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.

TUCSON II: Musings on the Mortality of Flying Machines

Okay, through the good offices of Shutterfly (whose online photo-hosting service I highly recommend, BTW), I’ve compiled an album of 53 photos I took during my exploration of Tuscon’s boneyards.

These pictures were taken on the grounds of the U.S. military’s AMARC aircraft-storage facility, and in several of the scrapyards that surround the AMARC compound. The photos more or less trace the path that an airplane follows as it moves from inactivity, to storage, to disposal, to cannibalization, to scrap.

Be forewarned: The images may be a tad unsettling. We entrust our lives to these birds, so it can be unnerving to see them in various states of disrepair or decay… to realize that they are, ultimately, just an improbable jumble of wires, rivets, and beer-can aluminum.

So, with that said, the online photo album begins here.

Lastly, a word about the use of the photos… I took ‘em all, I hold all the rights, and in the spirit of the Creative Commons, I've placed all the images in the public domain. I encourage you to use/manipulate/share/exploit them as you will.

Shutterfly will sell you hard-copy prints, if you’d like. Want an image to use as desktop wallpaper, the cover of your next goth-rock CD, or whatever? I’ll gladly email you a full-res digital file. (Most of the photos are around 1.1 MB.) Just tell me the file name, as shown in the slide show caption, and I’ll zap it to you poste haste.

And now, we return to our regular programming…

posted by Todd Lappin at 10:38:05 AM | permalink

TUCSON: The Middle Earth of Arizona?

I just returned from my trip to the Boneyards of Tucson, and I’m happy to report that my adventure was a great success.

I mean, really, why bother with the arduous journey to Middle Earth, when Tucson offers so many equally magical spectacles… so much closer to home?

To wit: During my visit, I was able to explore the Landing Gear Forest, the Propeller Garden, and the mysterious Turbine Incubation Pods.

I saw the Tail Fin Can-Can, the B-1 by Christo, and the cruel wreckage left behind by the Marauding Metal Guillotines. I battled my way through the Hoardes of S2 Trackers and I paused to listen to the dolorous Weeping of Scavenged 707s.

Truly, was a most excellent quest, and my head is still spinning with visions of the many wonders I witnessed. More photos to follow soon.

posted by Todd Lappin at 8:32:06 AM | permalink

URBAN EXPLORATION: The Ruins of Treasure Island

Okay, how’s this for an unlikely scenario…

Imagine a palm-lined island that sits in the middle of a beautiful harbor. Place it near a city that’s one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. Picture the island as a kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, full of abandoned houses, cavernous warehouses, and military ruins, all lying within plain view of the expensive city’s bustling urban center. Seem just a tad incongruous?

That’s San Francisco’s Treasure Island.

I look out at Treasure Island from my desk at work. As I write this now, I can clearly see the old seaplane hangars that were built to serve Pan Am Clippers en route to Hawaii and China. And I can see the former Administration Building, decorated with sculptural remnants of a grandiose World’s Fair. During World War II, Admiral Nimitz plotted naval strategy in one of the building's basement bunkers.

Treasure Island was created in the 1930s. It was built from landfill, in time to play host to the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition. Like other World’s Fairs, the Expo was a marvel of wild architecture and exotic amusements. (Lots more great Expo pictures here.)

When the Expo ended, the island was supposed to become an airport. Instead, the US government leased the land in 1941, a few months before Pearl Harbor, converting it into a a naval base along the way. The Navy used Treasure Island as a training and administrative facility until 1997, at which point the military packed up and departed, leaving a lot of empty buildings behind.

Treasure Island is now open to the public, and it’s a wonderfully eerie place. The old Pan American hangars are today used mainly as motion picture sound stages. (Nash Bridges, Battlebots, and The Hulk were all filmed there.) An old Navy gun turret, once used for training, remains on the lot.

There’s an abandoned bowling alley, a movie theater, a shuttered Retail Store, and even a desolate miniature golf course. Row after row of bland, 1970s-era military tract housing lines the north end of the island. Some of the homes are off-limits -- built on contaminated soil, apparently. But others have been rented to hearty urban pioneers who are willing to live on an island that doesn’t even have a place to buy a quart of milk. But hey, the views are nice.

What’ll happen to the place? It’s apparently unclear. For a while, there was talk of building casinos on the island, but that idea was quickly dropped. Because it’s built from landfill, the island is slowly sinking, and it’s also vulnerable to "liquefaction" during earthquakes. Other than that, it’s perfectly lovely. And it's just sitting there, all faded and forlorn, awaiting whatever comes next.

posted by Todd Lappin at 12:36:50 AM | permalink

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