Rudy Rucker is a writer, mathematician, and former computer science professor. He received Philip K. Dick awards for his cyberpunk novels Software and Wetware, now available in the WareTetralogy. His fantasy California novel of the afterlife, Jim and the Flims, appeared in 2011, as did his autobiography, Nested Scrolls, which received the Emperor Norton Award. He recently finished writing a 1950s alien-invasion novel called The Turing Chronicles, featuring a love affair between Alan Turing and  William Burroughs. Rucker edits a speculative fiction webzine called Flurb,www.flurb.net. These days he's gearing up for the collapse of publishing by starting his own line, Transreal Books.

"I like to think of science fiction as an edgy literature, like the beatniks or the punks, where we're turning our backs on the bullshit, we're trying to make a new world, we're trying to look at things with fresh eyes. And it's always possible to look at things with fresh eyes. It's never been easy to do that, but it's not any harder now than it ever was."