Software (Ware Tetralogy #1) (1982)

Rucker’s unruly robots and their ageing human creator turn the possibility of copying a mind into a messy problem about bodies, dependency and survival. The movement’s comic, grotesque side is fully present here, alongside questions about the status of artificial life. Choose this first Ware novel if cyberpunk’s cool exterior usually leaves you cold. It is short, strange and druggy, with deliberately outrageous transformations rather than sober technical prediction.