Vinge, Vernor

Average customer rating:

Hardcore Science Fiction at it's Best
Not up to Vinge's usual standards
More style than substance
Too much fiction not enough science
First Vinge

Rainbows End
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0812536363

Book Description

Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025.

Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he’s starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts. Living with his son’s family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access—through nodes designed into smart clothes—and to see the digital context—through smart contact lenses.

With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.

In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in, this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated security analysts, including Robert’s son and daughter-in law, two top people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.

As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and satisfying as it is unexpected. This is science fiction at its very best, by a master storyteller at his peak.

Customer Reviews:

Hardcore Science Fiction at it's Best.......2007-06-10

I think Vinge has actually gotten better with Rainbows End. Hardcore is about science and technology in the future. The future of the internet and medicine is treated in fascinating detail. Also, characterization, which is sometimes the weakness seen in hardcore, is very satisfying. The people and their interactions have depth.
As is usual in the hardcore tradition, Rainbows End is basically optimistic and libertarian. But there is enough of a dark, threatening, side to technology to interest the intelligent reader. This is a pre-singularity novel, but you can see it from here. I think it's Vinge's best.

Not up to Vinge's usual standards.......2007-04-30

Vernor Vinge is absolutely my favorite scifi author. ""True Names", The Peace War", "Marooned in Realtime", "A Fire Upon the Deep", and a "Deepness in the Sky" are absolute masterpieces. When I heard that "Rainbows End" was nominated for the Hugo, I simply assumed that Dr. Vinge had hit yet another one out of the ballpark, and that he would be picking up his third Hugo for best novel in 2006.

And then I read the book.

"Rainbows End" is not a bad book. Vinge does a good job of world building, although many of the concepts had already been already covered in his short stories. The problem is the plot. First, Vinge spends too much time on Robert Gu relative to other, more interesting characters. Second, Vinge leaves a huge number of plot threads dangling. What is the Rabbit, exactly? What happens to Vaz once his scheme collapses? What happens between Robert and his ex-wife? Clearly Vinge intends to write a sequel, but unlike his previous novels, "Rainbows End" reads like part one of a two-part story, with all of the attendant drawbacks.

Another problem I have with the book is Vinge's proposition that by 2025 a sufficiently sophisticated interface will effectively provide below-average kids with the ability to perform programming and engineering feats that would tax the capabilities of modern-day experts. As an engineering professor, I don't really buy it. I deal every day with young men and women who have been raised with computers since they were toddlers. Most of them are simply users of devices and programs they do not and cannot understand. Only a hardcore minority are the true geeks who can create something new, just as in every generation past. While I have no doubt that technology will make some amazing strides by 2025, it won't make geniuses out of people who lack the ability to critically analyze what the software tells them. I am a techno-optimist in the sense that I do believe that the Singularity or some reasonable approximation will be hitting us sooner than we think, but I tend to believe that most people will simply be along for the ride when it happens.

Hopefully we'll see Vernor Vinge return to greatness in his next novel, which I've heard will be another "Zones of Thought" novel. As many others have commented, any author is entitled to an occasional so-so story, and this one is clearly Vinge's.

More style than substance.......2007-04-22

Although to outsiders it may seem like a single, monolithic genre, fans know that science fiction is actually a whole bunch of subgenres: new wave, cyberpunk, military science fiction, science fantasy and space opera to name a few (which often overlap). Of all these subgenres, perhaps "hard" science fiction is closest to sci-fi's roots, with its heavy emphasis on the "science" part of science fiction. Done well, hard sci-fi has a real "gee-whiz" feeling to it. Vernor Vinge's hard sci-fi novel Rainbows End will make you say "gee-whiz"; unfortunately, it will also likely make you say "who cares?".

Taking place in 2025, Rainbows End is a complex story that has its central character Robert Gu, a seventy-five year old famous poet who has had his youth and Alzheimer's-plagued mind restored to him due to the wonders of modern medicine. Part of getting acclimated to this new world is going to a sort-of high school where Gu learns how to handle the information technology of the era. For example, now people wear their computers in their clothes and contact lenses. Books have become passe.

Gu gets entangled in a plot involving various intelligence agencies and a mysterious figure appearing as and named Rabbit. There is a battle, primarily virtual, that involves YGBM (for "You Gotta Believe Me") technology that threatens vast mind control. How Gu, a generally obnoxious fellow who gets along poorly with almost everyone, including his relatives, fits into this plot you'll have to read about to understand.

Vinge has written about a world that is filled with all sorts of wonderful things but comes off unbelievable. I understand that technology and culture will be quite different eighteen years from now, but I can't imagine it will be like Vinge envisions it. It is hardly credible that in less than a generation, books will be practically discarded. Yes, they are being electronically recorded, but what happens when the power goes out or the system crashes (personally, I've never had to reboot a book). And even if the kids of 2025 don't like books, there will still be many adults who would refuse to replace them with more technologically wonderful items. Then again, Vinge's world is not filled with the brightest people; they can access all sorts of information, but at the price of not actually knowing a lot.

But the real problem with the book is that it is boring. Not bad, just boring. After you get past all the gee-whiz technology, there are just some dull characters dancing around in an uninteresting story. While there enough of interest here to merit a low three stars, I cannot recommend this book. For similar, but more well-written stories, try William Gibson or Neal Stephenson.

Too much fiction not enough science.......2007-04-07

I rate this novel as 2 ½ stars.

Vinge's novel _Rainbows End_ just didn't do it for me. I nearly didn't finish it.

His plot was too narrow. I didn't much care about the events or their outcome because they didn't really matter. Sure, it's all well and good to have someone attempt to mind control the world, but what's the point? Unfortunately, absolutely nothing was mentioned about the mind control objectives. Also, he spent nearly no time dedicated to developing the most interesting character in the novel, rabbit.

On the other hand, I found him droning on and on about every other uninteresting character, their relationships, their feelings, their motivations... I don't care! I read the science fiction for the science surrounding the story. If I wanted drama and feelings I'd read Star Trek (not that I'm bashing Star Trek by any means).

Personally, when I'm in the mood for good "hard" sci-fi I am more interested in a macro perspective on the human condition as it relates to the plot developments and the technology in use. Writing about a man who has lost his genius coming back from Alzheimer's who is sad that he lost his wife because he was such a jerk to her because that's where his genius came from blah, blah, blah... doesn't constitute hard science fiction to me. In this sense, I really appreciate the work of people like Baxter and Clarke.

The one thing Vinge does a commendable job at in this novel is world-building. He really does set the tone and background for the setting of his novel. The wizardry of everyday and mundane tasks like doing homework or taking a ride in a car are very well highlighted and fun to read. His updating of the educational system is also interesting and thought provoking.

Despite the fact that I had never read Vinge before, I have heard him lecture and researched his thoughts on the technological singularity, and find them to be insightful and quite fascinating (he also seems to be a really nice guy). Perhaps this would be a perfect fit for many other people, but for me, it felt a bit lacking in many things important to a science fiction novel.

(if anyone could recommend a Vinge novel that might fit what I'm looking for, I'd love for you to put it in the comments)

First Vinge.......2007-03-24

I read a lot of Science Fiction but this is my first Vinge. Was led to him after he was mentioned in the context of his advocacy of the concept of a technology Singularity.

The novel was very good "Hard Sci Fi" with plausible yet fanciful extrapolation into a near future world. This is hard to do without "inventing" new science but Vinge does it well. The novel describes well what a world of increasingly smart objects might look and feel like and how ordinary people might deal with such a world. Very entertaining.

