My take on Vinge
My relationship with Vinge (pronounced like Vin-gee) began in 1984 when I bought The Peace War in a small bookshop, based largely on the cover art. I loved it. I hastily found copies of his previous fiction and have bought everything of his that has come out since. I'm going to break this Lens up in a way that is particularly meaningful to me because I think that's the only way I can reflect meaningfully on Vinge for you all.
The bulk of the lens will be devoted to Vinge's fiction (see below for a link to a lens on the Singularity), but I'll start with a sort of rolling blog on Vinge-related news. As I run across stuff elsewhere on the net worth linking, I'll add those links to the first section here and comment on them. I'll keep the list short so that it doesn't obscure the reviews of fiction below.
Entirely based on my own perception of Vinge's writing, I'm classifying everything before 1991 as early and his more recent writings as current. Also, he's into enough other interesting stuff that I'm including a section of non-fiction related info.
Contents at a Glance
Vinge News
- 2007 SF awards
- "HUGO, CHESLEY, AND PROMETHEUS AWARDS ANNOUNCED...Vernor Vinge came away as the top winner in the Hugo fiction category" And he won a Prometheus Hall of Fame award for True Names. w00t!
- Serious Singularitians
- The Associated Press piece on the recent Singularity Summit. It's more even-handed than the craptastic stuff written for the Wall Street Journal.
- VV as music!
- I guess in 2006, an artist going by the name of Christ -- working with Benbecula Records, released a limited-press record named Vernor Vinge after the title track. This probably isn't really Vinge news, but hey...
- Vinge's fictional tropes
- I don't know if this counts as "news" but I just ran across it and thought I could link it through.
- The Virtual Citizenship New Technologies Symposium
- Vinge was at the The Virtual Citizenship New Technologies Symposium yesterday. If any of you were there, I'd love to hear how it went.
- Interview in response to Rainbows End Locus award
- This appears to be a mail-in interview between Vinge and some French SF group. It is largely about Rainbows End and the Singularity. Good stuff.
E a r l y W o r k
--The following books fall into what I'm calling Vinge's early period.
The Peace War
This book occupies a special place in the massive array of books I call a library. I think it was the first really great SF that I found on my own -- leading to countless friends and family becoming Vinge fans. And it was like he was writing just for me.
In this story, a gifted kid demonstrates his smarts, earns a place of scholarship with a mentor and becomes really important. This is set against and interacts with a backdrop of interesting speculative science and conflict for resources and way-of-life. Now, it feels a little formulaic compared to his fantastic modern fiction, but I think it's still a great read.
This was published in 1984 then went out of print. You can find lots of book-club hardbacks of it around the used bookstores from that era. After being out of print for a while, it was collected in Across Realtime in 1991 with some companion stories (Marooned in Realtime and the short story, the Ungoverned). Apparently it was reprinted as a stand-alone novel in 2003.
For a more full summary, see The Peace War at Wikipedia.
In this story, a gifted kid demonstrates his smarts, earns a place of scholarship with a mentor and becomes really important. This is set against and interacts with a backdrop of interesting speculative science and conflict for resources and way-of-life. Now, it feels a little formulaic compared to his fantastic modern fiction, but I think it's still a great read.
This was published in 1984 then went out of print. You can find lots of book-club hardbacks of it around the used bookstores from that era. After being out of print for a while, it was collected in Across Realtime in 1991 with some companion stories (Marooned in Realtime and the short story, the Ungoverned). Apparently it was reprinted as a stand-alone novel in 2003.
For a more full summary, see The Peace War at Wikipedia.
The Witling
After discovering Vinge in The Peace War (and wanting more!) I found a battered old copy of The Witling. To be honest, I was kind of disappointed. This felt much more like the musty old SF novels from the 60s on my dad's bookshelf -- some of which were fine (e.g. Coordwainer Smith), but not quite modern.
