Rating: 
Summary: freeware review
Review: In this novel Rudy Rucker creates an original, twisted world where moldies (artificial life forms) and humans live amongst each other. Rudy creates a surfer/stoner dialect that could quite plausibly be a future lingo, like our generic, hip, MTV influenced lingo. Although I love Rudy's world and writing style I must admit this book was somewhat of a letdown. It was very captivating at times but those times were often followed by idle narrative. Plus the novel jumped around. It's like when you're watching a captivating sitcom, and right at the climax "to be continued" appears; tune in next week. The plot would then start a new chapter with a new character's story. Rudy would be careful to work in each character into the overall theme of the book though. I think if Rudy cut out all the idle, boring parts (that would be about half of the book) it would be a good novel. Some of Rudy Rucker's other books got better reviews so I would recommend you read those books.
Rating: 
Summary: nice story, sci-fi this is not
Review: Science fiction needs the integral component of science. Rucker's universe leaves a bad taste in my mouth of breaking most of the laws of physics, without much more than babbly pseudo-future-science jargon, hand waving.It's a nice enough story but file under fantasy. Two notches below masters like Sterling, Di Filipo, Stephenson. Oh did I mention most of the book is in annoying future-surfer speak, and obsessed with sex? Like not quite gnarly enough dude....
Rating:
Summary: Too ugly for me
Review: The best part of this novel is the ending - not just the fact that I got to the end, but the actual story in the last couple of chapters. For the rest I found the story appallingly ugly. Was Mr Rucker using bodily functions and, especially smell, that most pervasive of all senses, to demonstrate a symbiosis developing between humankind and the moldies (an invention of humankind)? But everytime I found some part of the story that seemed to catch a bit of my interest I found it snatched away by the ugliness again. There was also the matter of the time sequencing shown by the dates at the start of each chapter - I found myself having to go back again and again to try to understand how the events actually unfolded. (One of the aliens at the end of the novel does have a time independent (?) existance that Mr Rucker might have been trying to prepare us for - but I just found it a labour). A novel with a really interesting time sequencing is Piers Anthony's 'Chthon' and this unusual word - chthon - does pop up in 'Freeware'. I was disappointed in this novel because I enjoyed Mr Rucker's book on infinity, 'Infinity and the Mind', with its fascinating concepts of different sizes of infinity and the elegant ways in which these can be demonstrated. I also enjoyed his novel 'White Light' which is quite different to 'Freeware'.
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