My name is Woods Martin and I am currently a college student. I was born in Louisville, Kentucky in July of 2004. I am currently studying history and political science at Bellarmine University. I am going into my junior year and am also currently interning with the Belle of Louisville Riverboats.

Did you know that the Belle of Louisville was featured in a novel?  

The famous steamboat appeared in the novel Wetware by Rudy Rucker. Rucker was born on March 22, 1946, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the great-great-great-great grandson of the famous philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.  

Rucker attended high school at St. Xavier and then went on to study at Swarthmore College and Rutgers University. He eventually earned a BA in mathematics from Swarthmore as well as a MS and a PhD. After teaching mathematics and working at Autodesk he began writing books such as The Hacker and the Arts, The Fourth Dimensions, and Infinity and the Mind.  

Rucker is considered to be one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. He also developed a writing style that he calls transrealism. Transrealism as described by Rucker is science fiction based on the author’s own life and immediate perceptions combined with fantastic elements that represent psychological change. His earliest transreal novel was White Light which was written during Rucker’s time in the German city of Heidelberg.  

The Ware tetralogy of which the novel Wetware is a part of is in part an explanation of the use of natural selection to develop software.  

Interestingly when Rucker was a freshman in college, he was roommates with now retired American film critic and author Kenneth Turan.  

In 1967, Rucker married a Hungarian woman from Budapest named Sylvia Bogsch and together they had three children. Rudy met Sylvia during his time at Swarthmore College and their marriage ended up lasting 55 years. Sadly, on January 2, 2023, Sylvia died and a memorial service for her was held in Los Gatos on February 4th.  

On July 1, 2008, Rudy suffered a cerebral hemorrhage which caused him to write his own autobiography titled Nested Scrolls. Despite him thinking his death was imminent after the hemorrhage, he is still alive today.  

Rucker appeared in the movie Manual of Evasion LX94, which was a 1994 film directed by Edgar Pena. Rucker has won Philip K. Dick awards for his novels and one of his novels titled Million Mile Road Trip which was published in 2019 is often considered to be his greatest novel.  

When it comes to how the Belle of Louisville is depicted in Rucker’s novel Wetware the famous steamboat is actually a character within the story. The famous steamboat is depicted as having been imbued with an onboard artificial intelligence thus making it actual character instead of just a boat. The decision to include the Belle of Louisville in one of his novels indicates that Rucker truly does love his hometown of Louisville.  

Overall, the Belle of Louisville’s fame and association with the city of Louisville was enough to get it featured in a novel authored by a Louisville native. Rudy Rucker’s pride for his city specifically in regard to the Belle of Louisville cannot be understated and the steamboat making an appearance in of his novels only adds on to the ship’s fame.