Rudy Rucker is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and philosopher, and is 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. At present he edits the science fiction webzine Flurb. He taught at the State University of New York at Geneseo from 1972–1978. Thanks to a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Rucker taught math at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg from 1978–1980. He then taught at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia from 1980–1982, before trying his hand as a full-time

Author for four years. Inspired by an interview with Stephen Wolfram,[2] Rucker became a computer science professor at San José State University in 1986, from which he retired in 2004. A mathematician with philosophical interests, he has written The Fourth Dimension; Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension; and Infinity and the Mind. His recent non-fiction book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning Of Life , and How To Be Happy summarizes the various philosophies he's believed over the years and ends with the tentative conclusion that we might profitably view the world as made of computations, with the final remark, "perhaps this universe is perfect."