A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought)

Average customer rating:

Flawed, but entertaining
Nice title
Great book - three societies
Another gem from Vernor Vinge
Truly Hard SciFi

A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought)
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0812536355

Amazon.com

This hefty novel returns to the universe of Vernor Vinge's 1993 Hugo winner A Fire Upon the Deep--but 30,000 years earlier. The story has the same sense of epic vastness despite happening mostly in one isolated solar system. Here there's a world of intelligent spider creatures who traditionally hibernate through the "Deepest Darkness" of their strange variable sun's long "off" periods, when even the atmosphere freezes. Now, science offers them an alternative... Meanwhile, attracted by spider radio transmissions, two human starfleets come exploring--merchants hoping for customers and tyrants who want slaves. Their inevitable clash leaves both fleets crippled, with the power in the wrong hands, which leads to a long wait in space until the spiders develop exploitable technology. Over the years Vinge builds palpable tension through multiple storylines and characters. In the sky, hopes of rebellion against tyranny continue despite soothing lies, brutal repression, and a mental bondage that can convert people into literal tools. Down below, the engagingly sympathetic spiders have their own problems. In flashback, we see the grandiose ideals and ultimate betrayal of the merchant culture's founder, now among the human contingent and pretending to be a senile buffoon while plotting, plotting... Major revelations, ironies, and payoffs follow. A powerful story in the grandest SF tradition. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds.The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches. But first, both groups must wait at the aliens' very doorstep for their strange star to relight and for their planet to reawaken, as it does every tow hundred and fifty years......Then, following terrible treachery, the Qeng Ho must fight for their freedom and for the lives of the unsuspecting innocents on the planet below, while the aliens themselves play a role unsuspected by the Qeng Ho and Emergents alike.More than just a great science fiction adventure, A Deepness in the Sky is a universal drama of courage, self-discovery, and the redemptive power of love.

Download Description

This is a prequel to Vernor Vinge's 1993 Hugo Award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. It takes place in the same Zones of Thought universe as Fire, but some 30,000 years earlier; it also just won the Hugo.

Customer Reviews:

Flawed, but entertaining.......2007-06-11

The Amazon synopsis gives you an idea of what this book is about: 2 different groups of humans mount independent expeditions to the On/Off star. One group, the Xeng Ho, are intersteller traders who, though they aren't above cheating their customers just a little bit, are basically benevolent. The other group, the Emergents, are very much malevolent in intent. While the conflict between the Xeng Ho and the Emergents is being played out in space, the native species of the only planet orbiting the On/Off star awaken from their hibernation.

Strengths:
Vinge does a good job conveying the vastness of space and the diffilculties of intersteller travel. This isn't Star Trek where a trip to another solar system lasts about as long as a trip to Disneyland. It takes decades to travel between stars and starship crews alternate between being on watch and being asleep in suspended animation in order to survive the journey.

The intrigue and conflict between the Xeng Ho and the Emergents is very well done. The villians are well written and the story is fast paced and entertaining.

The weaknesses:
The sentient species of Arachna, the Spiders. Vinge has created a sentient, completely non-human alien race, yet anthromorphosizes them to ridiculous extremes. The insectoid Spiders marry and live in nuclear families. They live in capitalistic societies and their world is divided into separate nation states that often war amongst themselves. The secular scientists are at odds with the religious fundamentalists. In short, despite their 8-legs and external skelletons, they could be your next door neighbors.

Instead of making an effort to create a truely "alien" species, Vinge has taken the easy way out and written them as "human" as possible. The Spiders have names like Sheranker Underhill, Victory Smith, and Tom Downing (yes, an alien insect named "Tom").

The book is worth reading, but is far from being a classic.

Nice title.......2007-05-28

I wish the story and the prose lived up to the hype. For my money, Alastair Reynolds remains the best scientist-turned-fiction writer. While Mr. Vinge writes better overall than Stephen Baxter, too much of the real action of this story takes place, as they say in Hollywood, 'off camera' while the main characters are either unconscious or pre-occupied with other matters.

'Conventionitis' afflicts this book as much as it does other SF novels, where too many 'scenes' are in fact little more than discussions we've already heard on SF convention panels. I'm also tired of aliens who are basically bugs. Ken MacLeod's 'Learning the World' is far more fascinating both in its depiction of future humans and its realization of a truly alien race. I appreciate that Mr. Vinge doesn't thoughtlessly crank these novels out on a yearly basis, but frankly, if someone told me he did, I wouldn't see the difference in terms of his style. There is no reason this book had to be 700+ pages. It could have been told by Larry Niven, for example, in less than 300.

Great book - three societies.......2007-05-12

Vinge has created a wonderful book, with descriptions of three different cultures (2 human, 1 alien) and a lengthy story of their interaction. I appreciate how all of the people portrayed make sense and how Vinge keeps logical consistency between their actions and their culture and technology. There is psychological conflict, actually out ranking the technical, and big emotional sweep. The ending is a bit out there, but he gets to make the players do what he wants.
Perhaps most interesting was the use of very tiny sensors as a key technology, and as I was finishing the book I read an account of someone developing very tiny sensors in the real world - they have a ways to go before the real world catches Vinge, but it could happen!
Highly recommend this book, good length, good action, good drama, lots of interesting character and character development.

Another gem from Vernor Vinge.......2007-04-22

While the title is similar to an earlier book (A Fire Upon the Deep) and although this book technically takes place in the same universe, A Deepness in the Sky is a new and totally self-contained novel. Approaching 800 pages in this paperback edition, the novel is clearly epic in length; fortunately it is also epic in scope. Vinge deftly weaves multiple storylines throughout the book, including extended flashback sequences, but by focussing on several key characters the reader never gets lost or overwhelmed.

The story: Humankind has settled many worlds and fragmented into many cultures. Two diverse cultures converge on an astronomical anomaly at the same time. One group is the Qeng Ho - interstellar traders extraordinaire; they trade in knowledge and goods and have built an entire society around the notion that everything is negotiable. The other group is the Emergents, who have discovered "Focus" - a way to turn people into willing slaves who are so obsessive over their Focussed specialty that they can no longer function as normal human beings. The anomaly that drew them both: the OnOff star that is a brown dwarf for 200 years, then spectacularly relights into a typical sun-like star for the next 35 years. One planet orbits this star and against all logic, a pre-industrial civilisation has evolved and is making the leap into high tech. The Qeng Ho see them as new customers, the Emergents see a planet to be conquered and assimilated.

The "spiders" are the sentient race inhabiting the OnOff system's planet. While they aren't as creative or interesting as the telepathic dogs in Vinge's earlier work, they and their society are still an interesting invention. More interesting is the idea of Focus - basically turning people into idiot savants who are brilliant in a narrow discipine - say piloting, genetic engineering, or language - but totally incapable of normal human interaction. But the reason this book is a great read is the action, the plotting, and the politics between the two human cultures, which is mirrored in a clash between two Spider cultures on the planet below. Vinge also pulls in some subtle commentary on such diverse topics as religious fundamentalism and the doctrine of pre-emptive strike.

In a book of this scope, there are flaws. The most obvious is the weak ending, which is actually a symptom of the larger problem of the genius of the Spiders. In creating one Edison/Einstein/Da Vinci genius character, Vinge lets the technologically backwards Spiders make enormous leaps of technology in unbelievably short times. Other flaws include the discovery of an anti-gravity material that Vinge does nothing with, and a bizarre kidnapping episode inserted into the middle of the book for no apparent reason.

These flaws notwithstanding, it is one of the best science fiction books published in recent years. It was the winner of the Hugo award and is one of the few "hard sci fi" winners in recent years (compare it with, for example, American Gods and Harry Potter, winner of the next two after this book, neither of which are really science fiction). The sheer volume of speculation and science in this book would be enough to fuel a dozen lesser works. In the hands of Vinge, it all comes together in an epic and thoroughly enjoyable read.

