Product 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.
Amazon.com Review
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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (235)

Kindle edition is frustrating
The Kindle edition is littered with "Notes" and links to them. They became increasingly distracting the more I read.This is the first time I really wished I had purchased the actual book instead of the digital version.

Avoid the Kindle Edition
The story makes for a fine read, but the Kindle edition is utterly trashed.Someone had the bright idea to add 1,522 "Notes" that litter the text with the aesthetic appeal of thousands of plastic grocery bags blowing around Yosemite.If I wanted abook with someone else's (even the author's) highlights and notes, I would have gone to the used book store.

Not a Hard Read
The Kindle edition of this text includes about two hyperlinks to end notes per page which break up the text and are annoying.

I read my copy of A Fire Upon the Deep over a 23 hour period because I could not put it down. It's an addictive space opera that avoids common science fiction sins (such as fancy names for the sake of fancy naming), letting a thriller of a story shine through.

That said, this book is not the masterpiece of "Hard" Science Fiction that it is often billed as. All of the advanced technology is based on the presence of unexplained galactic "zones" which allow for faster than light travel and advanced computation. Once you have faster than light travel and a quasi-magical explanation for it, you are no longer in the realm of Hard sci fi.

If you want Hard Science Fiction then read Greg Egan, not Verner Vinge.

Furthermore, pivotal events in the story violate the already incredulous rules of the fictional universe. The author depends too much on Deus Ex Machinae when he has painted his way into a corner.

A Fire Upon the Deep is a fun piece of science fantasy, but little more.

Incredible concepts, but a bit wordy and lengthy
I will say right off of the bat that I don't read a ton of hard science fiction.The premise of this book sounded fascinating and it is a Hugo award winner.Then a co-worker of mine starting talking about this wonderful book he just finished and I was like hey that sounds like this Vernor Vingebook I wanted to read.So he lent it to me and I read it.It is an interesting and complex book, but it is also very long and a bit wordy.

The plot is complex.Humans in the Beyond (a portion of space where higher intelligence is possible) have created something horrible, something they have lost control of.A single family is the only thing to escape the horror and they crash land on a primitive planet.The planet is home to dog-like creatures who exist as multiple dog people (4-6) to one pack mind; they are called Tines.The only people to survive the initial encounter with the Tines are two kids; Johanna and Jefri and they are taken in by competing factions of Tines.Meanwhile in space, Ravna and a human who is host to a Power, Pham, are trying to escape the Blight that is taking over the universe. In the end the answer to pushing back the Blight may lie with the child survivors of the Human colony that survived it.

The plot is complicated, but mainly goes between the planet of the Tines and Ravna.There were a lot of good things about this book.The story is complex, the idea behind space having different Zones of thought that enable higher intelligence and different types of technology is fascinating.The Tines as a race are very interesting in how they are small packs that think with one mind.There are a lot of traditional sci-fi topics broached such as humans dabbling in tech they shouldn't and people from a high tech race being stranded on a medieval like world.

Vinge also delves into questions around war, mortality, morality, and humanity as a whole.So all in all this book has a bit of everything; action, philosophy, etc.Characterization isn't the strong point of this novel; you never really care all that much about the characters.Plot and world-building are definitely Vinge's strengths.

Vinge has a very readable writing style and overall I enjoyed it.His writing really shines when describing the scenes on the Tine's home planet.I didn't enjoy the space scenes as much; they tended to be wordy and throw around a lot of unexplained terminology.

There were some things I did not like about this novel.It is long, and I think the length was unnecessary.A lot of the space travel scenes get really wordy, and I think they could have been much more concise and still conveyed what the reader needed to know.Also there is a problem that I have with a lot of sci-fi which is the throwing around of terms and names without really ever explaining them.The reader is left to suss out what they can as they continue reading and is constantly struggling to figure exactly what things are.It took me a while to figure out exactly what the Tines were and how they worked together.Maybe that is the thrill of the book for some readers, but I just found it irritating.

Overall not a book I really enjoyed reading but it was interesting and creative.I would definitely recommend this for hardcore sci-fi fans.I think people who dabble in sci-fi might find it a bit lengthy and wordy.The concepts are really fascinating though so I recommend it based on that.It is a complex book and it is obvious the Vinge put a lot of thought into it; I wouldn't necessarily call it a fun read though.

Good but flawed!
This is a very uneven book.Vinge writes well.He is at his best when he describes the world of Tines. A world where individuals are compound organisms.These sections read almost as well as Richard Adams's "Watership Down."On the other hand, his humans are underdeveloped.They lack personality and are hard to empathize with.However the biggest flaw, of the otherwise enjoyable book, is the resolution.Deus ex machina is a completely unacceptable literary device.In my opinion it is always a fatal flaw in any book. ... Read more

Product 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.Amazon.com Review
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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Good book, shoddy edition
The print quality in this edition is dreadful. It looks like a third-generation Xerox copy. It's printed on low-quality paper as well.

Print quality poor in this edition
Just a heads up to potential buyers:The print quality in this edition is quite poor.It looks like an old 300 dot-per-inch laser printer on newsprint paper.You might be better off with a different edition or story collection.

