1. Balance the Budget

Republicans have proven themselves to be absolutely incapable of practicing fiscal responsibility, revealing themselves to be the true party of big government. We need to stop mortgaging our children’s future and limiting our flexibility to respond in times of true crisis. The Democrats need to lead the charge in returning Clinton-era sensibility to the budget.

2. Protect the Supreme Court

The Democrats must vow to maintain the current balance on the Supreme Court.

Liberals should be aware that, by-and-large, they’ve won the culture wars: They don’t need an influx of liberal, progressive justices to re-affirm the protections of the Constitution. All they need are principled, moderate judges like Sandra Day O’Connor who will conscientiously maintain the status quo and protect our Constitutional rights and liberties against the aggressive tactics of activist judges pursuing an extremist agenda of conservative interests.

And it’s a good thing that’s all they need, because it’s not only the best they can hope for given the Republican majorities in the national government, it’s also the best tactic for achieving their broader political aims (such as taking away those majorities from the Republicans). This is a goal that the Democrats can achieve while uttering nothing but sensible, moderate, centrist rhetoric as a counterpoint to the radical extremism of the Republican leadership.

The true goal here is to make this a positive, rather than a negative, campaign: The Democrats shouldn’t allow themselves to become trapped into simply nay-saying the goals of President Bush. Instead, they need to push for the things they believe in: That the individual rights and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution are a fundamental aspect of American society, and that any justice nominated to the Supreme Court should share their belief that these rights and liberties should be maintained.

3. Fight Global Warming

The only people who don’t believe that global warming is a looming crisis are the ignorant, the oil companies, and their lackeys. One solution that has some potential of succeeding in America is to establish a market for trading carbon-emission permits.

It would be preferable if America joined Tony Blair and Europe in pushing for a global carbon-trading market to replace the deeply flawed Kyoto Treaty, but merely establishing a national market would be a cost-effective way of achieving crucial environmental reform. It was George W. Bush’s father who pioneered the use of trading markets for emission permits as a radical and innovative way of fixing America ’s problems with acid rain. There’s no reason that his son shouldn’t follow his example.

4. Save No Child Left Behind

There are two parts to saving the No Child Left Behind act: First, it must be funded. In its present form, it would appear that the true purpose of No Child Left Behind is to defund our public school systems in order to cripple them, paving the way later on to hypocritically point to our failing public schools as an excuse for promoting elitist “reforms”.

(This vicious sabotage of our childrens’ future is not a new tactic for the Republicans. Throughout the ‘90s they deliberately defunded the public schools in Oregon by passing referendums to drastically cut property taxes (the primary source of funding for public schools). The results have been predictably traumatic and the quality of public education in Oregon has slipped dramatically.)

But a properly funded and reformed No Child Left Behind act can transform the mandatory standards and testing into a true set of objective assessments that can be used to accurately identify the problem areas in our educational system.

Second, a reformed No Child Left Behind would require a more effective program for actually fixing these problems once they’ve been identified: Simply defunding an already ailing school doesn’t solve the problem, although it does serve the Republicans’ hidden agenda of defunding our public schools and crippling our childrens’ potential.

5. Reform Social Security

The Social Security system is one of the great humanitarian acts of history, saving thousands of senior citizens from the miseries of abject poverty and death. In recent years, the shifting demographics of society have created problems with the system, but they’re not as serious as Bush’s rhetoric would lead one to believe. And, indeed, many of Bush’s proposed reforms would only exacerbate the real problems with the system, not solve them.

The Democrats need to put forward a solid platform for reforming Social Security in a responsible fashion. Unfortunately, this type of reform is not something which can realistically be achieved with the Republicans in total control. The Republicans are a party with a long-vested interest in dismantling the last line of defense for our grandparents, our parents, and (one day) ourselves, and they have a deplorable track record of offering golden platitudes with a forked tongue. (Look at the “energy security reforms” currently making their way through Congress: While Bush talks of developing clean, alternative energy sources, the bill is — in reality — a bloated package of subsidies and tax breaks for an oil industry already stuffing its pockets with profit.)

The inability and unwillingness of the Republicans to truly reform Social Security must be stressed on the one hand, while offering with the other a clear vision of how the system can actually be repaired.

6. Craft a True Patriot Act

It’s possible to establish a strong national defense that protects are ports; our nuclear facilities; our chemical plants; our transportation system; and our way of life without sacrificing the same basic freedoms that the terrorists are so eager to tear down and destroy.

Perhaps the most frightening irony of the Patriot Act as it exists today is that it not only hamstrings liberties which have been guaranteed since the dawn of our nation, it also systematically fails to safeguard our nation: Our ports, our nuclear facilities, our chemical plants, and our transportation system all remain dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attack.