Truly Hard SciFi.......2007-03-21

It doesn't get any better than this. Vinge has all the key elements for writing good scifi working for him, but he takes it to the next level here. The characters are very full and real. He does a wonderful job of humanizing the aliens and alienizing the humans so that by the end, even the "bad guys" have real understandable motives. The science is dead on, with just the right push into the theoretical to give you something to think about. As with all good scifi though, the star here isn't the science, it's the characters. I haven't read a book this good since Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. One day it will be considered amongst the top scifi novels ever written.

Average customer rating:

An annoying amalgam of random ideas and plots
Strong Contender for Best SF Novel of the 90s
A book of 2 tales
Sci-fi at it's best
Not a conventional sci-fi read. Highly recommended!

A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought)
The Peace War
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ASIN: 0812515285

Amazon.com

In this Hugo-winning 1991 SF novel, Vernor Vinge gives us a wild new cosmology, a galaxy-spanning "Net of a Million Lies," some finely imagined aliens, and much nail-biting suspense.

Faster-than-light travel remains impossible near Earth, deep in the galaxy's Slow Zone--but physical laws relax in the surrounding Beyond. Outside that again is the Transcend, full of unguessable, godlike "Powers." When human meddling wakes an old Power, the Blight, this spreads like a wildfire mind virus that turns whole civilizations into its unthinking tools. And the half-mythical Countermeasure, if it exists, is lost with two human children on primitive Tines World.

Serious complications follow. One paranoid alien alliance blames humanity for the Blight and launches a genocidal strike. Pham Nuwen, the man who knows about Countermeasure, escapes this ruin in the spacecraft Out of Band--heading for more violence and treachery, with 500 warships soon in hot pursuit. On his destination world, the fascinating Tines are intelligent only in combination: named "individuals" are small packs of the doglike aliens. Primitive doesn't mean stupid, and opposed Tine leaders wheedle the young castaways for information about guns and radios. Low-tech war looms, with elaborately nested betrayals and schemes to seize Out of Band if it ever arrives. The tension becomes extreme... while half the Beyond debates the issues on galactic Usenet.

Vinge's climax is suitably mindboggling. This epic combines the flash and dazzle of old-style space opera with modern, polished thoughtfulness. Pham Nuwen also appears in the nifty prequel set 30,000 years earlier, A Deepness in the Sky. Both recommended. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

Customer Reviews:

An annoying amalgam of random ideas and plots.......2007-06-17

Joel Fritz (see below if sorted by date) must have read a different book than I did. Despite critical and reader acclaim, I found this book unreadable. After two separate reading attempts, I finished only one-fourth of the book. Vinge tossed in a random assortment of sci-fi ideas, spread the action and characters across a huge and strange universe, and attempted to tie multiple story lines together. By the one-quarter point, I was more annoyed than enthralled, especially since the characters were not appealing.

Vinge should have pared the novel down to the story of the pack-intelligence dogs and the two human children. (Where are good editors when you need them?)

Strong Contender for Best SF Novel of the 90s.......2007-06-09

I read this book a couple of years after it came out and have re-read it two or three times. It's one of my all time favorites. It combines one of my favorite themes, the beginning of the Renaissance, with computer science and an interesting what-if wrinkle on the laws of physics.

The Tines, the dog-like collective mind species, work like a peer to peer computer network. They're entering their Renaissance and the contrast between the pre and post divide minds is fascinating.

The parallel plot involving the galactic civilization in the area where the speed of light is much faster is equally interesting. Vinge incorporates Usenet and Unix style email headers to give the galactic net commentary verisimilitude. The race between good and evil plot isn't obtrusive and provides enough juice to hold the reader's attention.

I found the resolution satisfying, not at all confusing.

This is science fiction that combines interesting ideas with decent character development and a well designed plot. The rule in science fiction is that you get two of the three. Every now and then a story breaks the rule.

A book of 2 tales.......2007-05-06

Two stories:
1) The children on the Tines world - excelllent, original ideas about alien intelligence .. 5*s.
2) The space race to stop the blight - seemingly, purposely confusing and an average storyline .. 3*s.

A little disappointed with the ending. Too many things remained unexplained, for example several references to the fungus inside the spacecraft which never played any part in the plot that I could tell.

The device that destroys the blight, is revealed only in the last chapter and not really explained - it's like the author just ran out of ideas and decided to kill the story.

OTOH the doggies (Tines) are excellent and well thought out. I would like to have seen more effort spent on developing the story of the children and less on 'the net' which is just an interstellar usenet and not very original, even in 1994.

Sci-fi at it's best.......2007-04-26

This story takes place in the future where humans have spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy. They have encountered other alien species. The universe is divided into Zones, and depending on what zone of space one is on, whether one has the ability of faster-than-light travel and high-tech electronic devices that work.

There is the Transcend, at the outer edges of the spiral arms, which is the ultimate goal of many intelligent alien races, where lifeforms have powers like gods and are able to grasp and comprehend thoughts that beings in the lower zones can't even fathom. They are called Powers and usually keep to themselves in the Transcend because as you go farther down the lower zones you lose the abilities you gain in the Transcend. To operate in the Beyond, the Powers use Emissary Devices to do their bidding.

There is the Beyond, a zone of space where faster-than-light ships travel and many automation and high-tech gadgets make life more luxurious and easy. There is the Slow Zone where faster-than-light travel is not possible, and this is where Earth is located. Lastly, there are the Unthinking Depths (toward the core of the Milky Way galaxy) and space travel is virtually a no-go here. Ships and electronic computers fail here after a time.

These are the boundaries in space and it is possible but difficult to reach the Beyond from the Slow Zone.

The worlds in the Beyond are connected through a type of Net, a type of library, with archives that store vast amounts of information. There are archives that are millions of years old, first created by alien races either extinct or evolved into a Power.

The story begins with a human colony Straumli Lab in High Beyond space, at the edge of the Transcend. They are tinkering with an ancient archive and unknowingly let lose an old, malevolent Power that the rest of the Beyond soon calls the Perversion or the Blight. It begins to devour and take down local nets in the High Beyond, with no hope of stopping it. Hope may rest on a Stramuli ship crashlanded on a planet in the Low Beyond with primitive aliens, the Tines, that resemble dogs and have a group mind centered around packs.

This is a highly engrossing read and I recommend it for those that enjoy space opera and adventures and other alien races.

Not a conventional sci-fi read. Highly recommended!.......2007-04-15

This book starts off a little vague, but stick with it and it takes you on a very exotic and unconventional ride. The universe Vinge imagines is very creative, with different rules of physics depending on where you are in the universe and a very "big picture" view of time and space. Even when you are shown the "grain of sand on the beach" reality of the lives of the characters, you still care what happens to them and want them to succeed.

It also introduces some really clever and original (to me anyway) ideas of intelligent life and how aliens might be different from humans. I found the alien species to be very interesting.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any sci-fi fan.

Average customer rating:

Near future vision, happy ending
Very good book, though not Vinge's best
Peace War
I was pleasantly surprised!
Not the best Vinge

The Peace War
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Marooned in Realtime
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ASIN: 0765308835

Book Description

he Peace War is quintessential hard-science adventure. This fast-paced hard-science thriller garnered Vinge the first of his four Hugo nominations for best novel. The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon -the 'bobble,' a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Author-ity becomes virtually omnipotent. But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to defeat the Authority. With the help of an underground network of determined, independent scientists and a teenager who may be the apprentice genius he's needed for so long, he will shake the world.

