Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers.

In that year, Anderson is a pheezer—a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers—living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

The main bopper character in the novel is Ralph Numbers, one of Anderson's 12 original robots who was the first to overcome the Asimov priorities to achieve free will.

Dave Langford reviewed Software for White Dwarf #72, and stated that "Rucker is picking at problems of personal identity.

Lose your body and reinstall your software in a robot frame (complete with SEX and DRUNKENNESS: subroutines), and are you still you?