

Truly, this is one of those gems that should be a cult classic rocking around in people's mental spaces and cropping up every once in a while in regular conversation.

We're going to Disneyland! (Okay, wait, let's place this in its proper time, shall we? 1982. This is "officially" the start of the cyberpunk movement, but it shares very little in common with [b:Neuromancer|22328|Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)|William Gibson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1167348726s/22328.jpg|909457]. It's more of a 60's stoner movie with crazy philosophizing robots behaving like zombies for people's meat brains for the stuff we hold in 'em, with weird homages to the traditional "human" lifestyle that's more epic comedy than a serious piece of love. Think Asimov's Robots meeting Hunter S. Thompson.)

I love it!

But that's not to say that there isn't some issues with plot or payout at the end of the novel, because there isn't much of that there.

But honestly? I just don't care. Its wild and fun and funny and I'm thrilled because it's only the first of the four in the quadrology. :)

The mark of a good book is sometimes all about how much fun we have; not focusing on silly things like plot. :) This is an idea-lover's book and it's written very well, transporting us away into a hellofafun pot-dream.

( )