A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)

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.

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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

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Customer Reviews

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.

2010-08-05 | nobody important (Mountain View, CA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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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 Vinge book 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.

2010-07-26 | Devourer of all books fantasy (Minneapolis, MN) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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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.

2010-07-22 | I call 'em as I see 'em (USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Best book I've read since the last Vernor Vinge book I read
By mistake, I read this book out of order; I read A Deepness in the Sky first. I'm still not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, I think it really works in either order.

I loved his ideas for the aliens -- all of them, both the ones on the world and the ones in space. The plot was wonderful, so rich and sad.

For some reason, the Usenet aspect of the book really worked. Usenet is old, yet somehow he made it fit.

Highly, highly recommended. I can't wait for the next one in this series, Children of the Stars.

2010-06-14 (California) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Good book a bit lagging (avoid kindle version)
The book is quite well written, interesting concept, and has some twists and turns which make it enjoyable.

The kindle version appears to be very disorganized, with NOTEs sticking in the middle of the pages making the reading a lot harder with these notes creating a big distraction.

The book could have been 75% of its original length, as at times it looks like the author made an effort to write 20-30 pages where nothing happens, or repeat something again which he just stated, or described a few pages ago.

The end itself is quite abrupt, ends in the last chapter or two, and is a twist rather than "fluid" finale, which some might like and some don't.

Overall I would recommend this book to sci-fi readers.

2010-05-09 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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The Peace War

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.

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Customer Reviews

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.

2010-07-13 (Columbia, MO) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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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!

2010-02-15 (Escondido, California United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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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.

2009-10-14 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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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.

2009-08-25 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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Thrilling and well thought out
Not Vinge's best work, but still up in the top tier of written scifi. A fascinating initial premise--both technologically and politically--which is delivered with conviction and thoughtfulness. As others have observed the character work isn't the strongest, but the cast is adequate for the narrative. Vinge is also to be praised for dealing with a dystopian forecast with nuance and without polemics.

2009-07-08 | Raskolnikov (The American Midwest) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought)

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780812536355
• Notes: BUY WITH Reliance, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and putting into play to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Requisite: New

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.

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

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Customer Reviews

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.

2010-07-05 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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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!

2010-06-01 (California) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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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.

2010-05-29 | cphi (Melbourne, Australia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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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.

2010-04-18 | frumiousb (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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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.

2010-04-03 | Pop (Seattle, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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The Witling

Description

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Customer Reviews

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.

2009-06-24 (Maryland Hts., Missouri USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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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.

2008-05-26 (Peru) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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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.

2007-12-26 (Austin, Texas) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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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.

2007-08-21 | jal3 (San Antonio, TX) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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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.

2007-01-02 (Palo Alto, CA) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

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Tatja Grimm's World

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.

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Customer Reviews

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.

2010-03-14 (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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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.

2010-01-10 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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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"!)

2009-12-09 (San Diego, CA United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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

2009-06-10 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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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.

2007-08-31 | - Research Finished | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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Marooned in Realtime

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.

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Customer Reviews

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.

2010-08-17 (Columbia, MO) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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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.

2010-03-14 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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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.

2010-01-28 (new york, ny United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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www.SingularitySymposium.com review: the book that coined the term
Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge introduced the term Technological Singularity in his science fiction novel "Marooned in Realtime." The book is a post-singularity sci fi detective story set 50 million years into the future on planet Earth where only 300 humans have survived. The remaining survivors are divided into two bitterly opposed fractions debating whether it is better to settle in and try to resurrect mankind or to continue venturing into the future by using high-energy stasis fields called "bobbles." After a human is murdered the last cop left on Earth is investigating the crime in a trust-no-one environment which could spell the utter extinction of man.

The book does not delve directly into the concept of the technological singularity but uses it as a mysterious precursor to the events of the novel. Never-the-less, in a sense it is "the original" singularity book and will delight not only sci fi fans but also detective-story-lovers and people generally interested in the technological singularity. It well worth reading because it not only coined the term and introduced it successfully to the public but did so with a highly original plot full of unpredictable turns and interesting revelations.

2009-09-30 | SingularitySymposium.com (Toronto, On, Canada) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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Splendid stuff
This novel is one of the most imaginative I've read. It easily compares with the works of the old masters of scifi. Ostensibly a murder mystery, it's also about the last two hundred or so human beings left on Earth, thousands of years in the future--to the extent that they stay on Earth when not "bobbling" forward through time. Their travels caused them to miss what they call the Great Extincton of humanity and they don't know what caused it. Now they must figure out how to start over again, if only at a nineteenth century level.

2009-01-18 (Austin, TX, United States) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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