The Witling is a good story of intrigue set in a world where the natives teleport around in pods. It spends time justifying the gain and loss of angular momentum as the location on the surface of the sphere changes and plays with the ramifications of having this ability. The background -- the SF of the book is very interesting while the story isn't particularly compelling. I'm not getting rid of my copy, but I'd guess that only fans seeking completeness would be looking for this.
The Witling is a good story of intrigue set in a world where the natives teleport around in pods. It spends time justifying the gain and loss of angular momentum as the location on the surface of the sphere changes and plays with the ramifications of having this ability. The background -- the SF of the book is very interesting while the story isn't particularly compelling. I'm not getting rid of my copy, but I'd guess that only fans seeking completeness would be looking for this.
Grimm's Word
This was another of the musty old-fashioned pieces that I found while searching the used book stores that I could reach on my bike. It was imaginative but kind of slow. And then it wasn't long before I was surprised and delighted to find the revamped version on the shelf of that same local shop where I found The Peace War. Tatja Grimm's World -- with real art and everything!
The world is metal-scarce. They do great stuff with wood. Lots of the story centers on the travel of a pulp-fiction publishing company/boat that travels around getting new ideas and spewing out fiction for various ports. And hey, how wrong can you go with oppressive aliens using the locals for brain-in-a-jar computer parts. Awesome stuff!
The world is metal-scarce. They do great stuff with wood. Lots of the story centers on the travel of a pulp-fiction publishing company/boat that travels around getting new ideas and spewing out fiction for various ports. And hey, how wrong can you go with oppressive aliens using the locals for brain-in-a-jar computer parts. Awesome stuff!
Marooned in Realtime
It was actually before the new edition of Tatja Grimm's World came out that this sequel to The Peace War came out. I was so excited! I want to say right out front, I am more fond of The Peace War while simultaneously thinking this is a better book. So, without the silly personal baggage of sentimentality that I bear, I suspect you'll like this sequel better than the first book.
It's the far, far future and only a handful of people are alive. People from various post-bobble eras with toys of widely different technologies who each missed the big departure -- some kind of die-off, departure or more likely transcendence through the technological singularity (A real concept that Vinge invented -- see the non-fiction section below). So the big plot element is the search for where the people went and how/why and then there's also a murder-mystery. But the murder is especially cool because the victim isn't the recipient of an ice pick to the skull, but instead a hack. Everyone in the colony bobbles up to skip forward in time (a few thousand years, I'm thinking) but one of the leaders of a faction doesn't get to come along because her equipment is monkied with. Her forty-year journey as well as the larger story set against a far-future Earth is cool in the detail that Vinge provides.
More summary info can be found at Everything2.com and Wikipedia.
It's the far, far future and only a handful of people are alive. People from various post-bobble eras with toys of widely different technologies who each missed the big departure -- some kind of die-off, departure or more likely transcendence through the technological singularity (A real concept that Vinge invented -- see the non-fiction section below). So the big plot element is the search for where the people went and how/why and then there's also a murder-mystery. But the murder is especially cool because the victim isn't the recipient of an ice pick to the skull, but instead a hack. Everyone in the colony bobbles up to skip forward in time (a few thousand years, I'm thinking) but one of the leaders of a faction doesn't get to come along because her equipment is monkied with. Her forty-year journey as well as the larger story set against a far-future Earth is cool in the detail that Vinge provides.
More summary info can be found at Everything2.com and Wikipedia.
True Names and Other Dangers
In 1987 I found True Names and Other Dangers. Unlike "real" SF fans, I didn't get all the magazines where the cool short stories and novellas came out, so I hadn't read most of the five short works collected in this book. Wow!
True Names and The Ungoverned were like sledgehammers of goodness to my forehead. The Ungoverned is a story that introduces Wil Brierson (the protagonist from Marooned in Realtime) is this libertarian (anarcho-capitalist, really) utopian fantasy. It was also collected into Across Realtime for a while when the two novels were out of print as individual books. And True Names is one of the most important speculative fiction stories ever written. From 1985, Vinge reached forward in time and described the internet in the more cyberpunky metaphor that dominated that genre. It is simply amazing -- and still as good a read as it was then.
