I structured Realware as a pair of love stories—I’d come to feel that it’s a good idea to have romance at the heart of a novel. I also included a scene with my main character hugging his estranged father and seeing him off to something like Heaven. And old Cobb himself achieves an apotheosis as well. In writing these scenes, I felt as if I were partially laying to rest the specter of a painful argument I’d had with my father the last time I’d seen him, shortly before his death in 1994. One of the virtues of writing is that you get to revise your past.
I was happy with how Realware came out, I felt it had good tightness and focus. But by now I felt like I’d pushed the series as far as I could— although I do sometimes wonder what kinds of adventures Cobb had with the Metamartians in their flying saucer. I got the idea for the very last line of the Ware tetralogy from Sylvia: “The newlyweds’ eyes were soft, their kisses wet, their hearts free, the big world real.”
One of my other recent writing projects has been an autobiography, with the working title Nested Scrolls, slated to appear from PS Publishing and from Forge Books in 2011. Much of the material in this afterword is in fact drawn from my memoir. So seek out Nested Scrolls if you want to know what else I’ve been doing for all these years. And for ongoing information, you can always check my blog, http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog.
I’m very happy to see my Ware novels one volume like this, and to reach a new generation of readers.
Enjoy the adventures—and seek the gnarl!
—26 April, 2010, Los Gatos
About the Author
Rudy Rucker is a writer and a mathematician who worked for twenty years as a Silicon Valley computer science professor. He is regarded as contemporary master of science-fiction, and received the Philip K. Dick award twice—for his novels Software and Wetware. His thirty published books include both novels and non-fiction books. He lives in Los Gatos, California. Paperback copies of The Ware Tetralogy can be purchased at Amazon and other book-sellers.