Customer Reviews:

Near future vision, happy ending.......2007-05-12

Vinge portrays a society not that far in our future where governmental borders and organizations have shifted. Overlords control technology, with a few at the top, and almost feudal societies below.
Good story, well written, a bit too much "superman" in that the principal characters manage fantastic feats (via technology, not brawn).
But a nice book.

Very good book, though not Vinge's best.......2007-03-09

I'm a big fan of Vinge, and I thought this book was really good, though not at the same level as "Fire on the Deep" or "Deepness in the Sky".

As a scientist, I have to admit that I really liked the idea of scientists forcing peace on the world through their inventions. And, no doubt, it would be a disaster if this were to occur in real life...

The only quip I have with the book is that none of the characters were very compelling, due to a lack of development. Superior character development is one of the biggest reasons why I would recommend reading "Fire" and "Deepness" before this one.

Peace War .......2007-02-19

Some do good folks come up with a technogology that can enclose objects withing a large mirror like sphere that cannot be penetrated. Presumably all within it are killed. That does not stop them from using this device coupled with computer tech and large power sources to bobble up all of the major weapons systems and weapons bases in the world in an effort to create peace on earth.
We begin the book with a plane crash. We discover a severly depopulated planet that has suffered from numerous man made plagues that were released just after the Peace Authority bobbled all the major military powers into ineffectiveness. None but the authority can utilize mass production or large power sources. We are introduced to an old man who may have some insight to what happened 50 years ago when the Authority came to power and he burns with the desire to bring them down. All of this is predominantly seen through the eyes of a teenager with remarkable intelligence as he is saved from homelessness and perhaps slavery in the predominantly feudal world he was brought up in.
I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to picking up Marooned in realtime. My only question is how the heck did I not read this 1984 novel or hear about it between then and 2007.

I was pleasantly surprised!.......2007-01-12

This started off a little dry as there were quite a few characters to establish and a lot of bouncing around between them. Eventually, many of these characters come to the same location and the story becomes easier to follow and more fast-paced.

The ideas in the novel are relatively unique and clever. I definitely enjoyed the creativity.

Not the best Vinge.......2006-05-16

I am a HUGE fan of "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky", but this book doesn't measure up. It's got an interesting idea (if implausible), but nowhere near what Vinge came up with for his other two books.

I also found the characters a bit thin. Paul, Wili, and the rest just don't seem real to me. I don't have a sense of how these people got to where they are now. So, Paul is a genius, and has something to do with the origins of the bobbles. Great, but what happened to him in the 50 years that the bobbles have been around? How did he get to where he is? Unanswered questions.

Overall, I'd skip this and stick with the other two books I mentioned.

Average customer rating:

A superb time travel mystery
One of my favourite books in any genre
Murder Mystery Millions of Years in the Making
Welcome to the FUTURE!
part two of the greatest

Marooned in Realtime
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Tatja Grimm's World

ASIN: 0765308843
Release Date: 2004-09-09

Book Description

Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge takes readers on a fifty-million-year trip to a future where humanity's fate will be decided in a dangerous game of high-tech survival. In this taut thriller, a Hugo finalist for Best Novel, nobody knows why there are only three hundred humans left alive on the Earth fifty million years from now. Opinion is fiercely divided on whether to settle in and plant the seed of mankind anew, or to continue using high-energy stasis fields, or "bobbles," in venturing into the future. When somebody is murdered, it's obvious someone has a secret he or she is willing to kill to preserve.The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to 21st century detective Wil Brierson, the only cop left in the world, to find the culprit, a diabolical fiend whose lust for power could cause the utter extinction of man.Filled with excitement and adventure, Vinge's tense SF puzzler will satisfy readers with its sense of wonder and engaging characters, one of whom is a murderer with a unique modus operandi.

Customer Reviews:

A superb time travel mystery.......2006-12-28

After hearing Vernor Vinge speak recently, it was no surprise to me that Marooned In Realtime is a thoughtful, intelligent novel. Science fiction that spans great periods of time is often forced to throw characterization overboard as the scope overwhelms individuals (e.g. Stapledon's otherwise excellent Last and First Men reads more like a treatise on the future than a novel). Vinge's tale of a small group of time travelers living in the ruins of a post Singularity Earth is epic in scope but at the core is a compelling personal tale of companions lost in the distant past and hope for the future. This book is an underappreciated classic and one of the best science fiction novels I have read in some time.

One of my favourite books in any genre.......2006-09-07

I first read Marooned In Realtime when it was serialised in the American Analog [sic!] magazine. I enjoyed it immensely - the artwork was tantalising, too.

I have now read this book a number of times and it is one I return to from time to time, it has become an old friend. I will read it again sometime. I now have the combined novel - Across Realtime, which included The Peace War and Marooned In Realtime - both novels are excellent and worth ten times any Orson Scott Card novel!

Many ideas and feelings are explored in Marooned in Realtime. The conversations between Will and the various people he interviews about the "murder" are informative, thought provoking and full of wonder. His conversation with Della Lu, the Chinese space traveller and former cop for the Peace Authority, is the most interesting and moving. I well remember Della's phrase, spoke in a quiet voice: "Intelligent life is a very rare development." Her story is so credible, it seems as if Vinge has actually found out about the universe from a private, undisclosed source.

The speculations, mainly from Della Lu, about the Singularity are worth reading. This book, as far as I can tell, presents one of the most interesting and credible scenarios vis-à-vis the Singularity I have yet read. Only David Brin's short story, "Stones of Significance" deals with the post-Singularity are well, or, perhaps, better.

If you like the sense of wonder, thought provoking ideas and a damn good story, then Marooned In Realtime is for you.

Murder Mystery Millions of Years in the Making.......2006-06-04

This is not quite a sequel to THE PEACE WAR but it is related and uses at least one of the same characters, Della Lu, but it is independent and can be read by itself. The technology, however, derives from that book and a knowledge of its story helps a bit.

In THE PEACE WAR, a government was able to impose a worldwide peace by imposing a "bobble" on anything that might be threatening. This can be taken to mean anything that threatens the peace or anything hat threatens the power of the peace authority. A bobble is merely a bubble, using a trick of physics to place everything inside in suspension until the bobble bursts. It is a perfect protection. That which is in a bobble can survive even in the sun itself, as long as the bobble does not burst while in the sun. Those within are protected and ignorant of all outside; those outside have no access to that within. All one can do is wait for the bobble to burst.

With the overthrow of the peace authority, technology kept racing ahead. Some time after the 23rd century, though, something happened. All the inhabitants of earth were gone with no clue as to what happened, although theories abound. Those coming out of suspension as the bobbles burst have no clue and there might not even be enough of them to make humanity's continued existence assured. One couple conceives of a grand scheme to suspend everyone until all of the bobbles are burst and then try to repopulate the world. It barely has a chance of working and those chances plunge when someone manages to murder one of the new power brokers. It is no ordinary murder, it was merely the failure to include the woman in the bobbles. She died of old age, alone in the world, while millennia passed.

One of those who has been rescued is a cop. He is tasked with trying to solve the murder of a case that is literally millions of years old. His only help is a series of journals the victim left behind. The catch is that the murderer does not want to be caught and can easily destroy anyone who interferes. Not everyone believes in the grand rescue scheme. To make matters worse, the cops is wrongly though to have raped the victim the night before the crime.

It's a good murder mystery and the technology is interesting to read about. Unfortunately, mysteries are not my favorite. Somebody who does really like them, though, should enjoy this book, especially if also a science fiction fan.