The Democrats need to repeal the fake patriotism of the Bush Administration and replace it with a True Patriot Act which would safeguard our freedoms without sacrificing them.

7. End War Crimes

Similarly, the atrocities committed and endorsed by the Bush Administration at Guantanamo Bay , Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere tarnish the ideals for which America stands. Torture and the repression of civil rights are, frankly speaking, utterly un-American.

Democrats have to demand accountability for these acts and they must take decisive action to see that such acts are never tolerated by our government again. If America is to truly be the Land of the Free and serve as a beacon to the world, we cannot compromise our own values and ethics.

8. Define Success in Iraq

The Democrats need to set benchmarks to measure and assess success in Iraq and Afghanistan .

The President and his administration have shown not only a remarkable inability to choose a specific set of goals for Iraq , they have systematically failed to define what succeeding at many of those goals would actually look like.

Think about it: What does it mean to win the war in Iraq ? I don’t know. Beyond vague rhetoric, we’ve never been told. If our goal was to eliminate the threat of WMDs, hasn’t that been achieved? If our goal was to establish a democracy in Iraq , hasn’t that been achieved? If our goal is to make sure that democracy is stable enough to survive our absence, what needs to be accomplished for us to consider it stable and secure?

This is just basic common sense: You can’t try to solve a problem until you know what the problem is.

In the battle of perception, meanwhile, the term “definition of success” serves two purposes: First, it’s far more difficult for the Republicans to twist and distort. (If you’re trying to achieve victory in Iraq , you clearly can’t be “cut-and-run”.) Second, it not only reminds people that Bush has changed his reasons for this war a dozen times; that he falsely declared victory in 2003; and that he still hasn’t told us what needs to be achieved before our brave men and women can come home.

9. Keep Faith With Our Veterans

One of the great tragedies over the last several years has been the crass and cruel exploitation of our armed forces by the Republicans in Congress and the White House. While demanding longer and longer tours of duty from our men and women in uniform, the Republicans have systematically slashed the benefits and respect paid to our veterans.

Democrats need to make sure that the nation’s duty to the brave men and women of our armed forces is not forgotten. There is nothing cheap about keeping the promises we have made, but the price is still small in comparison to the infinite sacrifice each and every soldier is willing to make in the service of their country.

Conclusion

The key theme to strike is simple: The Republicans are the party of Big Brother and Big Government. They want to legislate your bedroom and saddle your children with crippling debt.

The Democrats have a vision of a better, stronger, safer America . They want effective, responsible government. They want to preserve liberty and the American way of life.

I don’t want to hear any more Democrats talking about the strategy they’re going to use to defeat the Republicans. I can sum that up in one sentence: We’re going to try to get more votes than them.

Beyond that, everything else about strategy – as far as the public is concerned – is a meaningless detail. Strategy is nothing more than the means by which you communicate your message. It is, ultimately, a communications device. It’s no different than a cell phone.

As a result, when it comes to strategy, it is impossible to draw any distinction between a Democrat and a Republican: If we find a successful strategy, they’ll copy it. If they find a successful strategy, we should copy it (assuming it isn’t immoral, unethical, illegal, or all three).

Reporter: “So, Mother’s Day is coming up… what are you planning to say when you call her?”

Democrat: “Well, I’m planning to use a Nokia.”

Republican: “Well, I’m planning to use a Samsung.”

Democrat: “We’re a little worried about the Republican use of Samsungs. We think it might make mom love them more. But we’re going to counter their Samsung tactics with some strategic Motorola dialing.”

Is it any wonder, after a week of talking heads all chattering about what cell phones they’re going to us, that large swaths of the American public can no longer distinguish any difference between Democrats and Republicans?

Contrary to popular belief, politics is not about image. Image is just another strategy for communicating the message. And it’s the message that wins elections. Politics is ideology. It’s about the ideas. And if you’re a Democrat, it’s because you believe our ideas are better than their ideas. And if you believe that, then you owe it to yourself, to your party, and to the American people to put those ideas before the American people.

There is one place where it is, of course, appropriate to talk strategy, and that’s the Strategy Room. And so, for a moment, I’m going to turn this into a Strategy Room and talk about the most successful and powerful strategy to be used in American politics in the last fifty years:

The Contract With America .

Whatever you may think of its actual content, the Contract With America was undeniably a brilliant political strategy. It quickly and succinctly, on a single sheet of paper, summed up the entire philosophy of the Republican party. Because of its simplicity it could be photocopied, e-mailed, faxed, televised, discussed, bullet-pointed, powerpointed, and virally disseminated in hundreds of different ways. In an era where the media only wants to talk about how a political party is going to say something and rarely about what is actually being said, the Contract With America brilliantly combined the medium with the message: Whenever a newspaper wanted to discuss the Contract With America, for example, it would inevitably reproduce its ten bullet points.