Sci-Fi Short Stories from the Master
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
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
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. ... Read more

Product 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.
Amazon.com Review
This hefty novel returns to the universe of Vernor Vinge's1993 Hugowinner A Fire Upon theDeep--but 30,000 years earlier. The story has the same senseof epic vastness despite happening mostly in one isolated solarsystem. Here there's a world of intelligent spider creatures whotraditionally hibernate through the "Deepest Darkness" of theirstrange variable sun's long "off" periods, when even the atmospherefreezes. Now, science offers them an alternative... Meanwhile,attracted by spider radio transmissions, two human starfleets comeexploring--merchants hoping for customers and tyrants who wantslaves. Their inevitable clash leaves both fleets crippled, with thepower in the wrong hands, which leads to a long wait in space untilthe spiders develop exploitable technology. Over the years Vingebuilds palpable tension through multiple storylines and characters. Inthe sky, hopes of rebellion against tyranny continue despite soothinglies, brutal repression, and a mental bondage that can convert peopleinto literal tools. Down below, the engagingly sympathetic spidershave their own problems. In flashback, we see the grandiose ideals andultimate betrayal of the merchant culture's founder, now among thehuman contingent and pretending to be a senile buffoon while plotting,plotting... Major revelations, ironies, and payoffs follow. A powerfulstory in the grandest SF tradition.--David Langford,Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Customer Reviews (216)

Plot Development Painfully Slow
I really wanted to like this novel.I read until page 265 when I finally lost patience with it.I found the characters, civilizations, aliens and general setting to be boringly drab.The plot took forever to play out.Dialogue was dull and predictable.Basically, stay away from this novel.If you want to read good hard sci-fi pick up something by Arthur C. Clarke.

An outstanding book
I loved every page of this book.I loved all the characters.I loved the aliens.I loved every plot and twist to it.

A Deepness In The Sky was one of those books that I couldn't put down -- I went to bed late, I squeezed in ten minutes here and there to read a few more pages.

Highly recommended!

a very good read but...
A very good read and hard to put down. But. This story is a very good adventure of the old school. The characters are not particularly deep - quite cartoonish villains, near preternaturally gifted heroes and any number of implausibly gullible pawns. The broad thread of the plot (overall - not counting some fairly dramatic twists) is fairly predictable. Vernor Vinge's expertise though, both technically and socio-economically, is impressive. The universe is plausible and fascinating and Focus, 'Programmer-at-Arms' and the literally unavoidable rise and fall of civilisations stays with you. There is also an element of trust that, characters aside, the scenarios are all technically plausible. This *is* hard science fiction.

Not my cuppa.
I bought A Deepness in the Sky based on how much I loved A Fire Upon the Deep. Deepness is a loose prequel to Fire. (However, the connection is so loose that I can't imagine you really need to have read Fire to pick up this book.)

Sometimes I read a book that everyone loves. I mean, A Deepness in the Sky won a Hugo, was nominated for no less than a Nebula, an Arthur C. Clarke, a Locus award, etc. It is very well decorated with adoration and accolades.

I kind of see what everyone loved about it. But I didn't love it. I had one big problem with the plot, and I could never find my way around it enough to really appreciate the book. My issue was that I found the conflict between the Emergents and the Qeng Ho cartoonish and predictable. The Emergents are fascist and full of evil dictator-y kind of behaviour and the Qeng Ho are flawed and chaotic but lovably human. So much in this book turns on the fulcrum of the conflict between these two that it if you don't buy it, the whole thing kind of falls apart. At least, it did for me. It would have seemed to me a much more interesting book if the Emergents could have harnessed focus and Mind Rot but be doing their absolute best to use it ethically, struggling with the internal tensions. Instead they behaved like cartoon baddies, doing all of those things that bad guys do. It annoyed me.

The spider civilization was well-imagined, well-drawn. The rest of the plot was fine. It just didn't work for me. Too bad.

Did this really win the Hugo?
For a very hefty book, this one leaves you wanting. You start following one character, who all but disappears for about 200 pages then returning changed (although by then you don't care about that character any longer, since you already invested your feelings in others). That pattern is repeated many times over, and sometimes it feels like the author forgot that the character was hanging there and decides to spend a few pages telling us everything about that character (Pham's character being one example) filling the gaps. If the author intended it this way, I don't know. It kind of ruined it for me.

The Underhill character is a particularly interesting case. He is THE renaissance man (imagine all geniuses you know of compressed into one individual) but by the middle of the book he either disappears or is shown only briefly or through the eyes of other characters, in passing. He was a pivotal character at the beginning of the book, and very important at the end as well, but you don't really get to spend much time with him in the middle.

The premise of the book is interesting, and I do not regret reading it, but I also wouldn't recommend it. Take it or leave it. ... Read more

Product 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Enjoyable
An early and somewhat atypical Vinge novel.Most of Vinge's novels are built around a major gee-whiz technological idea.Plot, character development, etc., are primarily vehicles to carry the idea to its logical conclusions.This book is more of a traditional SF adventure using the classic bildungsroman approach of following the maturation of the main character as the hero/heroine explores the novel world constructed by the author.Vinge does this very well in this book with a nice balance of character development and development of an interesting world.
Set on a metal poor planet, Tatja Grimm's world follows the adventures of the eponymous heroine, an almost supernaturally intelligent woman plunked down in the midst of ordinary humans in a set of technologically impoverished societies.The world development is very entertaining and this book is developed with some humor.This book is somewhat similar both in tone and style to Sean McMullen's most entertaining books.

Solid story, but not the Vinge you expect
As most reviews mention, this is early Vinge that doesn't have the far future tech you may expect from his later novels.

I disagree, however, with those reviews that claim this is a "fantasy" novel, or even with those that don't see it as hard sci fi. It has a fantasy feel, perhaps, in that the setting is a pre-technological (actually prototechnological) culture, where the fighting occurs with blades and gunpowder, rather than lasers and cyberwarfare.But it is true science fiction, in the sense that it takes a single premise -- how would human society and technology develop on a metal-poor planet? -- and weaves an interesting story within those constraints.It even qualifies as "hard" sci fi, in the sense that everything that happens is constrained by known and plausible physics, although it certainly doesn't have the high tech or space opera backdrop that that label usually suggests.I don't mean to be overly hung up on such labels, but it's important to know what sort of book you're ordering, and this one is harder than most to categorize.

