Wetware

Ware, Book 2

By: Rudy Rucker

Narrated by: Chris Sorensen

Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

In 2030, bopper robots in their lunar refuge have found a way to infuse DNA wetware with their own software code. The result is a new lifeform: the meatbop. Fair is fair, after all. Humans built the boppers, now bops are building humans - sort of. It's all part of an insidious plot that's about to ensnare Della Taze - who doesn't think she killed her lover while in drug-induced ecstasy - but isn't sure. And it's certainly catastrophic enough to call Cobb Anderson - the pheezer who started it all - out of cold-storage heaven.

©2010 Rudy Rucker (P)2014 Audible Inc.

robots and meatbags.

More cyberpunk weirdness featuring robots and meatbags.

Rucker's 1987 "Wetware," the sequel to his 1982 award winning "Software" takes place 10 years later where the sentient robot "boppers" occupying the moon have been defeated by humans but some still long for an "evolution" for humanity and robots.

To that end, a bopper surreptitiously impregnates a human female with a robotic fetus in an attempt to create a human/synthetic hybrid. The birth of this "child" - appropriately named "Manchile" - matures into adulthood in a week, proceeds to impregnate multiple women with similarly fast growing hybrid children in the hope of creating a hybrid population bomb with Manchile posturing himself as a Christ-like savior of humanity and robots alike.

Needless to say, this doesn't make everybody happy, and powerful forces take steps to corrupt the remaining boppers but inadvertently creating the organic/synthetic hybrid they sought to avoid.

Fast paced and all over the place, and like I said, really really weird.

More drug induced craziness

Rudy Rucker's Wetware is the second installment in his Ware series and picks up about 10 years after Software. The basic plot revolves around and attempt by a bopper to create a bopper / human hybrid called a meatbop. This is accomplished by implanting an embryo that contains bopper software and causes the pregnancy and the resulting child to develop extremely fast. That creature, Manchile goes on to impregnate several women with similar accelerated pregnancies. After Manchile is assassinated, the boppers are exterminated by an infection of chipmold that leads to an intelligent plastic from their outer covering. These creatures develop into moldies. Some characters from their first novel are heldover for this story as well.

Rucker relates a fantastical tale that seems like an acid trip. Drug use is frequent including 'merge' which seems to liquify a body and allow closer more intimate contact but leaves the person vulnerable. The story has not aged well as the general tone, although taking place in 2030, it infused with 70's / 80's hipster equivalent slang that is hard to follow.

The narration reasonable wit decent character distinction. Pacing is brisk for a quick listen.