A lifetime of thought. Collected Essays includes sixty essays and a hundred illustrations. Manifestos and talks about writing science-fiction. Cool scenes seem riding the Silicon Valley computer wave for twenty years. Obsessively beautiful graphics—cellular automata, artificial life, fractals, space curves, and virtual reality. Playful raps and speculations about the future. Digital immortality, artificial intelligence, and the birth of universal mind. Reminiscences of strange days. Mentors, Great minds and wild freaks: Kurt Gödel, Martin Gardner, Robert Sheckley, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Ivan Stang and Stephen Wolfram.