Welcome to the FUTURE!.......2006-03-27

A mystery, a tale of survival, the government of New Mexico, the Peacers, bobbles and millions of years in the future. Tinkers, low tech, high tech, ungovs and statists. Wil W. Brierson, a police detective from the 21st Century, had been shanghaied - forced into a bobble against his will. Now he, and the last remains of mankind and culture, were doing all they could to survive.
And one of the most important persons on Earth, the one with the plan to save them all, is murdered. So after millions of years he gets a new job. To solve the crime.
Set in a Earth far in the future, with advanced techonolgy, interesting characters, realistic problems and new animals the book is a great read. Dogthings, social spiders and fishermonkeys remind me of a Dougal Dixon book. And as Vernor Vinge is a fan of Mr. Dixon there is a reason for that.
I don't have the Peace War but I do have the short story The Ungoverned in which Wil stops the NM invasion of Kansas so I did know some of the background of his character and why the New Mexicans dislike him. This book is just great with the first book. In other words, it pretty much stands on its own.

part two of the greatest.......2005-10-16

Bar none the best fiction I have ever laid eyes on. Unless you count Calvin and Hobbes. The best book comprised of only words then. And the only thing more outrageous than the fact that the year "The Peace War" was published, it had its Hugo award STOLEN away by the inferior (yet undeniably more popular) "Ender's Game" by Card, is the fact that "Marooned In Realtime", the second volume of this book, which somehow held up to the unimaginibly high standard of "The Peace War", had the Hugo that rightfully belonged to it stolen away by the VASTLY inferior sequel to "Ender's Game", "Speaker For The Dead", by the same stinker. Oh well. It just goes to show how little the Hugo people know what they're doing. (Their winning choices for short stories are even more ridiculous. For instance, one in particular where the author got EVERYTHING so wrong, even the most basic concepts, it was hard for me to even stand to read, such as the fact that tidal force is proportional to the inverse cube of the distance, so if you approached a sufficiently massive object, you wouldn't feel it until the instant before you were blasted to bits. And of course none of the story's characters, advanced space travelers mind you, had foreseen that this massive object would have a deadly tidal force and were all taken off guard.)

That said, if you give this book a CHANCE, I think you will find it the most compelling, fascinating story you have ever read. Unless you have read things I have not. Which is more than likely. The premise: what would happen if a group of people got ahold of the ULTIMATE weapon? A weapon so strange that no one could possibly have expected its invention, yet so powerful that it made nuclear weapons obsolete, and a few people controlling it could conquer the world? That's The Peace War. The long-term effects of this technology, and long term trends of human technological development in general are what fuel the second book, "Marooned in Realtime". Interesting social analysis, and I think a very likely interpretation of the nature and fate of intelligent life in the universe. Prepare for the ultimate showdown, the ultimate fight for freedom, perhaps even the ultimate battle between good and evil, because the bad guys conquering the world is only the beginning of the story.

I would recommend, however, that you search for "Across Realtime" and get that book. It's both this AND "The Peace War", the first volume in one book, with a short story, "The Ungoverned" in the middle that sort of bridges the two by introducing the main character in "Marooned in Realtime" in the setting some time after The Peace War but not millions of years in the future as it is in "Marooned in Realtime" itself.

Average customer rating:

An excellent light SF adventure
reprint of a superb insightful sci fi thriller
NOT an anti-feminist novel! In fact...
Vinge was just getting warmed up
A Tip O' the Hat to Larry Niven

The Witling
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 076530886X
Release Date: 2006-11-28

Book Description

This second novel by multiple award-winner Vernor Vinge, from 1976, is a fast-paced adventure where galactic policies collide and different cultures clash as two scientists and their faith in technology are pitted against an elusive race of telekinetic beings.

Marooned on a distant world and slowly dying of food poisoning, two anthropologists are caught between warring alien factions engaged in a battle that will affect the future of the world's inhabitants and their deadly telekinetic powers. If the anthropologists can't help resolve the conflict between the feuding alien factions, no one will survive.

This edition features sixteen full-page illustrations by Doug Beekman.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent light SF adventure.......2007-01-03

An excellent light SF adventure. Our heroes are captured on a medieval planet where it turns out the locals have telekinetic powers. Lacking such powers, our heroes are regarded as inferior "witlings".

Vinge, as usual, writes well and has thought things through in interesting ways. Conservation of momentum causes interesting limits (and also interesting capabilities) for telekinesis. For example, it is cheap to move between points at the same longitude and opposite latitude. So the Summer kingdom has a single Imperial palace split between the hemispheres, and the Winter kingdom has annual migrations from North pole to South pole.

Not "A Fire Upon the Deep", but that's a very high bar.

reprint of a superb insightful sci fi thriller.......2006-12-10

The male archeologist Bjault and the female space pilot Yoninne Leg-Wot disagree on how to go about their assignment to explore the planet Giri. She insists they know enough having "spied" from space on the feudal society below; but he says they only picked up information about women and children as the men are minors. Still with their incredibly superior technology, they land on the planet with a human superiority complex.

Prince Imperial Pelio wants to be recognized as the heir to his father's throne, but he is a Witling so even his sire Lord Prefect of Bodgaru knows his offspring is unworthy as his son cannot mentally transport himself or objects like most people can and do at the speed of light. However, though dreaming of becoming the Lord Prefect, Prince Pelio had no hope of succession as any attempt would not just fail, but also expose him as a Witling and turn him into a slave; that is he had no expectation until the two outsiders landed. They are Witlings like him, but they contain knowledge and technology far advanced than those on his planet. If he can exploit their knowledge, he can become the Lord Prefect even as a lowly Witling.

This is a reprint of a superb look at necessity is the mother of invention as Bodgaru society uses mental telepathy that limits the need for technological advancement especially in transportation for many people. However those lacking the skill are considered handicapped and treated as slaves way beneath those with the talent. The two pompous outsiders land at a time when the have-nots want to break the yoke of slavery while the haves prefer the status quo. Fast-paced and insightful, readers will appreciate this delightful insightful tale of a technological backwater world that for most people does not need wheeled-vehicles.

Harriet Klausner

NOT an anti-feminist novel! In fact..........2005-10-17

A book read years ago and never forgotten. An imaginative technical premise, interesting charactors, and fast paced adventure - all the ingredients of entertaining space opera. But what really blew me away was the ending, and years later I can still recall that mind blowing, apparently controversial, final paragraph (actually last two or three paragraphs) word for word.
Potential readers, please don't be put off by the reviewer that called it mysogynist. If you can capable of seeing the universe, and human charactor, in more than one dimension, you will understand. It's called irony! (but its actually more than that..)
Maybe like me, you will have tears in your eyes, and feel like you've been kicked in the stomach after reading the last page of this book, but it will also ring true. Oh, maybe I'm overstating it - just read the book.
I want to explain why the ending is NOT anti-feminist, in fact the reverse, but it will involve spoilers, so if you haven't read the book yet, I recommend you just take my word for it and don't read any further. The following is an explanation of how I interpreted the ending for the interest of others who have read this book.
(...)

Vinge was just getting warmed up.......2001-12-13

Vernor Vinge was just getting warmed up with this short, but amusing 1976 offering. With "The Witling", Vinge violates the fundamental rule of fiction -- show, don't tell. There are long rambling internal monologues where all the super-cool technical ideas are introduced and explained. The characters all act and talk like graduate students in a research lab.

"The Witling" is well worth it for the ideas, but nowhere near as complete an offering in terms of either technology or characterization as his as his captivating Marooned in Realtime series or his already classic "A Deepness in the Sky". Like me, you might also enjoy witnessing the evolution of Vinge's craft. And while I don't want to give too much away, there is a notion of discontinuity of time and place in this work that should be familiar to fans of Vinge's later work.

A Tip O' the Hat to Larry Niven.......2001-11-12

I believe the teleportation rules in this book are based on an essay by Larry Niven title something like "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation".