And here’s the most important point: The Contract With America made it perfectly clear exactly what the Republicans would do if they were given power. It served the same function once served by party platforms (which have, of course, become bloated documents completely dissociated from the party’s actual goals).

This was crucially important in 1994, when the American public was entirely unhappy with a Democratic congress which seemed incapable of accomplishing anything. In fact, it was entirely unclear what the Democrats were actually trying to accomplish. The Republicans, on the other hand, were clearly for something. And even if you didn’t agree with all of it, there was a good chance you agreed with some of it.

The result was the Republican Revolution.

A little over a decade later, we find ourselves in the same position: The public is completely disenchanted with a Republican congress and administration who seem to be either at odds with the public good or completely ineffectual or both.

But unlike the Republicans in 1994, the Democrats have failed to clearly communicate a message: What do they stand for? What will they do when elected?

They need something like the Contract With America.

…

Hey, here’s a thought: Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, why don’t the Democrats just use the most successful and powerful political strategy of the last fifty years?

Of course, we won’t call it a Contract with America . Instead, let’s call it An American Agenda.

What should it contain?

(1) I want wedge issues. I want the issues which will separate us from the Republicans. Those are the issues which define us.

(2) Not every Democrat in America needs to agree with every single article of the American Agenda. But they should be able to create a solid platform using a majority of it without being utterly compromised by the rest of it.

(3) It needs to be a positive document, not a reactionary one. It can’t be about what the Republicans should be stopped from doing, it needs to be about what the Democrats will be doing.

Roughly speaking, Vernor Vinge’s career as a novelist can be divided into three parts: His earliest novels, written pre-1983; the Across Realtime novels of the mid-1980s; and the award-winning Zones novels of the 1990s.

This reaction covers the first of these. I am planning additional reactions to cover his later novels.

TATJA GRIMM’S WORLD

The novel now known as Tatja Grimm’s World has something of a fractured history. In it’s earliest form, it was published as the short story “Grimm’s Story” in 1968. Damon Knight then asked Vinge to expand “Grimm’s Story” to novel-length, which he did by essentially writing another short story as a sequel to the first and then putting the two together as a patch-up.

The novel, published in 1969 as Grimm’s World, apparently made very little splash and eventually went out of print. In 1986, however, Jim Baen asked Vernor Vinge to expand and revise the novel for a reprint edition. This time Vinge wrote a prequel, which was published separately as “The Barbarian Princess” in Analog and then published as part of the new Tatja Grimm’s World in 1987.

Attempting to read Tatja Grimm’s World as a novel is an unrewarding experience: It’s poorly paced and completely disjointed. There are gaping holes in the individual character arcs and point of view characters disappear mysteriously between the chapter breaks.

Read correctly as a collection of three connected short stories, however, it makes a much stronger impression. I would also say that the addition of “The Barbarian Princess” in 1987 makes a big difference, allowing Vinge to more clearly establish his themes and primary character arc.

That being said, there’s still some awkwardness to be found here. You can tell that the core of this collection/novel is still the work of a young author early in his career.

But that’s not to say that the book doesn’t have a lot of offer, as well:

Tatja Grimm’s World takes place on a world at the cusp of the scientific revolution. But this world lacks metals, has a unique geography, and is possessed of distinctly different cultures. The result is a very different sort of scientific revolution, which Vinge works out in fascinating detail.

As his main character, Vinge chooses the editor of a fantasy and contrivance fiction magazine. (For “contrivance fiction” you can read “science fiction”.) This gives him a rather unique view of the gradual scientific revolution taking root on this alien world, but all of this takes a backseat to the character at the center of this drama: Tatja Grimm. It’s her mystery which forms the backbone of the novel’s plot.

Where this novel succeeds is in its hard SF extrapolation of an alien world in a parallel time of technological change, mixed with a story in which those elements are frequently expressed using the tropes of fantasy. (A mixture which is nicely mirrored in the main character’s fantasy and contrivance fiction magazine.)

Where the novel fails, however, is when it can’t quite make me believe the extrapolation. For example, Vinge posits a sea-based society more technologically and socially advanced than the island-based societies they trade with. This society also endures for at least a millennia with not only seemingly little change, but with a continuity of individual vessels (which are impractically huge). I can’t quite make those pieces, or some of the subsidiary technologies described, really fit together in my mind.

But if you can grab your bootstraps every so often and haul your suspension of disbelief back up where it belongs, I think you’ll find Tatja Grimm’s World to be a pleasant little read… particularly in the context of Vinge’s later writing.

THE WITLING

The Witling, published in 1976, is a deeply flawed novel.