Bookworm, Run was fantastic in the idea department but a little weak in the story-telling, in my opinion. At the time I didn't notice but it feels kind of long for the payoff now. The Peddler's Apprentice is very neat and plays with the forward-only time-travel motif in the Across Realtime stories. The story feels very human also. The last story in the book is Longshot. At the time of this writing, i don't remember it well -- I'll have to go home and read it in and come back to edit this. As I recall it's about a sentient interstellar ship.
It's hardish to find at the moment, but each of the stories are available in other collections.
True Names and The Ungoverned were like sledgehammers of goodness to my forehead. The Ungoverned is a story that introduces Wil Brierson (the protagonist from Marooned in Realtime) is this libertarian (anarcho-capitalist, really) utopian fantasy. It was also collected into Across Realtime for a while when the two novels were out of print as individual books. And True Names is one of the most important speculative fiction stories ever written. From 1985, Vinge reached forward in time and described the internet in the more cyberpunky metaphor that dominated that genre. It is simply amazing -- and still as good a read as it was then.
Bookworm, Run was fantastic in the idea department but a little weak in the story-telling, in my opinion. At the time I didn't notice but it feels kind of long for the payoff now. The Peddler's Apprentice is very neat and plays with the forward-only time-travel motif in the Across Realtime stories. The story feels very human also. The last story in the book is Longshot. At the time of this writing, i don't remember it well -- I'll have to go home and read it in and come back to edit this. As I recall it's about a sentient interstellar ship.
It's hardish to find at the moment, but each of the stories are available in other collections.
Threats...and Other Promises
OK, so I can't give the kind of blow-by-blow that I did for True Names... above. I guess I don't remember the book as well. I'm sure that I liked it in general but thought it was less compelling than his earlier collection. Except for The Blabber.
The Blabber is the final story in this collection and takes place in the same universe as A Fire Upon The Deep. I'm sure that's part of what I like about it -- the cross-reference between the stories. But also, it's just a touching story of how the mundane and the extraordinary intersect.
Just so that I'm listing them all, here are the stories in this book:
Apartness
Conquest by Default
The Whirligig of Time
Gemstone
Just Peace
Original Sin
The Blabber
The Blabber is the final story in this collection and takes place in the same universe as A Fire Upon The Deep. I'm sure that's part of what I like about it -- the cross-reference between the stories. But also, it's just a touching story of how the mundane and the extraordinary intersect.
Just so that I'm listing them all, here are the stories in this book:
Apartness
Conquest by Default
The Whirligig of Time
Gemstone
Just Peace
Original Sin
The Blabber
M o d e r n W o r k
--The following books fall into what I'm calling Vinge's modern period.
A Fire Upon the Deep
This is the first and largest of Vinge's grand space operas. (I actually prefer the less grand A Deepness in the Sky, but I'm something of a heretic among Vinge fans for this. This book is awesome.
There is too much going on for me to provide a reasonable plot summary, but there is basically the amazingly huge interstellar theater in which big events are happening and we are introduced to the Zones of Thought -- the notion that regions of the galaxy allow different maximum tech levels to opperate. And there is the planet-side story of the Tines -- doglike critters that distribute their mental-computing across multiple members, passing data as sound. If you want a pretty great plot summary, read one at Wikipedia or a shorter one at Everything2.
This is the only Vinge book that I have a signed copy of.
There is too much going on for me to provide a reasonable plot summary, but there is basically the amazingly huge interstellar theater in which big events are happening and we are introduced to the Zones of Thought -- the notion that regions of the galaxy allow different maximum tech levels to opperate. And there is the planet-side story of the Tines -- doglike critters that distribute their mental-computing across multiple members, passing data as sound. If you want a pretty great plot summary, read one at Wikipedia or a shorter one at Everything2.
This is the only Vinge book that I have a signed copy of.
