Kate Garnett Garnett থেকে সুবিল, বাংলাদেশ থেকে সুবিল, বাংলাদেশ

03/13/2012

I guess it was about 10 years ago when a guy I'd done some work for couldn't afford to pay me in cash, so he gave me a pile of books by Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, Jack Womack and maybe a couple of other so-called cyberpunks. We had a mutual interest in theoretical mathematics and philosophy and he was of the opinion that these books would appeal to me. Which they did. Despite my distaste for what I perceived as the sci-fi aesthetic (aliens, big laser guns, android babes, etc.), the cyberpunks had upped the intellectual ante by introducing more complex science and nuanced philosophy into the mix. Admittedly, Rudy is among the chief offenders from a standpoint of aesthetic taste, except that his big-breasted androids know more about set theory than Kurt Gödel. So therein lies the compromise. But it is completely without reservation that I list Rudy Rucker among the intellectual elite on my bookshelf. Which brings me to my relatively low opinion of this particular novel. It more or less contradicts my entire argument about intellectual sophistication trumping weak aesthetic choices. As far as I'm concerned, this is a weak piece in Rudy's extensive catalog. The science is not particularly rigorous and the philosophical impact of applying artificial intelligence to organic human minds is not sufficiently realized to elicit much more than a shrug once the whole thing is finished.