The novel itself is entertaining throughout, but fairly uneven.The latter two thirds of the book were written and published separately in the late 60s, and are a straightforward action story of the heroine's quest to surpass the limitations of her metal-poor world.The first third was written nearly twenty years later, to provide some depth and character development for this title character, as she scales the scientific and political ladder of her homeworld.This first section greatly improves the book, and shows how much Vinge developed as an author between the 60s and the 80s.It is more character-driven than action-driven, and is a lot of fun.The character of Tatja Grimm is compelling: part warrior princess, part ingenue, part savant, she is a classic and well-written heroine.Unfortunately, this quality is not quite maintained in the transition to the later portions of the book, and it loses some momentum, paradoxically, just as the action begins to heat up.

All in all, though, it's a solid book. It is interesting for Vinge fans to see how far he has come as an author, and to see the early hints of some of his favorite themes of intelligence, technological progress, and interfaces between cultures across a technological discontinuty.And it's an entertaining, although not fully engrossing, story for casual readers.

Science Fiction with Fantasy Backdrop
This early set of works from Vinge, are at times quite interesting; but, the ending fails to truly satisfy the buildup.

The 2nd and 3rd stories were published as short stories in 1968 and 1969, with the "prequel" being published in 1986, thus giving this "Trilogy" enough bulk to allow it to be published as a three part novel TATJA GRIMM'S WORLD.While Tatja Grimm is one of the main characters in each of the short stories, she is actually not the hero or heroine in any of them - indeed, she actually plays the "bad guy" more often than not in the 2nd & 3rd stories... only in the first story is she made out to be a "good guy".

One peeve worth mentioning... the art on the cover, while good, does not depict any actual scene from within the book... yes, there are human inhabited "termite mounds" described in detail in one of the stories in the book - but the termite mounds are obviously land based (who ever heard of "sea termites"!)

Tatja Grimm'sworld
Interesting expansion of a short story into a full length novel set in the alternate reality of outer space.

Super Reader
Vinge tells the story of a girl that is born in an aboriginal culture that is very low tech. An opportunity arises for her to enter the society of a floating city and become more educated. She is hyper-intelligent, and ascends swiftly to a position of power and influence. A look at whether her origin will make her act differently in such a situation. With a few SF magazine jokes thrown in here and there, as one of the elements of the story is a publication of that type that has been running for centuries. ... Read more

Product Description
The Peace War is quintessential hard-science adventure. 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 Authority 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, in the fast-paced hard-science thriller that garnered Vinge the first of his four Hugo nominations for best novel.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Great classic science fiction
Vernor Vinge is one of my favorite Science Fiction authors.With amazing skill he builds consistent and fascinating worlds to weave stories of the future.Vernor Vinge has a strong libertarian bent.My only complaint is he doesn't write enough.I wish he wrote more.

This story revolves around a concept of "Bubbles."At first people believed the bubbles were force fields and those inside would die after the oxygen ran out.Later they discovered the bubbles were stasis fields, basically frozen in time.Once the bubbles popped, the people would continue on with their lives.

Around our time scientists at Livermore Labs created the technology to "bubble" people and objects.A group of people used bubbles to encase armies and quickly ruled the world.The Peace War takes place fifty years in the future.A revolutionary group tries to revolt.Vernor Vinge explores what fifty years of rapid growth in computer technology might be like.

One of the heroes of the story is a science from Livermore Labs who tries to stop the bubbles from being used to conquer the world.He finds a young boy who is a greater genius.Together they lead the revolution.There is a lot of intrigue as the "Peacers" want to keep their power and stop the revolt.

Vernor Vinge put a lot of thought into what it means to have bubble technology.I have enjoyed this story so much that I've read it several times.

Good Yarn
This book was an enjoyable read, if a little light. It is a quick read (I finished it in a couple days). The plot was fast paced and the characters were memorable. However, this probably wasn't Vinge's greatest book. If you like Vinge you will most likely enjoy this book. However, if you haven't read any of his stuff yet go pick up "A Deepness in the Sky." It is pretty fantastic if a little long.

Kindle version very poor quality...
$9.99 for a Kindle version???Same price as a NY Times Bestseller???
WHAT A RIP OFF!
This looks like it was cut and pasted into digital format - very UNprofessional - am surprised Amazon has the nerve to charge this much for it...horrible quality.

Did I miss somewhere that this amateurish "story" is geared towards youngsters???Surely not the "hard sci-fi" it is made out to be in the opening review.Couldn't even finish this story - deleted from Kindle - don't waste your money!

Enjoyable but not his best
The title says it all. If you're looking for a follow-up to "A Fire Upon the Deep" or "A Deepness in the Sky", this won't do it. However, it's worth reading.

Not Vernors best effort
I had high expectations after reading Deep Space. This one is a let down. The story concept had tremendous potential,but mostly was unrealized. I sense that he was in a hurry to finish this one. Many subplots could have been developed, more background story leading up to the Peace taking over, more character development, etc, etc. I expected much more. ... Read more

Product 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.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Great classic science fiction
Vernor Vinge is one of my favorite Science Fiction authors.With amazing skill he builds consistent and fascinating worlds to weave stories of the future.Vernor Vinge has a strong libertarian bent.My only complaint is he doesn't write enough.I wish he wrote more.

Marroned in Realtime is a sequel to The Peace War.Both of these stories revolve around a concept of "Bubbles."At first people believed the bubbles were force fields and those inside would die after the oxygen ran out.Later they discovered the bubbles were stasis fields, basically frozen in time.Once the bubbles popped, the people would continue on with their lives.

