Software (Novel)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Software is a 1982 cyberpunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It won the first Philip K. Dick Award in 1983. The novel is the first book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, and was followed by a sequel, Wetware, in 1988. Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer - a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers - living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.