From Amazon.com
This super-smart and wildly goofy work by
Cyberpunk author Rudy Rucker is a hilarious and totally engrossing tale of electronic pestilence and conspiracy. Protagonist Jerzy Rugby is trying to create truly intelligent robots. While his actual life crumbles, Rugby toils in his virtual office, testing the robots online. Then, something goes wrong and zillions of computer virus ants invade the net. Rugby is the man wanted for the crime. He's been set up to take a fall for a giant cyberconspiracy and he needs to figure out who--or what--is sabotaging the system in order to clear his name. Plunging deep into the virtual worlds of Antland of Fnoor to find some answers, Rugby confronts both electronic and all-too-real perils, facing death itself in a battle for his freedom.
The Hacker and the Ants is funny, chilling, and surprisingly rich.
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
From Publishers Weekly
With a protagonist named Jerzy Rugby, a realty company called Welsh & Tayke, hackers who call themselves Bety Byte and Riscky Pharbeque and computer daemons that look like ants and destroy digital television transmissions, Rucker's second novel clearly dwells in that peculiar subdivision of postmodernism known as cyberspace. As it is enthusiastically described, Rugby's attempt to design a household robot that can function even in the most dysfunctional of homes seems truly like the Great Work he believes it to be. Rucker ( The Hollow Earth ) defines each computer-related term that might confuse the reader, ensuring that everyone will be able to understand the travails Rugby endures after he is blamed for the release of the TV-disrupting daemons. As matters become steadily more absurd, Rugby ultimately deals with the evolution of the human race. Readers familiar with Rucker's previous foray into virtual reality may be pleasantly surprised by his more mature perspective here. Even those who don't break into paroxysms of laughter while reading of bankrupt LISP programmers should find the Antland of Fnoor fascinating.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