A Deepness in the Sky
OK, so this is the creme. Good space opera. Excellent economics. Fantastic alien culture. Neato astronomy. Great tie-in with A Fire Upon the Deep. A wonderful story set against a wildly engaging backdrop. This is my vote for Vinge's best book.
It came out in 1999 as I was finishing up grad school and raising my first kid and getting ready to move a thousand miles. It was a comforting friend in a life filled with new stuff. I even recognize that as a strange characterization for a piece of speculative fiction, but the awsomeness of reading it suffused the rest of my life. (Maybe only the work of Neal Stephenson and the Dune books have also done that for me.)
Again, I'm not going to summarize the plot in full. Go to Wikipedia for that. But the characters, especiallly Pham and Shirk, rock!
It came out in 1999 as I was finishing up grad school and raising my first kid and getting ready to move a thousand miles. It was a comforting friend in a life filled with new stuff. I even recognize that as a strange characterization for a piece of speculative fiction, but the awsomeness of reading it suffused the rest of my life. (Maybe only the work of Neal Stephenson and the Dune books have also done that for me.)
Again, I'm not going to summarize the plot in full. Go to Wikipedia for that. But the characters, especiallly Pham and Shirk, rock!
True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier
This mostly non-fiction book came out in 2001. There are a couple of reasons one might cite in support of the notion that this entry might not belong here. First, only the introduction and the novella, True Names are Vinge's writing. Also, True Names wasn't new. But I have better, but personal, reasons than those to include it.
In 1991 I went back to school after taking a couple years off and found the internet. There was this mailing list for people interested in transhumanist issues called Extropians that I read every day and occasionally posted to. These guys knew about Vinge. Actually, I think several of them knew him personally. Vinge, having pioneered the Transhumanist notion of a technological singularity and written early speculative accounts of what globally networked computing would look like, was something of a figure. So This book is Vinge's project bringing people together (some of whom were on that Extropians mailing list) to write about how the net has developed since the early days both toward and away from the depiction painted by Vinge in True Names many years before. So basically, this book is personally significant to me and my appreciation of Vinge and also reflects the impact of just one of his pieces of fiction.
This book links the Modern Work section of this lens with the non-fiction section below. The pieces included are:
A Time of Transition/The Human Connection by Danny Hillis
True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy by Timothy C. May
Eventful History: Version 1.x by John M. Ford
How is the NII Like a Prison? by Alan Wexelblat
Intelligent Software by Pattie Maes
The Right to Read by Richard M. Stallman
Cryptography and the Politics One's True Name by Leonard N. Foner
Habitat: Reports from an Online Community by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer
True Magic by Mark Pesce
and
True Names by Vernor Vinge
In 1991 I went back to school after taking a couple years off and found the internet. There was this mailing list for people interested in transhumanist issues called Extropians that I read every day and occasionally posted to. These guys knew about Vinge. Actually, I think several of them knew him personally. Vinge, having pioneered the Transhumanist notion of a technological singularity and written early speculative accounts of what globally networked computing would look like, was something of a figure. So This book is Vinge's project bringing people together (some of whom were on that Extropians mailing list) to write about how the net has developed since the early days both toward and away from the depiction painted by Vinge in True Names many years before. So basically, this book is personally significant to me and my appreciation of Vinge and also reflects the impact of just one of his pieces of fiction.
This book links the Modern Work section of this lens with the non-fiction section below. The pieces included are:
A Time of Transition/The Human Connection by Danny Hillis
True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy by Timothy C. May
Eventful History: Version 1.x by John M. Ford
How is the NII Like a Prison? by Alan Wexelblat
Intelligent Software by Pattie Maes
The Right to Read by Richard M. Stallman
Cryptography and the Politics One's True Name by Leonard N. Foner
Habitat: Reports from an Online Community by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer
True Magic by Mark Pesce
and
True Names by Vernor Vinge
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
This baby came out in 2001. I got a copy, but it didn't really mean much to me -- I have yet to read most of it. Because I knew the stories from previous publications. It's really only missing True Names (which is in the collection immediately above this one on this lens) and is thus pretty definitive.
