Happy Birthday: Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (born March 22, 1946) is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which (Software and Wetware) both won Philip K. Dick Awards. He edited the science fiction webzine Flurb until its closure in 2014.

Rucker was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, son of Embry Cobb Rucker Sr (October 1, 1914 - August 1, 1994), who ran a small furniture-manufacture company and later became an Episcopal priest and community activist, and Marianne (née von Bitter). The Rucker family were of Huguenot descent. Through his mother, he is a great-great-great-grandson of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Rucker attended St. Xavier High School before earning a BA in mathematics from Swarthmore College (1967) and MS (1969) and PhD (1973) degrees in mathematics from Rutgers University.

As his "own alternative to cyberpunk," Rucker developed a writing style he terms transrealism. Transrealism, as outlined in his 1983 essay The Transrealist Manifesto, is science fiction based on the author's own life and immediate perceptions, mixed with fantastic elements that symbolize psychological change. Many of Rucker's novels and short stories apply these ideas. One example of Rucker's transreal works is Saucer Wisdom, a novel in which the main character is abducted by aliens. Rucker and his publisher marketed the book, tongue in cheek, as non-fiction.

[I read a handful of Rudy Rucker's work in the early 90's when I was *deep* into Cyberpunk. I think I need to look into some of his later work.]