Average customer rating:

Where has Vinge been all my life!
Best introduction to the Singularity you'll ever get
best thing I've ever read
hmm...bobble me to the end of this story please!
Worth It Just for "Marooned in Realtime"

Across Realtime
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Gollancz
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)
Marooned in Realtime
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ASIN: 1857981472

Book Description

'The intricately plotted progress of characters from near to farfuture... on an Earth which, like an abandon playground, has long ago been left behind by an evolving humanity... human-scale action within a vast canvas' The Excyclopedia of Science Fiction. Encompassing time-travel, powerful mystery and the future history of humanity to its last handful of survivors, Across Realtime spans millions of years and isan utterly engrossing SF classic. 'You can hardly turn the pages fast enough. As sheer entertainment, it's a winner' Locus

Customer Reviews:

Where has Vinge been all my life!.......2007-05-31

This is the good stuff. This guy is to me most reminiscent of Clarke, and that is about the highest praise I can give a science fiction writer. I have no idea about the possibility of "realtime" or any of his other ideas, but like Clarke, he has enough of a math and science background to flesh them out logically and realistically. And better yet, the characters are plausible and not weakly portrayed, the good guys are not perfect or always right, and the bad guys are not %100 evil, but also have compassion - mostly. And refreshingly, Vinge's grasp of politics, society, and economics is far more contemporary and realistic than that of most sci-fi writers. This pair of novels, or rather two-volume set IMO, is exciting, challenging, and also a real page-turner. Five stars.

Best introduction to the Singularity you'll ever get.......2006-02-07

Looking over what some of these reviewers wrote, I'm wondering, "What color is the sky of their planet of origin?" Sure, it's science fiction, but Vinge is writing about something that, given the current rate of Moore's Law, is going to hit us in less than two decades.

Vernor Vinge is a former computer science professor at San Diego State University, and the whole point of his book is to introduce the singularity (if you miss it, it's in his one-page afterward).

Yes, Across Realtime is a great story - one of the best I've ever read. But it's the ideas that make great science fiction, and Vinge will be known for his big idea long after the Sun flames out into a burnt-out cinder. Check out his presentation at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA, especially his 2003 comments on it. (www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/WER2.html)

best thing I've ever read.......2005-10-16

hmm...bobble me to the end of this story please!.......2005-08-26

Well, there are a couple of good ideas knocking about in here.
But the story is often very convulted and some of the characters
lack development. Its interesting in parts but at times its annoying having to keep track of the various characters and events.If a book is good then this event tracking should take care of itself. But when the story covers geological time frames its a little bit messy.
I wouldnt agree with a lot of the reviewers who claim this is far better than many other sci-fi novels - I found it an interesting read in parts but tedious in other ways.
I didnt share the significance of finding out who marthas killer was especially when there were other things of much more significance happening in the novel and to be honest finding out which of the high/low techs killed her was a bit of a rush to an anti-climax.
Theres a old psychological trait that perhaps people writing review will do so for books they find more favourable than others so its questionable whether you get a true reflection of public opionion about a book..so I'm not too sure how much my views are out of step with the general enthusasism here for these novels. I suppose you'll have to read it to make up your own mind...but remember there is an finite amount of books any human will read so choose well !

Worth It Just for "Marooned in Realtime".......2004-04-19

You know by now that this book comprises the novel "Peace War", the short story "The Ungoverned" and the novel "Marooned in Realtime." The first two stories are interesting, but probably not something that I would rush out to recommend to friends.

However, "Marooned in Realtime" is an amazing joyride! If you like the big ideas, big consequences, big time-spans, all carried out their logical conclusions, this is the story for you! Vinge clearly shows his skills in writing stories with a "sense of awe and wonder" that he later showcases in his "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" novels. If you liked those two novels, you'll most probably like "Marooned in Realtime".

One note:

If you wonder if you "need" to read the "Peace War" and "The Ungoverened" in order to fully enjoy "Marooned in Realtime," there are a couple of concepts and characters that are introduced that are important to fully understanding "Marooned in Realtime." In fact, the conclusion to the "murder mystery" in "Marooned" hinges on your being familiar with a certain character introduced in the earlier stories. I was surpirsed by this since I was hoping that "Marooned" could stand alone by itself without too much backreferencing.

Tatja Grimm's World
Average customer rating:

Not my favorite Vernor Vinge book...

this guy can write

Worth reading for Vinge fans

A Character-Based Fantasy That Works

Compelling reading... up to a point

Tatja Grimm's World
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0765308851
Release Date: 2006-01-24

Book Description

Tatja Grimm grew up among stone-age primitives, but she always knew that she was destined for something greater. When she starts working on the fabulous barge that circles her world publishing magazines, she begins to discover how very much she never knew. Exposed to new technology, to reading, to people who have experienced the wider world, she finds wonder in all of it. Rising through the ranks she proves far more special than anyone could have known. Before she is done, the world will know that her intelligence is matched only by her insatiable appetite for more, which makes conquering her world less an end than a beginning . . . . Unavailable for more than fifteen years, this exciting science fiction adventure is filled with colorful action and the unique ideas that have made Vinge one of the acknowledged masters of the field, and will delight his many fans.

Customer Reviews:

Not my favorite Vernor Vinge book..........2007-04-18

This started off really well. Then it took some very fast twists and turns that left me wondering if I wasn't reading a book that was missing some chapters. This was an interesting idea for a story, but eventually you begin to consider Svir and Cor as the protagonists and Tatja is just an annoyance. By the end, you are depressed because the characters you've come to care about most (including Anchu) have been killed off and Tatja's future is - well - Grimm.

Too disjointed and too depressing for me. I only give it two stars. My favorite Vernor Vinge book so far is A Fire Upon The Deep.

this guy can write.......2007-03-09

fabulous story from begining to end...Vernor is a great writer and this is a "guaranteed" dont put me down read...A true scince fiction story.

Worth reading for Vinge fans.......2007-01-04

The book is a rough work, not very easy to follow. Definitely worth reading for people who already love Vernor Vinge, but I wouldn't buy it otherwise.

A Character-Based Fantasy That Works.......2006-11-27

Vernor Vinge is one of my favorite authors, but Tatja Grimm's World is not typical Vinge. What I most enjoy in his other novels is the outpouring of novel science ideas played out on realistic tableaus. Vinge manages to populate his sci-fi stories with great characters that we can relate to--even those almost completely alien--and places them into solid societal (often completely alien) foundations. "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" are his primary recent efforts, extremely futuristic and alien, but with human connections rarely found elsewhere.

Tatja Grimm's World lacks the science ideas so unique to those novels: it is fantasy, not science fiction. This book combines two novellas Vinge wrote in the 60s, with a prequel written in the 80s; they fit seamlessly together into a very readable, interesting novel. The book centers on the titled character, a possible alien stranded on a world with almost no metals, and an island-based society. Is Tatja an android, or a future being stranded in the past? Maybe she's simply an evolutionary jump in the existing people, or perhaps she's another life-form altogether. The mystery about her past is combined with an ambiguity about her intentions. Is she evil or good, or is she beyond either in terms the islanders (and possibly we) can understand? The mystery and tension that builds up about Tatja is the key to the novel. Other than her, the stories are fairly pedestrian. Vinge doesn't do much with the lack of metals on the world, but does serve up a couple neat ideas (in the newer prequel) about the island-based societies.

Vinge makes the novel work based almost completely on Tatja Grimm's characterization. Even so, the novel feels incomplete. Vinge leaves a teaser that another story was (is? Tatja would be great character for a new Vinge novel!) in the offing. Although I was disappointed with the lack of hard sci-fi typical of Vinge, I did enjoy this book.

