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Vernor Vinge’s output as an author can be
described as almost tepid. Over the span of four decades (from
1965 through 2005), his total output consists of only 25 works:
19 short stories and 6 novels.
That’s a slim opus, indeed, but it’s an
opus which has completely transformed the entire genre.
Usually when you say stuff like that
you’re speaking hyperbolistically. But not in the case of
Vinge: At least half of the significant science fiction authors
of the last two decades owe Vinge either a direct or indirect
debt of enormous proportions. And, as a result, pretty much
everyone else in the field has been influenced by his ideas to
one degree or another.
A lot of this importance can be credited to
Vinge’s conceptualization of the Singularity,
which I’ll discuss at more length as it comes up in his work.
But he’s also responsible for the modern vision of cyberspace.
That, combined with his anarcho-capitalistic social thought
experiments, puts him solidly behind the nascent origins of the
cyberpunk movement in the 1980s. He is also arguably responsible
for the Neo Space Opera Renaissance of the past decade and his
most recent work (represented by “Fast Times at Fairmont
High”, “Synthetic Serendipity”, and the forthcoming
RAINBOW’S END) would seem tantalizingly poised to shape major
genre trends for the decade to come in ways we can perhaps
scarcely imagine.
But until recently, I, like many others,
had read only Vinge’s two most recent, Hugo Award-winning
novels: A FIRE UPON THE DEEP and A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY. I had
been previously turned away from his earlier works partly
because they were frustratingly unavailable and partly because
I’d heard that his earlier novels just weren’t of the same
quality as his more recent work.
Then, a few weeks ago, I finally cracked
open THE COLLECTED STORIES OF VERNOR VINGE. Over the course of
the following month I proceeded to devour (or re-devour) every
word Vernor Vinge has ever published.
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF
VERNOR VINGE
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF VERNOR VINGE is a
very strong testament to the quality and nature of Vinge’s
career. At the time it was published in 2001, this was arguably
a complete collection of Vinge’s short fiction. It
contains less than two dozen stories spread thing across four
decades of work, but almost every single story is a masterpiece.
The collection contains every word of short fiction published by
Vinge, but it reads like another author’s “Best of”
collection.
I have to assume that Vinge is essentially a methodical
craftsman: Each story painstakingly fashioned like a jewel, with
each facet carefully cut to reveal its inner strength and beauty
to the utmost. This can create seemingly agonizing waits between
the appearance of each work, but it also means that the wait is
always worthwhile.
The highlights of this collection include:
“Bookworm, Run!” – This is
basically the story of someone who gets Google plugged straight
into their brain. A version of Google fully stocked with the
mainframes of the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA, and
the FBI all rolled into one. The result is the ability to
instantaneously access an essentially infinite library of
networked information in a fashion almost, but not quite, as if
it existed in your own memory.
Lots of science fiction authors have been
known to let genies out of bottles: Ideas so powerful that they
come to define their careers and create a shockwave which
percolates throughout the field or transforms our understanding
of the genre. Smith’s space opera. Asimov’s Three Laws of
Robotics. Herbert’s DUNE.
But most of these authors don’t reveal
their genies until they’ve got a few dozen stories under their
belt. By contrast, Vinge, in the very first story he ever sold,
whips out his bottle, smashes it to smithereens, and starts
interrogating the genie. The result is a revelation which has
been haunting his work, and the entire genre, ever since.
What, exactly, are we talking about? The
Singularity. In “Bookworm, Run!”, Vinge asks a very simple
question: “What happens when human science creates the first
truly superhuman intellect?” And Vinge’s answer is
evocative, “You get something incomprehensible. You get a
point beyond which the merely human is no longer capable of
understanding.”
Vinge’s argument, essentially, is that as
you begin to grow intelligence, you reach a point at which that
growth becomes essentially exponential. For example, in
“Bookworm, Run!”, when you reach the point that your natural
memories can be supplemented by artificial databases, you
don’t get a situation in which intellect gradually improves:
You have an explosive, essentially infinite growth in
personal knowledge. And that sudden expansion from knowing a few
things to knowing everything creates a dynamic which is,
essentially, unimaginable – it can only be thought of in the
grossest and most imprecise of ways by those of us who have not
yet undergone that change.