Around our time scientists at Livermore Labs created the technology to "bubble" people and objects.A group of people used bubbles to encase armies and quickly ruled the world.The Peace War takes place fifty years in the future.A revolutionary group tries to revolt.Vernor Vinge explores what fifty years of rapid growth in computer technology might be like.

Marooned In Realtime takes place in the same universe, but millions of years in the future.The singularity occurred and most of humanity has moved on.Those in bubbles during the singularity missed out.Some of these few humans want to restart the human race and are trying to gather a critical mass.Wil is the main character of the story.He is a detective who is trying to find the person who bubbled him and made Wil miss watching his children grow up.

Both of these stories are complex.There are lots of details making the stories seem real.Vernor Vinge put a lot of thought into what it means to have bubble technology.

Vinge blends genres and creates another fantastic sci-fi novel
If you're a fan of Vinge's inventive sci-fi+ space opera works, you'll definitely not want to miss MIR. It's grander in scope than 'Peace War' and filled with much more realistic characters, especially the Hi-tech ones. The Singularity is conveniently left unexplained, and I hope Vinge addresses it in another novel.(Charles Stross' 'Accelerando' seems almost like a companion piece to this novel). MIR takes all the drama and formal set-pieces of a classic murder mystery and places it in a possible future set on a post-singular Earth.

Excellent Short Fiction
This is by far the best of Dr. Vinge's shorter fiction. The story has good pacing, character development and very interesting technological concepts. Vinge uses "bobbles" or stasis as a literary device to allow his characters to travel forward in time, interesting but not very plausible. However, his discussion of human/machine interfaces and the rate of technological progress are what make the book stand out.

Worth the Money
This book is the second in the series, but you don't really need to read the first to enjoy this one.It is one of the greats in Sci-Fi cannon and it is worth your time and money, go buy it now.It is one of those books that you think about for years to come and it makes you examine your own life and times and focus on the important things.

Delightful and Mind Stretching
If you are considering this book, then, like I, you love science fiction. I love science fiction blah blah blah blah(the usual reasons) nevertheless I, a seasoned SF aficionado, found I had to stop while reading this book and happily try and stretch my mind to comprehend/embrace some of the ideas/happenings/occurrences of this book.
This is a fascinating & wonderful sequel to The Peace War. ... Read more

Product Description
Once in a great while a science fiction story is so visionary, yet so close to impending scientific developments that it becomes not only an accurate predictor, but itself the locus for new discoveries and development. True Names by Vernor Vinge, first published in 1981, is such a work.

Here is a feast of articles by computer scientists and journalists on the cutting edge of the field, writing about innovations and developments of the Internet, including, among others:

Danny Hillis: Founder of thinking machines and the first Disney Fellow.

Timothy C. May: former chief scientist at Intel--a major insider in the field of computers and technology.

Marvin Minsky: Cofounder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer: Codevelopers of habitat, the first real computer interactive environment.

Mark Pesce: Cocreator of VRML and the author of the Playful World: How Technology Transforms Our Imagination.

Richard M. Stallman: Research affiliate with MIT; the founder of the Free Software Movement.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Who Are You, Really?
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
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
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
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
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... ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (15)

Decent adventure story with just a tiny hint of deepness
What this book is not: It's not A Fire Upon the Deep, or A Deepness in the Sky, or The Peace War, or Marooned in Realtime. Those books were so rich that as soon as I finished them, I wanted to reread them again. This book ... I'll read it again, but probably not anytime real soon.

What this book is: A decent, straightforward adventure story with a leavening of neat scientific ideas. It reminded me a lot of the science fiction adventure novels that I read and enjoyed in junior high and high school.

But it's a little more than that. Right when I least expected it, the book hit me with Something To Think About. I was blindsided by one paragraph. It made a point about the sorts of people we call the crippled, the seriously handicapped, and especially the "mentally retarded" -- how we see them, versus how they may see themselves. How, despite having a serious "defect," they may still be able to love, and other people still love them. I'm done with the book, I've put it away, but I'm still thinking about that one paragraph.

(One other reviewer misread this paragraph as "antifeminist." If it struck you that way, you need to step back and look at this from a broader perspective than gender politics. Especially reconsider your attitude toward people who have less brainpower than you, or who have serious handicaps. Do you hold them in contempt? Do you think it's wrong that some people love them?)

I would recommend this book primarily for two audiences:

1) Young bright readers of science fiction, say junior high and up. It's a good, fairly fast-paced adventure story, but also smart, logical, science fiction. And while it's far from didactic, it does make that one little point that made me think.

2) People who are already fans of Vernor Vinge and who would like to read one of his early works to see how he has grown as a writer. There are glimmers, here and there, of the ideas that Vinge would later play with at length. It's a decently entertaining story with a few hints of the greatness to come.

A little immature but extremely enjoyable story
Even in the '70 s Vernor Vinge was there with his very interesting and well-presented ideas...

As an other reviewer says, it is obvious that the story is written by a relative beginner in the field, but, wow, how many beginners would dream of being able to write a story like that!

From Vinge I have read only A Fire into the Deep and its prequel A deepness into the Sky and throughout the "Witling" you can recognize the seeds of what he would become later.

Some common traits are recognizable: he seems to have an obsession about medieval or generally backward civilizations who, however, have certain talents or abilities which make them dangerous and uncontrollable... So humans are presented most of the times as the technologically more advanced civilization, who, however, are trapped in these worlds.

And, of course, there is the wealth of ideas that is the trademark of Vernor Vinge. He doesnt only throw the ideas. He presents them as scientific facts, focussing on all its uses and consequences... a real delight for Scifi fans.

