In the year 2165, America is divided into two groups of
people, Dreamers and Drones. Drones spend their time answering questionnaires generated by Phiz-Whiz, a Big
Brother computer. Dreamers watch 3-D holovision all day and
plug their skull-sockets into a Phiz-Whiz link-up at night.
Young Vernor Maxwell doesn't want to be a dreamer or a drone. He wants to program Phiz-Whiz by linking his brain with its central processor. So he moves into the public library (nobody cares because nobody ever goes there), reads all the science and math tapes, and takes lots of LSD and seeweed in preparation. Vernor and a few others (dubbed the angels) are so successful in programming Phiz-Whiz that they are busted for conspiring to overthrow the government.
But Vernor's adventures don't stop there. They keep getting
wilder, until he and his girlfriend transcend the third
dimension and travel through hyperspace. This pre-Reagan
story of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and higher math is cyberpunk at its finest.
(M. Frauenfelder)
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Spacetime Donuts
by Rudy Rucker
Ace Science Fiction, 1981
Here is the TEXT POPUP for Spacetime Donuts:
Seeweed was a mutated aquatic strain of cannabis sativa. All you had to do was drop a seed into a bucket of urine, and six weeks later you had a half-pound of seeweed. The grownups said you'd go crazy if you smoked it without taking tranks to smooth the trip, and they may have been right; but the kids continued to function pretty well after they discovered that tranks just took the edge off the weed.