If you are new to Vernor Vinge, and are looking for great science fiction, try his two novels mentioned above; you won't be disappointed. If you are a Vinge or fantasy fan, I recommend Tatja Grimm's World as a quick and interesting read.

Compelling reading... up to a point.......2006-05-11

I'm a big Vernor Vinge fan, and bought this book on the strength of the first section (which was reprinted in a compendium. This book may appear to be new, but is actually also a reprint, too). This is a good way to read "early" Vernor Vinge, and the story/characters/locations make for compelling reading in the first parts of the book. But the last section just doesn't hold together, as it involves the murky motives of [spoiler warning] off-worlders who are never fully developed as characters, and their motives are based on really silly sci-fi. So while it didn't live up to my expectations, it did make for decent plane-reading on a transcon trip.

-avi

True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier

Average customer rating:

Who Are You, Really?
A cyberspace primer
Excellent in parts, mediocre in others
Thought-provoking, but not as far-reaching as I'd hoped
Interesting Story and Related Articles

True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Rainbows End
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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ASIN: 0312862075

Book Description

In 1981, three years before the publication of Neuromancer, Vernor Vinges critically acclaimed novella True Names invented the concept of cyberspace, introducing fictionally the idea of a global network of computers. In forums as diverse as Wired, The Whole Earth Catalog, Artificial Intelligence conferences, and Omni, Vinges concept of cyberspace has been the subject of articles and debate. This book is the first forum to explore, in original articles and never-reprinted magazine pieces, the frontier of the Internet and all its subsets.

Customer Reviews:

Who Are You, Really?.......2003-07-11

Try to remember back to the days when computers were giant things located inside even larger buildings, when access to them was jealously guarded by a high priesthood of computer scientists, and the results you got from them, after many days of painstaking labor, was as likely to be absolute rubbish as it was to be useful answers. This was the way the world was when Vinge wrote this remarkably prescient novella, a story of a world dominated by computer access to information, commonly available to everyone, where virtual reality and your avatar are more 'real' than your physical body. In fact, the story was so far ahead of its time that several of the ideas presented in it became the blueprint for how to continue to develop the way computers work and how people interface with them.

It's a fairly good story in pure fictional terms, also. Vinge does not stint on developing his characters while letting us wander in his (at the time he wrote it) fairyland. The conflicts and problems his protagonist faces are very real problems, and Vinge's resolution of the story rings as true as his title.

The title is significant: in today's world when many wander the net known only by a self-chosen moniker, and jealously guard access to any information about their real selves, but have, never-the-less, a large amount of information held in many databases about their real selves (driver's license, social security number, credit reports), obtaining their 'true names' would be equivalent to forcing them to stand naked on a stage. It is this aspect of today's information dominated society that is the subject of several of the essays that accompany this story, many of which advocate methods for maintaining absolute secrecy of communications on the web. This is a large subject rife with many opinions pro and con, especially after the events of 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Several of the essays are well written, although they do seem to come prepared with an axe already ground, and are well worth reading.

But like most collections of essays, the quality is very uneven. Safely skippable are 'Intelligent Software', 'True Magic', and 'A Time of Transition'. Those deserving of a close read are 'Eventful History: Version 1.0x', 'Cryptography and the Politics of True Names', and most especially the original afterword to True Names written by Marvin Minsky, which is not only an excellent essay about the role of computers in society, it is also a very insightful look at all the various things that are going on inside Vinge's story that may not be readily apparent to the casual reader.

Some of the impact of Vinge's story may have been lost in the intervening years since its writing, as many of his imagined items have become reality, but it would be very hard to find a science fiction story that has predicted the future as well as this one.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

A cyberspace primer.......2003-01-09

Vinge's novella would have been worth reprinting on its own, but this package offers a bit more than just a good story. "Truenames", like several other stories mentioned in the introduction of this book (and in the other reviews here), presented an eerily insightful prediction of the cyber-world we have today. Perhaps due to Vinge's familiarity with the technology, however, he was able to pinpoint a number of important issues and sticky points quite specifically, and well ahead of his time. The essays included were well-selected and each serves to highlight these areas and their importance to us today- and these essays comprise the bulk of this volume. Because they cover such diverse topics, and because they are fairly approachable even for a novice, they can provide a beginner with a fairly well-rounded introduction to some of the fundamental issues and challenges of the information superhighway. Timothy May's essay, in particular, is outstanding.

Unfortunately this book stands on somewhat awkward ground. The readers it is going to attract are unlikely to be completely new to the subject - they're probably going to know a bit about one aspect or another. As a result, they're going to be bored by at least some (or many) of the essays in the book. Some of the essays are quite dated as well, though the editor made sure that none were actually irrelevant.

All in all it was quite satisfactory. It's worth rating at 4 stars for a reader who is interested in but unfamiliar with this material.

Excellent in parts, mediocre in others.......2002-09-08

This collections of essays and stories is rather uneven. Some of the essays are rather monotonous and superflous, especially since the long essay by Tim May touches on many of the issues discussed in other essays. The longest portions of the collection - Tim May's essay on Crypto Anarchy, Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer's reports on Habitat, and the eponymous novella by Vernor Vinge - are all excellent and together are worth the price of this volume.

The Habitat reports are probably the most amazing portion of this book, since they are based on a real implementation of some of the concepts discussed in other essays in the book. Habitat was a mid 1980s graphical massively-multiplayer game produced by Lucasfilms. Amazingly, the frontend ran on the Commodore 64 and the connection was over a 300 baud modem. The three essays presented in the book are available online, along with a couple of other pieces on Habitat (including one about the happenings on the Japanese version, which is wonderfully interesting).

"True Names" itself is a good novella and it reads like it could have been written in the past few years. Whether or not this was the first presentation of "cyberspace" is irrelevant to the quality of the story.

Thought-provoking, but not as far-reaching as I'd hoped.......2002-06-25

The emphasis of this collection built around Vinge's 1981 story is exploring how the Internet has evolved in the 20 years since, and how it might change in the future, as well as its impact on society. The deepest essays in the book concern cryptography, which seems appropriate since the hero of "True Names" gets into trouble because the government finds out who he is (in the first three pages!). Still, four or five essays on cryptography, how we can use it to free ourselves from government control, and how governments and corporations want to use it (or ban it) to control us makes the book feel like a one trick pony after a little while. Tim May's article on cryptography says most of what needs to be said on the subject in this context.

The essays otherwise are short on exploring how the net has changed our lives in other ways: Social contact, economic infrastructure, the boost to (and fall in) the economy due to the sheer volume of hardware and software needed to support the net's growth, and so forth. The article on the virtual reality "Habitat" fills some of this void, but it seems woefully outdated considering that MUDs, Instant Messaging and the like have all been popularized since Habitat's heyday.

As for Vinge's story itself, it still holds up well today as an enjoyable read, although the things that bothered me about it ten years ago (the handwaving about how the human mind interprets the net as a fantasy world, the ineptitude of the police to deal with problems in an off-net manner) are still problematic today. But it's certainly a rousing adventure, and touches on several points which are entirely worthwhile today (privacy, secrecy, the value of increased computing power, the Turing Test, how peoples' on-line personas can be entirely different from their true selves). Admittedly, I've always found virtual reality-based stories hard to swallow, so I'm a hard sell in this regard.

Hard-core Vinge fans (such as myself) should certainly pick this up, as "True Names" is an essential developmental story in Vinge's writing career. Those interested in cryptography or some case studies of the history of the Internet should also find it interesting. But all-in-all I think I'd have preferred to see "True Names" included in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge and found some other place to present the essays.