A fun read
I am a Vernor Vinge fan, and he doesn't disappoint me with this book.He tells an engaging story that is fun to read.And as usual, I get caught up it the story and it occupies my mind a great deal until I finish reading it.Because of my schedule this usually takes a week or so.

Anyway, I recommend this and just about any other Vinge title to any sci-fi fan.He just seems to have an unlimited supply of neat ideas.

A Great Story
Humanity is spread out amongst the stars but the lack of a faster than light drive means that systems are, at best, only loosely connected. Empires have risen and fallen and Armageddon has come to many worlds.

One world is trying to recover from such a catastrophe. It has reached out and colonized a planet in a nearby system. That planet is just self-sufficient enough to try and explore its system. It sends out a mission to explore a world a bit further out and finds a civilization. The civilization is what we would call feudal but it has its surprises.

As the explorers, an archeologist (specializing in recovering technology) and a pilot, await recovery, disaster overtakes their ship. It is destroyed and they are captured by the locals. It is only then that they learn the strange secret of this world. They may be backward in terms of technology but they make up for it with an amazing ability. They are natural teleports.

The explorers, of course, are not. This makes them "witlings", those without the ability to teleport. In this culture, that means that they are fit for little more than slavery. They are desperate to get to the far side of the planet to recover a beacon there and send for help. They realize that with teleportation comes the potential to solve humanity's interstellar problems and a lot is riding on their success. In this mission they are aided by a crown prince, who is also a witling.

There are problems. Massive intrigue is the norm in the prince's court. All factions and foreign powers believe the strangers are the key to power. Teleportation may make some things easy but it is still subject to all sorts of physical laws which make transport directly to the beacon impossible. Also, the local food is toxic.

It's a race against time, well told and well written.

An excellent light SF adventure
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.

... Read more

Product 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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

Classic science fiction packed with lots of cool ideas
Vernor Vinge is one of my favorite Science Fiction authors.With amazing skill he builds consistent and fascinating worlds to weave stories of the future.Vernor Vinge has a strong libertarian bent.My only complaint is he doesn't write enough.I wish he wrote more.

Across Realtime is a book with two stories.Both of these stories revolve around a concept of "Bubbles."At first people believed the bubbles were force fields and those inside would die after the oxygen ran out.Later they discovered the bubbles were stasis fields, basically frozen in time.Once the bubbles popped, the people would continue on with their lives.

Around our time scientists at Livermore Labs created the technology to "bubble" people and objects.A group of people used bubbles to encase armies and quickly ruled the world.The Peace War takes place fifty years in the future.A revolutionary group tries to revolt.Vernor Vinge explores what fifty years of rapid growth in computer technology might be like.

One of the heroes of the story is a science from Livermore Labs who tries to stop the bubbles from being used to conquer the world.He finds a young boy who is a greater genius.Together they lead the revolution.There is a lot of intrigue as the "Peacers" want to keep their power and stop the revolt.

Marooned In Realtime takes place in the same universe, but millions of years in the future.The singularity occurred and most of humanity has moved on.Those in bubbles during the singularity missed out.Some of these few humans want to restart the human race and are trying to gather a critical mass.Wil is the main character of the story.He is a detective who is trying to find the person who bubbled him and made Wil miss watching his children grow up.

Both of these stories are complex.There are lots of details making the stories seem real.Vernor Vinge put a lot of thought into what it means to have bubble technology.

One of my favourite books
One of my favourite books; I highly recommend it. Note that over the years there have been multiple editions of this book with the same name, but they're not all the same. The Baen Books edition with the cover picture showing a sun with concentric rings has three stories: The Peace War, The Ungoverned, and Marooned in Realtime. Other editions (the one with the purple cover showing a bobble in a dessert scene, and the one with the cover showing a bobble in a valley with trees and mountains) are missing the middle story.

One of my favourite books
One of my favourite books; I highly recommend it. Note that over the years there have been multiple editions of this book with the same name, but they're not all the same. The Baen Books edition with the cover picture showing a sun with concentric rings has three stories: The Peace War, The Ungoverned, and Marooned in Realtime. Other editions (the one with the purple cover showing a bobble in a dessert scene, and the one with the cover showing a bobble in a valley with trees and mountains) are missing the middle story.

Sci-Fi Book Club Omnibus Bargain
Well I got kicked off the net before finishing the long form, so here is the short form review:

The reason to buy this edition is that mine has both the Vernor Vinge hard-scifi novels, "The Peace War," and "Marooned in Realtime" in a good quality hardcover with sewn binding, at a really low price, used.It does NOT have the short story apparently included in some paperbacks.Both novels are excellent, "Marooned in Reraltime" being a bit better than "The Peace War".

For details of Vinge's writing skills and some story details, see the five-star reviews of theexpensive new paperbacks (up to $21+ for both novels in separate trade paperback versions).

Where has Vinge been all my life!
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. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (98)

Like most other negative reviewers, I couldn't get through it
There's far better cyberpunk, and far better Vinge out there.Skip this one.All the other 2-star reviewers are right on.

Perplexingly tedious
It's probably worth more than 1 star (2 maybe), but I'd like to pull the average rating down to warn potential readers. I thought "A Deepness in the Sky" and "A Fire Upon the Deep" were marvelous. Great plots, interesting aliens, a good build-up of tension. It's hard to believe that "Rainbows End" is by the same author. I've nothing against Vinge trying something new, but this is just so darn BAD.

Vinge has developed a vision of our technological near-future that is reasonably interesting. People wear contacts lenses and their clothes receive and transmit information, controlled by body motions, in such a way that they can project skins onto their environment, interact with distant people as if in the same room, send their virtual avatar elsewhere, and so on. This technology has become ubiquitous in people's lives, so experiencing reality "in the raw," without virtual overlays, has become a novelty.

