Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (Photo ©Georgia Rucker) was born on March 22, 1946, in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. The philosopher G. W. F. Hegel was his great-great-great-grandfather.
Rudy Rucker earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at Swarthmore College in 1967, a master’s degree in 1969, and a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1973 at Rutgers University. In 1967, he married Sylvia, and over the years, the couple had three children. During the ’70s, he worked as a mathematics teacher before becoming a computer science teacher. Meanwhile, he started working as a writer, dividing his time between fiction and nonfiction.
The first book published by Rudy Rucker is an essay titled “Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension”, published in 1977. His first science fiction novel is “White Light” (1980), where logical-mathematical elements are crucial in the plot.
Early in his career as a writer, Rudy Rucker was associated with the cyberpunk movement, so much as to be considered one of its founders. However, he soon contributed to the birth of another movement called transrealism, which consists of telling real life in fantastic terms. Following this principle, Rucker inserts even versions of himself in his works.
The fame came to Rudy Rucker, especially with the “ware” series winning the Philip K. Dick Award with its first two novels. Eventually, the series has become a tetralogy composed of: “Software” (1982), “Wetware” (1988), “Freeware” (1997), and “Realware” (2000).
Meanwhile, Rudy Rucker has also kept on writing essays such as “Infinity and the Mind” (1982) and “The Fourth Dimension. A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes” (1984).
Scientific elements kept on being the foundation of some of Rudy Rucker’s stories, such as “Master of Space and Time”. The author develops those elements in a very personal way, very far from the typical hard science fiction.
In the ’90s, Rudy Rucker wasn’t very active but started publishing several novels and essays again at the beginning of the new millennium. In 2006, he also launched a webzine called “Flurb”, which closed in 2014.
On July 1, 2008, Rudy Rucker suffered a brain hemorrhage that made him think that he didn’t have very much left to live, and that’s why he wrote an autobiography titled “Nested Scrolls”, published in 2011.
Luckily, Rudy Rucker is still alive and well and in recent years published some more novels, such as “Turing & Burroughs” (2012) and “The Big AHA” (2013). He’s a unique author for the way he mixes elements of hard science fiction with other funny, surreal, and sometimes even mystical ones, so let’s hope he can offer many more special stories.
