Rudy Rucker
If we suppose that many natural phenomena are in effect computations, the study of computer science can tell us about the kinds of natural phenomena that can occur.Collection: Science
Science fiction writers put characters into a world with arbitrary rules and work out what happens.
I like a book better if I can't predict what's going to happen.
It's soothing to realize that my mind's processes are inherently uncontrollable.
Computations are everywhere, once you begin to look at things in a certain way.
It's tedious to watch something very obvious being worked out, like a movie that's not particularly good and after about half an hour you know how it's going to end.
I like to do things that are surprising and different.
Some ideas you have to chew on, then roll them around a lot, play with them before you can turn them into funky science fiction.
Selling a book or story has never become absolutely automatic for me.
The hard fact is that not everyone does get published.
Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it's done, keep sending it out for quite awhile.
If all else fails, there's always print or web zines.
In any case, A New Kind of Science is a wonderful book, and I'm still absorbing its teachings.
I think dry nanotechnology is probably a dead-end.
Unfortunately our nation, nay, our world, is run by evil morons.
At present, however, I don't think the Net is a very good medium for books, books should really be inexpensive lightweight paperbacks you can bang around.
Electronic distribution is more of a fall-back strategy for putting out a book that isn't deemed profitable enough to print. You hardly make any money publishing an electronic book.
But how does it feel to plug into a system that's say, a million times as smart as a person.
Lately I've been working to convince myself that everything is a computation.
A computation is a process that obeys finitely describable rules.
If you think of your life as a kind of computation, it's quite abundantly clear that there's not going to be a final answer and there won't be anything particularly wonderful about having the computation halt!
All living things are gnarly, in that they inevitably do things that are much more complex than one might have expected.
Traditional science is all about finding shortcuts.
One of the nice things about science fiction is that it lets us carry out thought experiments.
Now, being a science fiction writer, when I see a natural principle, I wonder if it could fail.
For me, the best thing about cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just pretend that the whole thing is two miles below the moon’s surface, and that half the people’s right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it’s interesting again.Collection: Moon
It's a waste to chase the pipe dream of a magical tiny theory that allows us to make quick and detailed calculations about the future. We can't predict and we can't control. To accept this can be a source of liberation and inner peace. We're part of the unfolding world, surfing the chaotic waves.Collection: Dream
We're part of the unfolding world, surfing the chaotic wavesCollection: Surfing
I am, as it were, an eye that the cosmos uses to look at itself. The Mind is not mine alone; the Mind is everywhere.Collection: Eye
A little-known truth: Every aspect of the world is fundamentally unpredictable. Computer scientists have long since proved this.Collection: Long
When I see an old movie, like from the ’40s or ’50s or ’60s, the people look so calm. They don’t have smartphones, they’re not looking at computer screens, they’re taking their time. They’ll sit in a chair and just stare off into space. I think some day we’ll find our way back to that garden of Eden.Collection: Garden
The world is magic. Science is but an insipid style of sorcery.Collection: Magic
The churning of a human mind is unpredictable, as is the anatomy of the human heart.Collection: Heart
The study of infinity is much more than a dry academic game. The intellectual pursuit of the absolute infinity is, as Georg Cantor realized, a form of the soul's quest for God. Whether or not the goal is ever reached, an awareness of the process brings enlightenment.Collection: God
Lately I’ve been working to convince myself that everything is a computation.Collection: Computation
Intellectually, perspective [drawing] is a breakthrough, because here, for the first time, the physical space we live in is being depicted as ifit were an abstract, mathematical space. A less obvious innovation due to perspective is that here, for the first time, people are actually drawing pictures of infinities.Collection: Teaching
The world is colors and motion, feelings and thoughts and what does math have to do with it? Not much, if 'math' means being bored in high school, but in truth mathematics is the one universal science. Mathematics is the study of pure pattern and everything in the cosmos is a kind of pattern.Collection: School
What is the shape of space? Is it flat, or is it bent? Is it nicely laid out, or is it warped and shrunken? Is it finite, or is it infinite? Which of the following does space resemble more: (a) a sheet of paper, (b) an endless desert, (c) a soap bubble, (d) a doughnut, (e) an Escher drawing, (f) an ice cream cone, (g) the branches of a tree, or (h) a human body?Collection: Science
Think of a field of daisies: they bloom, they wither, and in the spring they grow again. Who wants to see the same stupid daisy year after year, especially with a bunch of crappy iron-lung-type equipment bolted to it?Collection: Spring
Our bodies are the time machine.Collection: Machines
The simple process of eating and breathing weave all of us together into a vast four-dimensional array. No matter how isolated you may sometimes feel, no matter how lonely, you are never really cut off from the whole.Collection: Lonely