That's kind of interesting, I guess, and not implausible as a near-future scenario. But that's it. That's all Vinge has. The need for sympathetic characters, or an engaging story, or any kind of dramatic tension, seems to have been forgotten. Some readers seem to have gotten excited about the imaginary-but-plausible technology conjured by Vinge, but, speaking for myself, (A) exciting technology doesn't suffice for a good book, and (B) it wasn't THAT exciting. One character in the book still uses a LAPTOP (gasp!), and we are clumsily reminded endlessly of how hopelessly old-fashioned this will be in the future. (What's the point? Are we supposed to laugh at ourselves for being such lame laptop users? Be amazed at the outrageous prophesy that one day laptops will be old hat?)

This is how bad it was: I waded through it, stoically determined, until I was about 20 pages from the end. And then it just sat there gathering dust beside my bed and I actually FORGOT that I hadn't finished it. I started another book. Three or four days went by, and with a sinking heart I MADE myself finish Rainbows End (because that's the kind of person I am). And, no, it didn't redeem itself in the last 20 pages. And this won a Hugo Award?! Sheesh.

High concept, lacking story
I started off with high expectations for this book. After all it won a Hugo award, so I figured it had to be good. It started off with very little fire and the first few pages felt boring and tedious from the get go. However when I learned who the main antagonist was and what he was up to, my interest was piqued and my enthusiasm jolted.

The story continues pretty well but around the time the characters are set up by the mysterious cyber being "Rabbit" the plot becomes very hard to follow. There are some touching moments throughout the book and I really like the theme of rebirth and second chances with the "retread" characters. However, the book just seems too concerned with being some high-minded exploration of technology and its reprocussions while the storyline itself is not so hot.

Sure, Mr. Vinge makes some very relevant commentary on the youtube/google culture but the story itself was a tangled, muddled affair that I found too hard to follow. (Or maybe I just didn't care enough to get enwrapped in it) I'm really surprised to see that this book won a Hugo. I think the voters were really swept away by his view of the future and exploration of feasible technologies but overlooked the fact that the story itself was slow and lacking. And the techno jargon! It wore thin after awhile and I felt like the book suffered from "Star Trek syndrome." IE throw around some fancy words and invented high tech terms to drive the plot and force resolution.

The climax was weak with an old fashioned fade-to-black-at-the-moment-of-highest-tension that left me shaking my head. Overall the story left me with so many question marks. Maybe this was intentional on the part of the author, since the door is wide open for a sequel but I sure won't be reading it.

A sad story about old age
Vinge fans looking for a mind-blowing space epic like A Fire Upon the Deep will be disappointed; this book is a different animal, more similar in tone and feeling to the haunting slowness of Marooned in Realtime (though ultimately a bit more lighthearted and optimistic). Rainbows End is a story about old age, for the protagonists, but also for the human race. The technological ideas (reality augmentation, wearable computers) are not as mind-blowingly original as some of the stuff in Vinge's earlier works, but the depiction of a culture that has fully adjusted to the internet is, as far as I know, unrivaled in modern literature. As for the plot, it's more of a portrait of several people's lives, with a loose story framework draped on top in Vinge's trademark minimalistic style.

Bottom line: if you're looking for something thoughtful, this is a good read. From Vinge, we should expect no less.

Ideas, ideas, ideas
Very lively and full of ideas.My one complaint is that I felt the protagonist's transformation was a bit abrupt.I would have liked the shift to have rolled out with a little more exposition and for the reason to have been exposed and make sense.Actually, I think this book is visionary, as all the best science fiction is; but also much like a travelogue, another common trait of science fiction, I'm afraid. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great collection of stories
I usually don't enjoy short stories, but I made an exception for this book because I had heard good things about True Names.Vinge does an amazing job of character/plot development in each of these short stories.The common theme of "singularity" is explored in each.

Fun mix of cyber hacking, scifi, and sword-and-sorcery
"True names", predates this pseudonymous age, by twenty years, but it seems remarkably current.Vinge, predicts and anticipates a lot of technology, and I am looking forward to neural browsers!Perhaps more important, is the ethical question of whether one that avoids the temptation of self interest, should be trusted .. indefinitely, even if in a non-physical form?There is some talk about making this into a film, so that would be exciting!

The "Apprentice" is perhaps most significant for its collaboration, with then wife, Joan Vinge.The piece "The Ungoverned", is the connection between "The Peace War" and "Marooned in real time" (the "Across realtime" edition includes that story).Vinge's introductions are a delight in themselves, and the way he approaches "the singularity" (a particular state oftechnological self awareness) from different angles is thought provoking.

Fast pace, original ideas, make for a superb collection
Science fiction fans should be very impressed with this collection of five stories by Vernor Vinge.The real standout is the title story, "True Names", a uniquely imaginative piece that cleverly combines the magical conflict of the swords and sorcery genre with modern high-tech computers.In the world of the not too distant future, virtual reality technology has completely replaced contemporary operating systems so that talented computer hackers can virtually live in a pseudo-magical realm called the Other Plane.The very best are effectively sorcerers who can mold their reality in any way imaginable, at least until they break the connection and return to the real world.In order to avoid reprisals, they only need protect the secret of their true names.Against this backdrop, a brilliant sorcerer is recruited to hunt out the mysterious new destructive force known as the Mailman, who seems to be using the computer realm to gain power in the real world.But in a universe where nothing is as it seems, how can he tell who are his friends and who are his enemies?This is a fascinating piece of speculation that seems more and more plausible every day.

