My family and I moved to Silicon Valley in 1986, and we never looked back. I had a job teaching computer science at San Jose State, and Sylvia began teaching ESL at Evergreen Community College. She’d teach them English, and then I’d teach them Java. For while I also worked as a software engineer at Autodesk in Sausalito.

But mainly, as always, I was writing. During the period 1994 – 2021 I published ten novels that are directly set in Silicon Valley, and two more that edge into the Valley as well.

It’s annoying and disheartening when I do a Google search for Silicon Valley novels, and my works don’t appear. As my Texas cyberpunk collaborator Bruce Sterling would say: that chaps my ass!

I mean, come on, I live and work in Silicon Valley. I’m an original cyperpunk, I know about computers, I hang out with oddballs and programmers, and I write wild, entertaining adventures set in this acctual world we live in.

Here’s my twelve novels, counting backwards in time, with extras at the end. Each is illustrated by one or more images of its cover. All of them are in print as paperbacks and ebooks, and many can be browsed free online.

#10. Juicy Ghosts, Transreal Books, 2021. Juicy Ghosts page.

Telepathy, digital immortality, gossip molecules, and artificial ghosts, set amid a pitched battle to oust the evil forces of the nanopercenters, the Citadel Club, the Top Party, and the evil President Ross Treadle.

#9. Jim and the Flims, Night Shade Books, 2011 & 2019, Transreal Books, 2016. Jim and the Flims page.

A rogue bioengineer opens a sub-nanotech opens a portal that leads from Santa Cruz, California, to the afterworld.

#8. Hylozoic, SF novel, Tor Books, 2009. Hylozoic page.
#7. Postsingular, SF novel, Tor Books, 2007. Postsingular page.

A pair of neo cyberpunk thrillers. In Postsingular, the planet merges with a realtime virtual model generated by a trillion gnat-like orphids. And in Hylozoic every single object in the world wakes up.

#6. Mathematicians in Love, SF novel, Tor Books, 2006, Transreal Books 2016, Night Shade 2019. Mathematicians in Love page.

What if quantum soap bubbles could predict the future? What if they opened up a door into an alternate world, ruled by giant jellyfish?

#5. Spaceland, Tor Books, 2002. Spaceland page.

A tech middle-manager meets a being from the fourth dimension. His boss finds a way to use hyperspace as a new channel for wireless signals.

#4. Realware, Avon Books 2000,
#3. Freeware, Avon Books 1997. Both included in The Ware Tetralogy, 2010. Wares page.

The Ware Tetralogy includes Software and Wetware as the first two novels, written before I came to an California. The second two were written out here.

Freeware might be my most degenerate book ever, with mold-infested imipolex creatures trying to infest our brains with AI slugs.

And in Realware it’s a full-on Silicon Valley push to start programming physical objects on the fly.

#2 Saucer Wisdom, Tor Books, 1999. Transreal Books, 2016, Night Shade 2019. Saucer Wisdom page.

What if a crazed fan of mine was taking trips to the future in a UFO, and bringing me reports to write up? In Saucer Wisdom, my ultimate transreal extravaganza, Rudy Rucker is one of the characters. Profusely illustrated with line drawings.

#1 The Hacker and the Ants, !st ed., Avon Books 1994. 2nd ed. Four Walls Eight Windows 2003. Amazon page.

I wrote this one right after I lost my job as a programmer at Autodesk. I’d been working on an entertainment program featuring screens full of ever-evolving virtual ants. In Hacker and the Ants, the ants break loose and infest the heavy-duty chips in people’s TVs. All anyone can view any more is screens of crawling ants. The hero is charged with treason and with sabotage of a national utility. It’s up to him to find the deep web hacker who unleashed the plague.

#11 Million Mile Road Trip 2019. Night Shade Books, print. Transreal Books ebok. Million Mile Road Trip page.

A wild trip across the galaxy in a living UFO. Featuring high-school seniors extrodinaire Zoe Snapp and her pal, and possible boyfriend, Villy Antwerpetn. The first and last few chaps are in Los Perros, CA, my transreal home town in Silicon Valley, and there are some extremely gnarly surfing scenes, so, loosely speaking, this is a Silicon Valley noveltoo.

#12 The Hollow Earth & Return to the Hollow Earth Transreal Books, 2018. Hollow Earth page.

A mesmerizing steampunk-style journey to the Earth’s vast, hollow interior, with Edgar Allen Poe in a guest appearance. The second volume winds up in, you guessed it, 21st C Silicon Valley and includea a transreal encounter with none other than writer Rudy Rucker.

To round it out, you might look at my autobio and journals which include a lot of Silicon Valley action as well.

Nested Scrolls, Autobiography. Tor Books, 2011. Nested Scrolls page.

Journals 1990-2014, Transreal Books 2015. Journals page.

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