In “Bookworm, Run!” Vinge saddles his
protagonist and his specific technology with some… unique
limitations. In this way he sidesteps the essentially
incomprehensible nature of his proto-Singularity (since he
hadn’t fully developed the concept yet), and instead sidles up
to it from the side. But he doesn’t simply ignore the
implications, either, as the end of the story reveals.
This reveals the unique problem of dealing
with the Singularity in fiction: How do you tell a story about
something incomprehensible by its very nature? Trying to meet
that unique challenge of storytelling can give rise to some
fascinating solutions and some wondrous world-building. In many
ways, his many varied solutions to this problem have come to
define Vinge’s career.
“Bookworm, Run!” is also
quintessentially Vingean, revealing the future contours of his
career, for another reason: In addition to the central conceit
of the story, Vinge also casually drops a few other bombshells
into his world-building which fundamentally transform society
even before the story begins. Not only is he not content in
running just a single thought-experiment through his story, the
entire setting is permeated with detailed extrapolation.
In this case, the most notable change after
the proto-Singularity at the centerpoint of the story, is the
availability of cheap fusion reactors. Vinge postulates that
this prevalence of cheap energy will create an economic
depression, requiring the government to impose a period of
strict economic controls. His logic here makes no sense to me,
but it’s particularly interesting to look at the story as a
starting point for Vinge’s experimentation with the economic
organization of a high-tech society, a theme he’ll return to
time and again in his work.
(Although I find it interesting to note
that if you replace the words “cheap fusion reactors” with
“self-replicating nano-factories” I probably wouldn’t have
had the reaction of, “How do you figure, exactly?” Is that
indicative that self-replicating nano-factories are just the
latest “utopia gizmo” of science fiction, or is it that
science fiction has finally found the utopia gizmo it’s always
been looking for?)
“The Ungoverned” – This
question of the ways in which technology can restructure an
entire economy and, by extension, society is central to
Vinge’s world-building in “The Ungoverned”. Basically,
Vinge seems to have quickly reached the conclusion that
sufficiently advanced technology inevitably breaks down central
authority.
“The Ungoverned” is a novella lying
between two novels: THE PEACE WAR takes place before it;
MAROONED IN REALTIME takes place after it. In THE PEACE WAR we
see the last desperate efforts of a central authority attempting
to cling to power by artificially suppressing technology. In
MAROONED IN REALTIME, Vinge takes this question to its extreme:
What use is a central authority when an individual is an entire
economy unto themselves? “The Ungoverned” lies quite
literally between; an anarcho-capitalist society in rapid
transition.
But all that is just the world-building.
It’s the groundwork and the thematic substance which opens up
the door for the rip-roaring war story which is the actual meat
of the story. It makes for a fascinating reading because, on the
one hand, it’s a fast-paced, no-holds-barred action story;
but, on the other hand, it doesn’t take much to peel back the
surface and see some frightening conclusions being drawn about
the future being drawn. What does it really mean when a handful
of people are capable of wielding as much power as a 19th
century superpower? Or even a 20th century
superpower?
“Conquest by Default” – This
story takes a slightly different approach to Vinge’s vision of
technological profligacy leading inevitably to extreme
libertarianism. Here we have a system with a central control
designed to deflect the monopolistic tendencies within the
anarcho-capitalist structure. And if you think that Vinge is
whole-heartedly endorsing the anarchic chaos which he appears to
believe inevitable, then this is a story which will make you
think twice.
“The Peddler’s Apprentice” –
This story, which is a collaboration between Vernor Vinge and
his ex-wife Joan D. Vinge, highlights several of the ways in
which Vinge sidesteps the enigma of the Singularity. Once again
we have a centralized authority artificially holding society’s
technological progress in check, but we also get to view the
Singularity through the eyes of a primitive. We also get to see
Vinge’s willingness to dream across incredibly vast scales of
time: A vision of civilizations rising and falling; or rising
and disappearing into the Singularity; with the vestiges of
either being given a chance to rise again over the spans of
hundreds of millennia.
“The Science Fair” – Vinge
also has a real flair for developing completely alien cultures
with a great depth of thought. In reading “The Science Fair”
I was reminded of something John Campbell once said: A good
science fiction author, writing in 1900, would be able to
predict the automobile. A *great* science fiction author would
predict the traffic jam. In similar fashion, Vinge doesn’t
just create imaginative and memorable alien races, he follows
through on the basic qualities of their nature to logically
produce the cultures, societies, and technologies such a species
would naturally create.
