Saucer Wisdom

Rudy Rucker serves a feast of genuinely new and compelling, plausible ideas leavened with extraterrestrial humor. After reading thousands of SF books and hundreds of science books, true novelty is exceedingly rare for me- but this book delivers it on almost every page. Any reader with exceptional imagination and openness to exotic branches of science and technology who tries a taste will joyfully devour this book.

Professor Rucker does it again with his Fantasy-Reality, Saucer Wisdom. Using the UFO cultural phenomina as a foot stool, Dr. Rucker uses his immagination and the fantastic speculations that are now a part of modern science anmd math to illuminate a way forward. Rudy Rucker's character's leads us into the deep future, as well as understanding what aliens might be, what is identity, how human civilization may progress, and, perhaps how to view the Big Bang as an something that has personal meaning to all thinking beings. Not bad for a work of fiction. Or is it fiction?

This has to be one of the most original science fiction books I have read in a long time. This book snagged me right from the start......and theres even some funny parts.

Why do all alien abductees suffer from Cartman-esque anal probes? The answer to this question lies within . . . Seriously, this is a *very* funny fictional novel which does manage to make one think about the future of technology and mankind. A must read.

Rucker uses the narative of a fictional character(Frank Shook) as a "saucer" abductee to visit Earth's future in leaps; from the late 21st century to the beginnings of the "5th milenium" to see whither goest the human condition. He also includes interactions with aliens, and specifies the difference in viewpoints between "wetware" beings and those made of sterner stuff. Rucker uses these literary devices to explore what is mind and personality, and how in the distant, future humans and transhumans will view the soul. Which leads me to another feature of the book. It is also a spiritual one, in a "New Ager" kind of way; yet it is not preachy, nor would it be too upsetting for those of traditional religious bent, However, there is a couple of sexual encounters in Saucer Wisdom, so if your morals are not comfortable with this, be fore-warned. The altering of what is determined as homo-sapien is tinkered with. From a late 20th century perspective, it all seems implausible and half-baked! But well it should be, as it is deliberately, a work of technological speculation, that Rucker has given himself 20 additional centuries to fully gestate. Saucer Wisdom is a work in progress that spans large time-frames. A very decent work, by a renoun mathematician/computer nut.