The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities explores the use of multiple simultaneous realities as a medium in contemporary art, including mixed reality, augmented reality and alternate reality approaches. Building on the notion of "trans" from transgender, signifying the crossing of boundaries, the book proposes that transreal aesthetics cross the boundaries created by a proliferation of conceptions of reality that occurred as a result of postmodern theory and emerging technologies.
Nine wild, weird and wondrous stories, written together by Rucker and Sterling. What do you get if two cyberpunk masters spend thirty years writing tales about transreally warped versions of themselves? A unique perspective on giant ants, flying jellyfish, Soviet rocketeers, runaway genomics, Silicon Valley, and the death of the Universe. With notes by the authors and an introduction by Rob Latham.
Brace yourself when you open this book, for it purports to be the about the visions of neat biotechnologies one Frank Shook brings back from future times where he has been taken to by flying saucers, and gives to the writer, Rudy Rucker, who's telling the story. That's an odd way to begin a work of popular science . . . . but amusing. Please heed the warning from the Introduction by Bruce Sterling: "If you are examining Saucer Wisdom imagining that Rudy (or some fictional 'Frank Shook') has been actually logging a lot of on board saucer time, well, you can knock that off right now. Rudy Rucker made up the flying saucer part. There is no actual flying saucer. The saucer is not an interplanetary faster-than-light device. Its what we professional authors like to call a narrative device. "I'm going to spill the beans as directly as I can here: Saucer Wisdom is a work of popular science speculation. Its a nonfiction book in which Prof. Rucker takes a few quirky grains of modern scientific fact, drops them into the colorful tide pool of his own imagination, and harvests a major swarm of abalones, jellyfish, and giant anemones. "Pop-science writers didn't used to treat 'science' in this boisterous way, but there might well be a trend here, there may be a real future in this. Saucer Wisdom is a book by a well-qualified mathematician and computer scientist, a veteran pop science writer, in which 'science' is treated, not as some distant and rarefied quest for absolute knowledge, but as naturally great source material for a really long, cool rant." Rucker, in character, describes, and illustrates with delightful cartoon sketches (the way he would use chalk and a blackboard while talking science), the world of the progressively more distant future as it is transformed by computer technology, biotechnology, and human evolution. He also describes a hell of a party in Berkeley. Popular science writing will never be the same. At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.
This volume contains thirty-nine revised and extended research articles, written by prominent researchers participating in the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2014, held in San Francisco, October 22-24 2014. Topics covered include engineering mathematics, electrical engineering, circuit design, communications systems, computer science, chemical engineering, systems engineering and applications of engineering science in industry. This book describes some significant advances in engineering technologies and also serves as an excellent source of reference for researchers and graduate students.
Trans-Reality Television: The Transgression of Reality, Genre, Politics, and Audience offers an overview of contributions which engage with the phenomenon of reality television as a tool to reflect on societal and mediated transformations and transgressions. While some contributors delve deep into the theoretical issues, others approach the topic at hand through empirical studies of specific reality television formats and programs. The chapters in this volume are divided into four sections, all of which deal with how we see the fluid social at work in reality television through the trans-real, trans-politics, trans-genre, and trans-audience. The first section stresses the concept of the trans-real. These chapters go into the complexity of the construction of reality in reality television. The second section, which deals with the concept of trans-politics, offers a diversity of perspectives on the articulation and re-articulation of politics and the political. In the third section, trans-genre, the chapters analyze how the modern conceptualizations of genre and format are transcended. Finally, the last set of chapters articulate the concept of trans-audiences, using case studies of particular audiences and a study of reality celebrities. Trans-Reality Television concludes by returning to the sense and nonsense of the use of these 'post' concepts.
From the two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF, a brilliant collaboration to rival 1987's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
"Juicy Ghosts" is a fast-paced adventure novel, with startling science, engaging dialog-and a happy ending. The novel treats near-future versions of telepathy and immortality. It's also a redemptive political tale, reacting to the chaos of the 2020 US presidential election. The tone is hip, bright, and darkly comic, with generous helpings of Rucker's SF surrealism. Romances interweave the tale.
Trends of the last few years, including global health crises, political division, and the ongoing threat to social-environmental survival, have been continually obscured by disinformation and misinformation and therefore created a need for stronger global technological media policy. It is no longer acceptable or moral to support a global communication network based only on market factors and propaganda. The Handbook of Research on Global Media’s Preternatural Influence on Global Technological Singularity, Culture, and Government views preternatural healing of the media-sphere from a variety of perspectives on the dynamic of heart-coherent entertainment. Specifically, it addresses the subject of a healthy media from a variety of fractal perspectives. Covering topics such as collective unconscious, mediated reality, and government media trust, this major reference work is an essential resource for librarians, media specialists, media analysts, sociologists, government employees, communications specialists, psychologists, researchers, educators, academicians, and students.
An artist in a wild biotech future confronts aliens from another dimension—and finds a new way to get high—in this rollicking, psychedelic SF novel from Rudy Rucker. Biotechnology has replaced machines, and genetic modification is commonplace. At the forefront of this revolutionary change is artist Zad Plant, who works with living paint, lives in a talking home grown from plants, gets around on a giant roadspider, and has a sentient rat—complete with Kentucky accent—as a sidekick. Unfortunately for Zad, his career’s on the skids, and his wife Jane has thrown him out. Enter qwet—quantum wetware—that changes Zad, making him cosmically high and giving him telepathy, and soon enough, a psychedelic revolution begins. Yet when mouths begin appearing in midair, eating people, Zad and Jane must travel through a wormhole to learn how to save their world. . . . Night Shade Books’ ten-volume series with Rudy Rucker collects nine of the brilliantly weird novels for which the mathematician-turned-author is known, as well as a tenth, never-before-published book, Million Mile Road Trip. We’re proud to collect in one place so much of the work of this influential figure in the early cyberpunk scene, and to share Rucker’s fascinating, unique worldview with an entirely new generation of readers.