“Original Sin” – This talent
for creating alien races and then extrapolating upon their
biological imperatives to create unique and multicultural
societies is the foundation which makes “Original Sin” such
a classic. The other element which deserves comment here is
Vinge’s ability to invest a relatively large cast of character
with a lot of individual depth. The result is a multi-faceted
character drama which is made even more impressive given that
several of those characters are completely alien in their
countenance and in Vinge’s ability to create that character
drama within the confines of a crisis capable of reshaping the
known universe.
“Original Sin” is also notable because it shows Vinge
hitting the central thesis of A MOTE IN GOD’S EYE several
years before Niven and Pournelle.
“The Barbarian Princess” –
It’s also interesting to note how most of Vinge’s novels
have grown out of his short fiction. “The Barbarian
Princess” is part of his pastiche novel TATJA GRIMM’S WORLD,
which will be dealt with at length in its own reaction.
“The Blabber” – This short
story is probably most famous because it’s the genesis point
of the Zone universe, which serves as the setting for Vinge’s
two best-known works, A FIRE UPON THE DEEP and A DEEPNESS IN THE
SKY. But “The Blabber” is a damn fine story in its own
right.
The conceit of the Zones universe is a way
for Vinge to cheat the exponential growth curve which ends
inevitably in the Singularity. Basically, if Vinge is right
about the Singularity, humans don’t get to go to space: Long
before the industrial trends give us interstellar flight, the
informational or biogenetic or artificial intelligence trends
result in humanity becoming something transhuman.
So Vinge sidesteps the issue by, basically,
waving his authorial hand and saying: “These technologies
would surely be nifty… but they just don’t work. Too bad.”
Vinge is hardly the only author to do this, but what makes
Vinge’s experiment interesting is that he makes his authorial
hand-waving explicit to the universe itself AND varies those
technological limitations.
The result is a galaxy split into multiple
“zones” (hence the name applied to the fictional milieu): In
the Unthinking Depths at the galactic core, intelligent thought
itself is impossible (or, at least, intelligent thought as we
know it). If you and I were to jump on a spaceship and head down
towards the galactic core, at some point our brains would simply
stop functioning at anything but an animalistic level.
One step up from the Unthinking Depths is
the Slow Zone. That’s where we are now: Human-level
intelligence is possible, but not much more than that and the
limits of physics are already pretty well known to us: FTL and
gravity-control systems are impossible, for example.
The next step up is the Beyond. Here you
can get some pretty sophisticated AI systems and other forms of
superhuman intelligence. FTL, gravity-control, and some other
amazing, physics-bending technologies are easily achievable.
Basically, the Beyond is the realm of classic space opera.
And beyond the Beyond there is the
Transcend: Here Vinge’s Singularity is possible. And, in fact,
due to the nature of the Zones universe almost inevitable: A
High Beyonder civilization has been artificially arrested on the
precipice of the Singularity. Take them into a Zone where the
Singularity is possible and they practically fall into
Transcendance.
The net result is a universe where you, as
an author, can literally scale the technology to whatever your
current needs are, while also profiting immensely from unique
interactions between the Zones. For example, “The Blabber”
takes place near a border between the Zones, on a human colony
world just far enough within the Slow Zone to be inexorably
stuck, but close enough to the Beyond to know what they’re
missing out on.
As a story, “The Blabber” begins to
show a truly mature Vinge working his craft like a maestro. It
mixes crafty and subtle storytelling; a character drama and
coming of age story told with touching sincerity; marvelously
intricate extrapolation and world-building; a cleverly conceived
alien species; and at least a dozen nifty ideas thrown around to
create sensawunda on a grand scale.
“Fast Times at Fairmont High”
– As “The Blabber” was the genesis point for A FIRE UPON
THE DEEP and A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, “Fast Times at Fairmont
High” is the genesis point for Vinge’s forthcoming
RAINBOW’S END. In this new cycle of stories, Vinge chooses to
examine the Singularity by jumping onto the on-ramp and taking
us down the gaping maw of the rapid plunge into
computer-assisted super-consciousness.
What makes “Fast Times at Fairmont
High” so very interesting is that Vinge’s technological
predictions are not particularly outrageous. Indeed, what makes
this story so utterly compelling, on a level beyond its
immediate characterization and plot (which are both sterling),
is Vinge’s completely believable extrapolation of the effect
that technology scarcely more advanced than our own will have on
the daily lives of every man, woman, and child alive.