The other strong entries are "Bookworm, Run!" which features a chimpanzee whose mind has been experimentally augmented with a computer hookup, and "The Ungoverned" which shows private security agents trying to fend off an invasion in a United States that has been decimated by nuclear war. "Bookworm" is primarily a long chase, as the terrified chimp tried to escape his captors before they can punish him for the terrible crime he's committed, while "The Ungoverned" covers one key battle of a potentially major war.Both stories are heavy on action and excitement, but present some interesting ideas as well.Less successful are "The Peddler's Apprentice", in which a traveling salesman sets an angry young man on the path to greatness, and the tedious "Long Shot", which seems little more than a setup for the clever ending.

These stories are fast, easy reading with plenty of action, and should be eminently suitable for younger readers, but adult fans of science fiction will also find this a superb collection.

the story that conceived cyberspace
In 1981, vinge published the book that conceived the cyberworld that exists on the internet today.Software bots, node-hopping, 3D chat rooms, warez, avatars, a hacker underground...they are all here....and were described in this book before IBM sold its first personal computer.I am amazed at Vinge's ability to see the future....or, as I believe, he created the future by giving a generation of computer programmers the vision to build what he saw.

True Names is a feast for the imagination.I set the book down many times while my mind reeled with extrapolations of the ideas he wrote into his story.The characters are richly developed.the climax was terrific.

Read this book if you can find it.Remember when it was published (14 years before Neuromancer).I have bought 5 copies.But over the years, friends have 'liberated' 3 of them.This book is a prize.

If you read only one SF book EVER...
Want to know the future of the human race?A lot of authors explore the future and make it gripping or entertaining; Vinge explores the future and gets it right.True Names is a story of amplified human intelligence.

Intelligence determines the rate of technological progress.Once technology is used to amplify intelligence, a positive-feedback loop of enormous power is created.No mortal can ever write of that future - but Vinge creeps up on the edge of human history and shows that Something lies beyond.

This is the story that introduced the Vingean Singularity of SF legend:"Every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own... extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied... the world will pass beyond our understanding."

The Singularity is seriously projected, by Ph.D.'d folk, to occur around 2030.And in my opinion, it's that or nuclear war.Choose.Be ready.Read this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Enjoyable
An early and somewhat atypical Vinge novel.Most of Vinge's novels are built around a major gee-whiz technological idea.Plot, character development, etc., are primarily vehicles to carry the idea to its logical conclusions.This book is more of a traditional SF adventure using the classic bildungsroman approach of following the maturation of the main character as the hero/heroine explores the novel world constructed by the author.Vinge does this very well in this book with a nice balance of character development and development of an interesting world.
Set on a metal poor planet, Tatja Grimm's world follows the adventures of the eponymous heroine, an almost supernaturally intelligent woman plunked down in the midst of ordinary humans in a set of technologically impoverished societies.The world development is very entertaining and this book is developed with some humor.This book is somewhat similar both in tone and style to Sean McMullen's most entertaining books.

Solid story, but not the Vinge you expect
As most reviews mention, this is early Vinge that doesn't have the far future tech you may expect from his later novels.

I disagree, however, with those reviews that claim this is a "fantasy" novel, or even with those that don't see it as hard sci fi. It has a fantasy feel, perhaps, in that the setting is a pre-technological (actually prototechnological) culture, where the fighting occurs with blades and gunpowder, rather than lasers and cyberwarfare.But it is true science fiction, in the sense that it takes a single premise -- how would human society and technology develop on a metal-poor planet? -- and weaves an interesting story within those constraints.It even qualifies as "hard" sci fi, in the sense that everything that happens is constrained by known and plausible physics, although it certainly doesn't have the high tech or space opera backdrop that that label usually suggests.I don't mean to be overly hung up on such labels, but it's important to know what sort of book you're ordering, and this one is harder than most to categorize.

The novel itself is entertaining throughout, but fairly uneven.The latter two thirds of the book were written and published separately in the late 60s, and are a straightforward action story of the heroine's quest to surpass the limitations of her metal-poor world.The first third was written nearly twenty years later, to provide some depth and character development for this title character, as she scales the scientific and political ladder of her homeworld.This first section greatly improves the book, and shows how much Vinge developed as an author between the 60s and the 80s.It is more character-driven than action-driven, and is a lot of fun.The character of Tatja Grimm is compelling: part warrior princess, part ingenue, part savant, she is a classic and well-written heroine.Unfortunately, this quality is not quite maintained in the transition to the later portions of the book, and it loses some momentum, paradoxically, just as the action begins to heat up.

All in all, though, it's a solid book. It is interesting for Vinge fans to see how far he has come as an author, and to see the early hints of some of his favorite themes of intelligence, technological progress, and interfaces between cultures across a technological discontinuty.And it's an entertaining, although not fully engrossing, story for casual readers.

Science Fiction with Fantasy Backdrop
This early set of works from Vinge, are at times quite interesting; but, the ending fails to truly satisfy the buildup.

The 2nd and 3rd stories were published as short stories in 1968 and 1969, with the "prequel" being published in 1986, thus giving this "Trilogy" enough bulk to allow it to be published as a three part novel TATJA GRIMM'S WORLD.While Tatja Grimm is one of the main characters in each of the short stories, she is actually not the hero or heroine in any of them - indeed, she actually plays the "bad guy" more often than not in the 2nd & 3rd stories... only in the first story is she made out to be a "good guy".

One peeve worth mentioning... the art on the cover, while good, does not depict any actual scene from within the book... yes, there are human inhabited "termite mounds" described in detail in one of the stories in the book - but the termite mounds are obviously land based (who ever heard of "sea termites"!)

