The Hacker and the Ants Book

Revered as one of the Godfathers of the "Cyberpunk" literary movement, author Rudy Rucker is an American original - a seriously daffy sf innovator whose irrepressible imagination truly knows no bounds. And now the man who the San Francisco Chronicle says "has always displayed a taste for the goofily outlandish" climbs to bold new heights of plausible absurdity - with an unorthodox tale of cyber-conspiracy and virtual infestation. When he's not butting heads with his soon-to-be-ex-wife or barring realtors from his door, 40-something Silicon Valley computer programmer Jerzy Rugby is neck-deep in "The Great Work" - aiding GoMotion Unlimited in its quest to bring truly intelligent robots into existence. He spends his days blissfully hacking away in cyberspace - a virtually real combination office, lab and funhouse testing area for his a.i. creations. And everything seems copacetic - until an ant gets in the ointment. Lots of ants, actually, millions and millions of them - strange viral pests appearing from out of nowhere to wreak havoc throughout the shared computer network. And when Jerzy's not-so-faithful robotic companion Studly feeds the ever-multiplying infection into the TV cable lines, thereby invading the homes of Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary America, innocent hacker Rugby is suddenly Public Enemy #1 - wanted by a very angry government for sabotage, computer crime...and treason. But Jerzy Rugby is nobody's patsy. And before he takes a long, hard fall, he's going to get to the bottom of the computer-generated insectile plague - even if it means confronting Death himself, aka Hex DEF6, in a cyberspacial backroom in the Antland of Fnoor.

Computer programmer Jerzy Rugby spends his days blissfully hacking away in cyberspace, aiding the GoMotion Corporation in its quest to bring intelligent robots into existence. Then an electronic ant gets into the machinery, then millions of them. Suddenly Jerzy is public enemy #1, wanted by the government for treason--a set-up patsy.