Freeware by Rudy Rucker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm still in awe with this series, and here's the plain truth: So much happens, so many huge changes to humanity and the Bobbies, that each novel feels like a completely new universe.

However, we've got a truly delicious continuation of family and an evolution of the same characters we've grown to know and love. Yes, even Stay High is still around, as is his father in a way and now we get to see all about his children. :) It's amazing how things turn out.

Especially the mold.

My god! The moldies!!! They killed off all the Bobbies. Intelligent plastics and mold that are perfect shape-changers, wiping out one whole intelligent species to make a mess of everyone else.

And yes, of course they take over the moon and become second-class citizens (and furniture) on Earth. I really like how they can be space-suits and rocket ships and flying gulls and underpaid dishwashers. But as for the story, I especially love how they can become Indian goddesses and how they laugh at human's sexual perversions.

Want mold? Do you looooove mold? *laugh*

This review can't do the book justice. Just know that some of the strangest worlds and words in science fiction comes out of Rudy Rucker's works. He's striving ahead of the post-singularity crowd even before the Singularity crowd has gathered. It's pretty amazing. Let's alter reality with each book and make a real mess of intelligent species, a complete revolution of science and life and understanding wit every generation... and we're not far past 2050!

And to make things worse, aliens are transmitting themselves to unprotected moldies on the moon! It's an invasion of smart and some rather dumb aliens! Oh, no! :) :)

Is it going to be another genocide? Something worse? Will Stay High or his son or anyone else be melted down again and cloned or turned into a robot or a moldie or some sort of standing wave function again? Who knows! Maybe all of the above, and maybe they'll have to ride a moldie's skin while sharing time with an intelligent sunspot that wants to eat the moon like a lollipop. WHO KNOWS!

This is some crazy cool stuff. When we're not getting high with all variations of drugs or mathematical transforms we're inundated with math-speak so beautiful it may as well be poetry! And it is. Poetry that is. :) It's beautiful to see and the images in the text will stay in my mind for a very long time.

This is truly weird SF. This is cutting-edge weird and this one is almost 20 years old now! How odd! :)

And totally awesome, dude. :)



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