Tatja Grimm'sworld
Interesting expansion of a short story into a full length novel set in the alternate reality of outer space.

Super Reader
Vinge tells the story of a girl that is born in an aboriginal culture that is very low tech. An opportunity arises for her to enter the society of a floating city and become more educated. She is hyper-intelligent, and ascends swiftly to a position of power and influence. A look at whether her origin will make her act differently in such a situation. With a few SF magazine jokes thrown in here and there, as one of the elements of the story is a publication of that type that has been running for centuries. ... Read more

Product Description
This book has DirectLink Technology built into the formatting. This means that we have made it easy for you to navigate the various chapters of this book. Some other versions of this book may not have the DirectLink technology built into them. We can guarantee that if you buy this version of the book it will be formatted perfectly on your Kindle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good speculative fiction
There is a qualitative difference not only in the writing but in the imagination between science fiction authors who describe the future.Vinge is one of those "B+" writers, not quite the top.The PEACE WAR was a great book and introduced the concept of "Bobbles", the huge bubbles into which one could safely escape to the future undeterred by weather, weapons or even time.With everyone bobbling the very idea of time itself was called into question.

The characters are not your run of the mill novel players. We have, of course, the bobblers, then there are the high-techs (humans with extraordinary tech ability from right before the time of the Great Extinction when humanity vanished.Then there is the detective, the best around since he's the only one around. He searches for a murderer amid the attempts by the high-techs to gather humans from the bobble and recreate a new human civilization.The writing is not technical, and the book is very brief.

Brilliant
/Marooned in Real Time/ is on my extremely short list of books that I call "modern classics".This edition is out of print, but the new edition is over here: Marooned in Realtime ... Read more

Product Description
Fifty years ago, back in 1997, the Peace Authority eliminated war. In one smashing worldwide coup, the Authority removed missiles, armies, governments, entire cities - everything that could oppose peace. The Peace Authority's weapon was - and still is - the "bobble," a unique spherical state of stasis that can encapsulate an object in an impenetrable force field. Nothing can get in or out of a bobble, not even light or air; it's a prison - perfect, even beautiful. And permanent. Since the "peace war," all high technology has been banned, and civilization has fallen into a semi-feudal state. What has replaced war is tyranny, but as Peace Authority Director Hamilton Avery would add, it is a benign tyranny, isn't it? A small price to pay for permanent peace. Only old-timers like Paul Naismith, the reclusive leader of the Tinker underground, can recall a time before the Authority's reign. A mathematical genius, he's spent 50 years secretly developing his own extraordinary, illegal, technology, far surpassing that of the Authority, hoping to strike back some day. But nothing can defeat the Authority's bobbler. Until now. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great classic science fiction
Vernor Vinge is one of my favorite Science Fiction authors.With amazing skill he builds consistent and fascinating worlds to weave stories of the future.Vernor Vinge has a strong libertarian bent.My only complaint is he doesn't write enough.I wish he wrote more.

Across Realtime is a book with two stories.Both of these stories revolve around a concept of "Bubbles."At first people believed the bubbles were force fields and those inside would die after the oxygen ran out.Later they discovered the bubbles were stasis fields, basically frozen in time.Once the bubbles popped, the people would continue on with their lives.

Around our time scientists at Livermore Labs created the technology to "bubble" people and objects.A group of people used bubbles to encase armies and quickly ruled the world.The Peace War takes place fifty years in the future.A revolutionary group tries to revolt.Vernor Vinge explores what fifty years of rapid growth in computer technology might be like.

One of the heroes of the story is a science from Livermore Labs who tries to stop the bubbles from being used to conquer the world.He finds a young boy who is a greater genius.Together they lead the revolution.There is a lot of intrigue as the "Peacers" want to keep their power and stop the revolt.

Marooned In Realtime takes place in the same universe, but millions of years in the future.The singularity occurred and most of humanity has moved on.Those in bubbles during the singularity missed out.Some of these few humans want to restart the human race and are trying to gather a critical mass.Wil is the main character of the story.He is a detective who is trying to find the person who bubbled him and made Wil miss watching his children grow up.

Both of these stories are complex.There are lots of details making the stories seem real.Vernor Vinge put a lot of thought into what it means to have bubble technology.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

One of my favorite books!!
I found this book in my school library in my freshman year of high school.I checked it out and got partway through,then had to return it.I was hooked,though,and finally found a used copy here on Amazon,which seems to be the only place you can get it now,since it's out of print.That said,it's worth tracking it down and paying S&H and a private seller to get your hands on this book.If you're serious about sci-fi,or have even a moderate interest in AI,this is a requisite.It's a compilation of sci-fi short stories about Artificial Intelligence that ranges in date from the earliest robot story to debate the ethics of the field--"Moxon's Master",written in 1894 by Ambrose Bierce--to classics of and groundbreakers in the genre--with a heavy dose of Asimov,"The Founder of Robotics"--to more modern stories written in the 1970s and 1980s.That's one catch:the book is an old one,so the most recent stories are from right before it was published.However,the book is organized into thematic sections,which is helpful for a disscussion-based reading of the stories.It contains some of the stories you kind of have to read to be considered to know AI sci-fi--several of Asimov's more important ones,two by Philip K Dick,one by Arthur C Clarke and another by Poul Andersen,but a bunch of others as well.The one problem I have with the book is that Asimov is an editor of it,and while he's undoubtedly contributed a plethora of work to the sci-fi genre and a good deal of it is important,I feel he's tooting his own horn too much by giving himself four spaces in this anthology.Otherwise,the pieces in here,while maybe not all well-written overall(a lot of it is pulp sci-fi),contribute important ideas to thinking about AI. ... Read more