The primary problem here is that the characters come across as flat and lifeless – their actions seemingly forced by authorial fiat. With a little imagination you can see how these character arcs could have been very, very compelling… but they aren’t. Emotions, for example, don’t seem to emerge organically from the characters. Instead they just seem to happen, with the only seeming cause being that the author’s outline said that they should.

This core problem also cascades to certain extent. At first glance, for example, the plots appears to have been padded out from a more proper novella length. But, upon reflection, it would appear that this is simply an aggravated symptom of the character dramas falling with such resounding thuds.

Where the novel succeeds, however, is in its analysis of its central conceit: Teleportation which observes the conservation of momentum. Vinge takes this idea and extrapolates it to at least four levels of depth. To borrow John Campbell’s saying again: Not just the car, but the traffic jam, the interstate system, the oil crisis of the ‘70s, and the search for alternative fuels.

I suspect The Witling’s biggest problem is that it’s narrative structure and tapioca characters would be primarily appealing to the hard SF aficionados who like things like Niven’s Ringworld– where the central conceit and speculation of the story takes center stage and holds your attention and fascination. But the conceit in this case takes the form of psychic teleportation – so those same hard SF aficionados are probably turned off by how “improbable” it is (as opposed to scrith, I suppose).

That being said, Vinge’s detailed extrapolation of the teleportation is, in fact, interesting, rigorous, and detailed enough that The Witling makes for a worthwhile read.

TRUE NAMES

True Names is a little difficult to classify. It’s short enough to technically classify as a novella. However, it’s long enough that it has been published as a stand-alone novel in its own right.

At the moment, the story is only available as part of the volume True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier – which collects the story itself along with a dozen or so essays by other authors discussing the story and its predictions. So, for the sake of argument, I’m going to classify True Names as a novel and discuss it here. (It should be noted, however, that I don’t own the current collection and have not read the essays. So this is a reaction only to True Names itself.)

True Names is probably the specific point at which Vinge went from being “a pretty decent SF author” to “hot shit”. There were a few false steps still to be taken, and it took awhile for the rest of the world to notice, but with True Names Vinge basically arrived. He pulled the lever and he delivered.

It’s probably not coincidental that True Names is also basically the first time that Vinge puts the Singularity firmly in his sights and pulls the trigger. He comes at it from multiple directions, trying to hem it in and define its outlines… and then he plunges into it, penetrating perhaps as deeply as one can into the fundamentally incomprehensible. Then he pulls back and lets the foundations of his story rest firmly on a human drama.

But, in truth, that’s not the primary focus of the story.

Nor is the primary focus of the story to be found in Vinge’s casual introduction of a fully-realized cyberspace, a trope which has been masticated endlessly in the two and a half decades since.

No, the primary focus of this story lies in the subtle, interwoven theme suggested by the title: The power and meaning of true names. Vinge allows this theme to play itself simultaneously on planes transcendental, digital, and mortal.

True Names is a complicated and subtly worked narrative. Vinge isn’t afraid to keep adding one big idea after another to his pot until it’s almost overflowing, stirring in multi-layered character dramas, spicing the whole thing lightly with thematic elegance, and then bringing the whole thing to a slow boil over a plot of high-stakes thrills.

But what makes True Names even more impressive is that, in the act of reading, you’re scarcely aware of the complexity of the material you’re reading. Somehow Vinge manages to present it all with smooth prose and fast-placed plotting, keeping you fully engaged in his story and turning the pages as if you were reading nothing more substantial than a piece of light adventure fiction. It’s only when you’ve breathlessly flipped the last page and have a moment to reflect that you realize the truth:

This is the reason you read science fiction.

GRADES:

TATJA GRIMM’S WORLD: B
THE WITLING: C+
TRUE NAMES: A+

Vernor Vinge
Published: 1968 / 1976 / 1981
Publisher: Tor
Cover Price: $14.95
ISBNs: 0-76-530885-1 / 0-671-65634-1 / 0-31-286207-5
Buy Now!

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 Rainbows 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 19^th century superpower? Or even a 20^th 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 Rainbows 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:

COLLECTED STORIES OF VERNOR VINGE: A+
“Synthetic Serendipity”: A
“The Cookie Monster”: A+

Vernor Vinge
Published: 1966-2005
Publisher: Tor
Cover Price: $16.95
ISBN: 0-31-28758-43
Buy Now!

Today we have the first brand new, never-before-seen WIR reaction to appear on the website. I spent the month of March reading through essentially every word written by Vernor Vinge, and this is the first in a series of WIR reactions which will cover his entire corpus of work:

WIR 46: The Short Stories of Vernor Vinge

I’ve also recently been spending a good deal of time listening to every single note of music ever published by the Flaming Lips. It may just be a personal and idiosyncratic synchronicity, but I’ve found that their albums At War With the Mystics and (even moreso) The Soft Bulletin have proven to be the perfect musical accompaniment for Vingean exploits.