The Hacker and the Ants - Softcover

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.

A cyberspace yarn from the author of The Hollow Earth (1990), etc. Jerzy Rugby writes computer programs for a company developing a household robot and shares his apartment with Studly, an advanced prototype. Jerzy finds that his equipment is infected with ``ants''--rogue programs like viruses apparently released by his oddball-genius boss, Roger Coolidge. Suddenly, he's fired and immediately hired by a second company that is developing a rival robot. Studly releases the ants into the global TV system, which promptly crashes, leaving Jerzy facing a major lawsuit--though his new company bails him out and provides a lawyer. But once Jerzy has perfected the robot, his contract is terminated (no more bail, no more lawyer). The ants, meanwhile, have occupied large areas of cyberspace and are rapidly mutating, intruding on the real world to develop robots of their own. Naturally, they turn on their creator, leaving Jerzy with a dangerous mess to sort out. Sophomoric and excessively didactic, with an obscure plot: of interest largely to teenage computer buffs and Rucker regulars. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.