Interesting Story and Related Articles.......2002-05-19

Having read Vernor Vinge's "A Fire upon the deep", I was very eager to read something else of his. I've heard about "True Names" a few years ago and was really intrigued, however, I could not find this book anywhere. Therefore, I was delighted to see that it's out again - I didn't check what else is on the
book, however, it would probably not have made a difference.

"True Names" is basically a medium sized story which was (apparently) groundbreaking at the time it was written (1981). In addition to this story, the book contains many articles by known figures in related areas.
So what is "True Names" about ? Roger Pollack, aka Mr. Slippery, is what is called a warlock. However, he's not the type of warlock of fantasy worlds, he is a warlock of "The Other Plane" (the name Vinge uses for Cyberspace.. simply because Cyberspace has not been coined at the time the book was written). There are a lot of similarities between the two types of warlocks, Mr. Slippery has special powers because of his great knowledge of The Other Plane. Mr. Slippery also is a member of a coven of warlocks, the greatest one in The Other Plane. These people are generally good natured, but are known to cause mischief every now on then. Roger's world crumbles around him when the FBI finds his true name (they discover his secret identity). The offer him a chance to get a reduced sentence by exposing his coven, or more specifically, expose a specific member, The Mailman, whom they believe is trying to take over the world. But the FBI does not know how much they are right, and how much the situation is more dangerous than they think.. only Mr. Slippery and Erythrina, another witch from his coven, have any chance of stopping this danger before it is too late.

I'm sure this story sounds great to you - well it is! I really enjoyed reading it, and it was interesting to see how many of Vinge's predictions have come true.

In addition, there are many articles in the book: among them
* Tim May's LONG article about Cryptography. Very interesting article, however, its relevance to the story is fairly small, and it is way too long.
* Pattie Maes' article about the future of intelligent software. Short article, yet very interesting
* Richard Stallman's very short story and commentary about free reading and software. Very interesting article.
* Chip Morningstar and Randall Farmer's article about Habitat, the first online multi-user game. Fascinatting! So interesting to see the great ancestor of EverQuest and Muds. Also very relevant to "True Names". and there were more..

To summarize: while the articles were interesting, they were not interesting enough to buy without the actual story, and some were simply just barely related to "True Names" which was frustrating, because it made me think this was just an excuse to fill up pages. Nonetheless, the entire book is worth it because "True Names" is an excellent story, and the articles are still interesting. Just don't be embarrased to skip something if it bores you, because there are quite a lot of articles and a fairly short story in between...

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
Average customer rating:

Sci-Fi Short Stories from the Master

A Solid Collection

Unexpectedly good series of short sf stories

Not disappointed.

Great collection of classic and new sci-fi

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge
Manufacturer: Orb Books
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312875843

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A career-spanning collection of science fiction from one of the field's most highly regarded writers, The Collected Stories contains all of Vinge's published short fiction with the exception of two stories--almost 40 years of work including his first professional sale and his most recent novella (published here for the first time). It's a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable review of his career, made richer by the addition of forewords and afterwords to the individual stories in which he discusses everything from the ideas that drove the story to insights on his own writing process.

Vinge's writing is characterized by a clear love of science and an empathy for human needs and feelings. He's intensely curious about what happens when people and science collide. His stories explore the legacies of racism and xenophobia, the pros and cons of anarchy, alien contact, and the sometimes even more difficult contact between humans. He's a master of big ideas, epic settings, and stories well told. --Roz Genessee

Book Description

The short works of the two-time Hugo Award winner, including his big new novella, Fast Times at Fairmont HighVernor Vinge may be the most brilliant science fiction writer of the past 20 years, most recently earning two Hugo Awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999). His earlier groundbreaking works, such as True Names (1981) and Marooned in Realtime (1986), won him a wide readership. Now Vinge presents a feast of great SF sure to delight. From his earliest stories in the mid-1960s, to his longer works of the 1970s and 80s, these pieces display Vinges sense of wonder. Those who love his novels will find his short fiction even more impressive.In such classics as The Ungoverned and The Blabber, Vinge shows the form that has garnered him numerous Hugo and Nebula Award nominations. And in this chronologically arranged showcase, theres a final treatan original novella found only in this collection.

Customer Reviews:

Sci-Fi Short Stories from the Master.......2007-05-19

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge is an excellent, mostly thematic group of short stories by the author including his earliest. As a big fan, it's interesting to note the progression of his craft, his story-telling ability, over the years.
The other surprise was how many of the stories were similar in theme, especially with his later popular novels like Deepness and Marooned in Realtime.
An excellent read in small doses.

A Solid Collection.......2007-03-25

Vernor Vinge is a stalwart of the Science Fiction community and a retired mathematics professor, so I decided to explore his writing with his Collected Stories. I was not disappointed. The entire book is filled with interesting explorations, more than just stories. I really enjoyed the recurring theme of Artificial Intelligence that runs through his work and it wasn't until after I read this volume that I discovered that he's done significant work in the field of technological singularities, arguing that technological advancements are perpetuating and moving at a rate resulting in a situation where the prediction of future inventions and the state of the world become near-impossibilities.

In particular I liked his stories dealing with futures and anarchist themes, with the best being The Ungoverned followed by a bizarre karma story, The Whirligig of Time where ruling aristocrats get their comeuppance. Another future story, Apartness was incredible for its world building and post-apocalyptic future where a settlement in Antarctica provides some answers.

I highly recommend Fast Times at Farimont High for anyone with children because we're not far from this level of school projects, given the technology children have access to.

None of the stories are bad, but I'm only giving the collection 4 stars because the quality is a bit uneven. That's to be expected from a career-long collection. The following is the list of stories you'll find in the volume:

"Bookworm, Run!"
The Accomplice
The Peddler's Apprentice
The Ungoverned
Long Shot
Apartness
Conquest by Default
The Whirligig of Time
Bomb Scare
The Science Fair
Gemstone
Just Peace
Original Sin
The Blabber
Win a Nobel Prize!
The Barbarian Princess
Fast Times at Fairmont High

- CV Rick

Unexpectedly good series of short sf stories.......2007-03-08

I bought this collection for the novella "Fast times at Fairmount high" on the random reccomendation that it was on the 2007 "Futurama" calendar as a Read this. The novella is good, serious SF with a hint of humour and a lightness of touch. The bonus was an almost complete collection of the authours other short works complete with introductions by the authour. His range is wide and you can see his style develop over the years. The stories are more than usually thought provoking without baffling the reader with science (although he does like difficult to pronounce character names). I will re-read the lot in about six months (a rather geekinsh habit of mine to check whether my first imopressions are still right) and am looking forward to that enormously.

Not disappointed........2006-11-11

Being Vernor Vinge stories, I was sure they would be great - and I wasn't wrong for the most part. Most of them were enjoyable. The only downside was that some of them were 'early' Vinge and thus a bit dated. But, even knwing this - I would buy this book again.

Great collection of classic and new sci-fi.......2005-11-12

I had read Vinge's Zones of Thought novels "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" before getting this. These two novels were vast, intricately plotted stories. Vinge does well to flesh out the characters and ideas in the relatively short stories of this book. It surprised me to learn he has been writing short fiction since his teens. One of the fascinating parts of reading this collection is seeing his writing style develop, although it was never too shabby in the first place.

These stories were written over the last 30+ years, and his style varies from the classic Asimov-like tone of 60's sci-fi to one with more than a nod towards fast-talking cyberpunk. I found them all enjoyable in their own way - his speculative treatment of computer animation from the 60's is quaint, while "Fast Times" ended a bit abruptly just as it was getting interesting (it's being turned into a novel). The writing is never boring, and more often than not inspired - one of the better books I've read of late.

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