Indeed, you can begin seeing signs of that
change around us even now: The experience that I had in high
school in the mid-to-late ‘90s was only tangentially different
in the slightest of ways from the high school experience kids
had twenty years earlier. Less than ten years later, ubiquitous
proliferation of ‘net access, cell phones, wireless devices,
online communities, and more have fundamentally changed the high
school experience. It’s easy to say “this changes
everything” – and it’s so very rarely true – but it’s
actually happening right now. These new technologies are
fundamentally changing the way you study; it changes the way you
learn; it changes the way you socialize – it changes the way
in which you live. And when you change the way people live their
lives at a societal level, you change the very nature of that
society. And it’s not just the change which is notable, it’s
the pace of the change: Meaningful generation gaps which begin
shrinking into spans of less than a decade.
What gives Vinge’s effort it’s
distinction is that he doesn’t simply take a look at current
trends, extend the graph lines by a few years, and then present
the result. Instead he narrowly looks at the trends in the
advance of computer technology and extends those graph lines a
few years. Then he imagines what types of applications those
technologies will make possible. Then he imagines what people
will do with those types of applications. Then he imagines what
a whole society of people doing those things would look like;
what types of synergies would be created; what other
technologies would be pursued. It’s a gestalt; it’s the
traffic jam lurking behind the automobile.
OTHER SHORT STORIES
In the four years since THE COLLECTED SHORT
STORIES were published, Vernor Vinge has published two
additional short stories: “Synthetic
Serendipity” and “The
Cookie Monster”. (These stories are both available legally
online -- follow the links.)
“Synthetic Serendipity” – This
story takes place in the same near-future universe as “Fast
Times at Fairmont High”. What I find interesting is that,
despite sharing largely the same locales and a similar cast of
characters, there is little thematic or content overlap between
the two stories. This seems to go back to the discipline which
lies behind the austerity of Vinge’s artistic output: He may
go back to visit the same settings and even the same characters,
but somehow he finds the ability to keep everything *completely*
fresh.
I’m reminded by a story that my friend
David Kloker told me the other night: The first time he went to
New York City
he spent the night sleeping on the floor of his friend’s dorm
room at NYU and, in the morning, went to an anti-nuclear rally.
The second time he went to
New York
he stayed at a 5-star hotel in
Manhattan
, supped beneath a glass chandelier, and spent the evening at
the opera. The two experiences, though separated by scant miles,
seemed to take place in two completely different cities. And, as
my friend David says, if you stand on a busy, bustling street
corner and reflect upon this, you can be humbled through the
understanding that there is a reality which can only be
understood through disparate views – at the interstice of
diffracted experience.
Similarly, the Fairmont High we see in
“Synthetic Serendipity” is the same school as the one we see
in “Fast Times”… yet the experience is fundamentally
different. And by refusing to hit any of the same beats a second
time – by showing a completely fresh facet of his creation –
Vinge adds remarkable depth to a setting which has only had a
few thousand words dedicated to it.
“The Cookie Monster” – It’s
difficult to do a review of this story because any substantive
discussion of it would necessarily reveal the central mysteries
which Vinge so very skillfully unwraps for you over the course
of the story itself.
So let me speak in generalities for a moment: The escalation of
the story’s central mystery and the execution of the plot are
solid and well-paced. The characters not only have distinct
personalities and unique roles, but genuinely make you care for
them. The story, as a whole, explores a lot of different
dynamics within the situation in a very efficient, entertaining,
and creative fashion. There’s essentially no dead air in the
story, and Vinge manages to hit a wide thematic range without
beating you over the head with any particular message: Slavery.
Genocide. Resistance. Freedom. Hope. Despair.
In “The Cookie Monster” I find a
summary of Vinge as a whole: He excels at mixing old and new
ideas alike, analyzing their implications to an unprecedented
depth, twisting them in original ways, combining them in great
quantities, accelerating the pace of change, and waiting to see
what comes out of the mix. And then, once he’s got all that
worked out, he’ll quite casually figure out where the crisis
points and character dramas naturally arise and then execute the
resulting story in a flawless fashion.
That’s “The Cookie Monster”. That’s
Vinge. That’s genius.
GRADES:
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