It's good that I have it and if you're new to Vinge, you should definately get it, but it's not momentus in my psyche the way some of his other stuff is.
Here's what you get (a bargain!):
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
It's good that I have it and if you're new to Vinge, you should definately get it, but it's not momentus in my psyche the way some of his other stuff is.
Here's what you get (a bargain!):
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
Rainbows End
This is so cool!
No, really. I guess I don't think it's better than Deepness... but it is fantastic. It's a near future exploration of some inevitable technologies and a very human story about technological dissonance. it just came out in 2006 so it's really relevant (at the time of this writing).
The characters are very real. Often SF authors write because they have great, big ideas but don't capture the human nature very well. Not so here. And I love the examination of affiliance and "no user-serviceable parts" and belief circles and Epiphany hardware and the phenomenon of kids being better at technology adoption. There's nothing to not like about this book.
And it doesn't feel as daunting to reread as Fire... and Deepness... -- it's somehow friendlier. As usual, see Wiki for a plot summary.
Oh, and notice how there's no punctuation in the title? Think about that when you're done reading it.
No, really. I guess I don't think it's better than Deepness... but it is fantastic. It's a near future exploration of some inevitable technologies and a very human story about technological dissonance. it just came out in 2006 so it's really relevant (at the time of this writing).
The characters are very real. Often SF authors write because they have great, big ideas but don't capture the human nature very well. Not so here. And I love the examination of affiliance and "no user-serviceable parts" and belief circles and Epiphany hardware and the phenomenon of kids being better at technology adoption. There's nothing to not like about this book.
And it doesn't feel as daunting to reread as Fire... and Deepness... -- it's somehow friendlier. As usual, see Wiki for a plot summary.
Oh, and notice how there's no punctuation in the title? Think about that when you're done reading it.
Non-fiction
Computer Science, technology and the Technological Singularity
I was going to write up a big thing on The Singularity, but I found that there is already a pretty sweet lens devoted to that. So instead, just go over here for that.
Miscellaneous Vinge Links
Any lens like this one -- as a sort of information multiplexer, needs a place to stow links. Even better that the "Links Plexo" tool provided by Squidoo allows the users to order and add to the list. So here it is and please do add any links that you think are relevant.
Discussing Vinge's Singularity
1 point
KurzweilAI.net
1 point
Salon Technology | Vernor Vinge, online prophet
The author whose science-fiction classics predicte more...0 points
Vernor Vinge - Summary Bibliography
0 points
IEEE Spectrum: Synthetic Serendipity
In this futuristic tale, Mike Villas is good at playing more...0 points
miscellaneous essays
0 points
3pointD.com » Blog Archive » Vernor Vinge Paints the Future at AGC
The metaverse and 3D Web, as blogged by Mark Walla more...0 points
Article: Interview: Vernor Vinge
0 points
IT Conversations: Vernor Vinge
0 points
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060320/full/440411a.html
Read the latest science news stories, extended fea more...0 points
Vernor Vinge
A bibliography of Vernor Vinge's books, with the l more...0 points
Dora Games- dress up dora games Online
Feel free to play Dora Games on dress up dora game more...0 points
Free Cooking Games - Cooking Games Online
Play free cooking games and online cooking games.w more...0 points
Footnotes
I'll be editing this as time passes. I'll add and remove blocks of the lens as I see fit and I'd like this to be a really valuable tool for fans and other interested parties. If you have any suggestions for stuff I should add, please drop me a note.
Your Comments
Comments, questions, whatever you think I and others should see, related to Vernor Vinge. Add links to your Vinge sites/resources (and remember to add links from your resources back here).
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msirkin
Jan 16, 2008 @ 9:27 pm | delete
- Love this lens..nice job!
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by clweeks
Christopher Weeks Jordan, MN, USA I program small pieces of software (with and without UI) in VB.NET (mostly) for a living and a hobby. I dig... more »
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