Rucker's WARE books available for download, free!

[Lenny]

Has anyone read Rudy Rucker's WARE tetralogy?

They're cyberpunk and the first two won the Philip K. Dick Award (the first book won the first ever PKDA, you know). A brief description of them:

It starts with Software, where rebel robots bring immortality to their human creator by eating his brain. Software won the first Philip K. Dick Award.

In Wetware, the robots decide to start building people --and people get strung out on an insane new drug called merge. This cyberpunk classic garnered a second Philip K. Dick award.

By Freeware, the robots have evolved into soft plastic slugs called moldies --and some human "cheeseballs" want to have sex with them. The action redoubles when aliens begin arriving in the form of cosmic rays.

And with Realware, the humans and robots reach a higher plateau.

All four have been released in one volume (866 pages) under a Creative Commons license, and are available for download.

Did I mention they're free? Well, they're free.

Rucker's WARE books back in print -- and free to download!!!11!ONE! - Boing Boing

 

[Lenny]

I was reading the synopses to these books on Wikipedia a few weeks back, contemplating buying at least the first. And by chance, I've happened across my old thread!

So, I'm going to bump this in case anyone else is interested. The PDF is still available (I've just downloaded it - all four books in an 886 page document), and we're sure to have more members with Kindles and other e-readers now than we did two and a half years ago.

 

[Vertigo]

Always interested in free legal downloads, thanks Lenny! With all four volumes combined it is one chunky book; clocking in at over 900 pages.

Also for those that don't want the PDF version, which can sometimes be a pain to get formatted for your ereader, there is this link provided by Rudy Rucker on his own website: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/4949/the-ware-tetralogy and here you can get the book in ePub, mobi (Kindle) or pdf format.

 

[Fried Egg]

I've read the first two books and they are...okay. Nothing special to be honest, at least I didn't think so.

 

[J-Sun]

I've read it. The first one is a classic. The second one has a beautiful scene in it (with the robots flying/dancing around a beam of light in a cavern in the moon) but doesn't otherwise match the first. The third one's actually pretty bad. The fourth one's a little better but not enough to save the series. But the first one doesn't really have to have any sequels. It's a shame because he does elaborate and expand as he goes - the first book isn't as "big" as the series (aside from just pages) but it is better. So, yeah, I recommend Software. But when they're free anyone who has time to invest can find out for themselves.

I'd suggest hurrying though - I'm kind of disappointed that it seems these are being done as advertisements rather than just dumping selected items out there as their own ads. IOW, he used to offer his complete stories and much more free but I can't find it - now most everything points to Amazon or other ebook dealers. I mean, I'm fine with him not offering anything for free - I just don't like bait-and-switch. But maybe it's there somewhere and I'm just not seeing it.

For Rucker, generally, I'd recommend Master of Space and Time, Spacetime Donuts, and White Light in addition to Software.