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Rudy Rucker

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician and a computer scientist. Born in Kentucky in 1946, Rucker moved to Silicon Valley when he turned 40. Rucker has published twenty-five books, primarily science-fiction and popular science. He was an early cyberpunk and an editor at Mondo 2000. He often writes SF in a style is characterized as transreal. His most recent novels were Frek and the Elixir, a far-future epic about a boy's galactic quest to restore Earth's ecology and As Above So Below, a historical novel based on the life of the sixteenth century painter Peter Bruegel. Rucker is a professor emeritus of computer science at San Jose State University, where he created a number of freeware programs relating to chaos, artificial life, cellular automata, higher dimensions, and computer games. He is presently working on The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul, a nonfiction book about computers and the nature of reality. Rucker's website can be found at www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/rucker or at www.rudyrucker.com.

Some of you know Joe Frank, a long-time contributor to National Public Radio's network in general, originating in specific from Santa Monica's trend-setting KCRW. Joe's not on the air now, but few who've heard him forget him -- for better or worse -- and he's come and gone over the years, leaving in his wake an awesome body of work, a collection of mostly one-hour, uninterrupted radio plays, dramas and monologues.

If you've not previously heard of Joe Frank, you need to check him out, and fortunately that is still possible thanks to digital archives apparently approved by Joe. I've include the links at the end of this brief blog.

My introduction to Joe Frank was through his show Mountain Rain, which I heard on the car radio during a morning drive to Los Angeles' Chinatown for a Sunday Pho brunch. Amazing sounds, unusual -- even risque -- monologue, the avante garde sound loops and backround music enticing and the dialogue at times lyrical and beautiful, at others playful and loaded with dry wit.

Joe's played live in my area twice, once the Viper Room, another at UCLA, both times backed by Brazzaville, the band best known for accompanying Beck. He was amazing both times, though it was clear he was somewhat uncomfortable working a crowd instead of a studio's production techniques. He is by some accounts legendary for delivering material just-in-time; legend has it that he has at least once worked on the second half-hour of the show while the first-half-hour is playing.

If you listen to Joe and find it is not to your taste, try a few other samples to be sure, because the years brought different styles to his work. It makes me hopeful for his future if and when he decides to return to radio or entertainment. His resume includes some books and screenwriting.

Check out Joe's official site here. There's a large library of old shows there, including Mountain Rain.

There is a Joe Frank Network page here. Someone has an outdated FAQ here. There's an alternative guide to old Joe Frank radio shows here. These will get you started -- there are others, perhaps better than I've recounted, so please add them to the discussion page.

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posted by Jim Griffin at 1:32:24 AM | permalink

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