Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (born March 22, 1946 in Louisville, Kentucky) is an American computer scientist and science fiction author, often included in lists of cyberpunk authors. 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) as well as non-fiction books such as Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension and Infinity and the Mind. He is the great-great-great-grandson of Georg Hegel.
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March 22 - 1946 - Louisville, Kentucky - Computer scientist - Science fiction - Cyberpunk - Ware Tetralogy - Philip K. Dick Award - Georg Hegel
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Rucker attended Swarthmore College as an undergraduate student (Bachelor's in mathematics) and Rutgers University as a graduate student (Master's and Ph.D. in mathematics). He was a professor at various universities before settling at San Jose State University until his retirement in 2004.
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Swarthmore College - Mathematics - Rutgers University - Master's - Ph.D. - Professor - San Jose State University - 2004
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Although generally recognized as one of the early figures in cyberpunk, Rucker espoused an approach to writing he termed Transrealism. The essence of this is science fiction based on his own life and immediate perceptions mixed with fantastic elements to symbolize psychological change. Rucker outlined these ideas in "The Transrealist Manifesto," an essay he wrote in 1983. Many of Rucker's novels and short stories apply these ideas. Perhaps the most interesting example is Saucer Wisdom (a novel about alien abduction), which Rucker and his publisher marketed (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) as non-fiction.
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Transrealism - 1983 - Alien abduction
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His earliest transrealist novel White Light was written while living in Heidelberg, Germany. Rucker had received a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and taught math at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg. The novel is based (in a Transrealist manner) on his experiences at State University of New York at Geneseo, where he taught from 1972 to 1978.
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White Light - Heidelberg, Germany - Alexander von Humboldt Foundation - Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg - State University of New York at Geneseo - 1972 - 1978
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He also wrote his breakthrough novel Software and the non-fiction book Infinity and the Mind in Heidelberg.
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Latest news on rudy rucker
New issue of Flurb!
Yee-haw! It's Christmas around here because Rudy Rucker's just released a new ish of his peripatetically published by inevitably brilliant science fiction ezine, Flurb! Rudy Rucker: Qlone Madeline Ashby: Fitting a New Suit Michael Blumlein: The Big One Brian Garrison: 3 SF Poems Charles Platt: The Gnirut Test Brendan Byrne: The Loa and the Gaping Jaw Jetse de Vries: Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsy Bruce Sterling: Computer Entertainment Thirty-Five Years From Today Flurb! (via Rudy's Blog)...
Help design a cipher for my crypto wedding-rings!
When my wife and I started to plan our wedding, we inevitably turned to the question of rings, and it was only a matter of time before we came to the idea of rings with little wheels on them that could be used as crypto devices, in the manner of super-duper Captain Midnight Decoder Badges. So we asked Bruce Schneier for some advice and he suggested that we make each ring with one static band and two rotating ones, each inscribed with the alphabet. The first wheel has dots on the letters, alternating above, none, below. The second wheel has the repeating sequence of above, above, none, none, below, below. The third wheel has the repeating sequence of above, above, above, none, none, none, below, below, below (it sounds confusing, but you can see a chart here). The rings were made in white gold by Isabel Rucker (daughter of master cyberpunk author Rudy Rucker -- and a fantastic jeweler in her own right) and they turned out great. Now it's time that we turn to the Internet with a challenge: given these two matching rings, what crypto applications can you come up with? Could you use them to scramble passwords (possibly hashed with a key)? How about encoding messages for secret transmission? What additional common apparatus (say, different-sized coins) could you use to generate initialization vectors and increase the system's security? This is an open competition to be judged by Bruce "Applied Cryptography" Schneier and me -- the winner gets a copy of Little Brother signed by both of us. Post your submissions to the comments or send them to cryptocontest@craphound.com before Oct 1, 2008. Crytpo Wedding Ring...
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