I’m a bit bummed at the moment.

I recently discovered the BBC series Hustle. The show is about a group of professional con-men and every episode features a con in the style The Sting. As soon as I heard the concept, I knew this was a show I had to check out. And as soon as I saw the first episode I was completely hooked.

The show truly delivers on its promise: Every episode is a tightly-scripted and carefully-constructed piece that delivers the special magic of the long con. It really does feel as if you’re watching an episodic version of Ocean’s Eleven.

Adrian Lester, who plays the role of the mastermind and leader for the group, exudes the confidence, slickness, and sex appeal of a Brad Pitt or a Robert Redford. Robert Vaughn, who plays the wizened master, has the quiet mastery of a Paul Newman or George Clooney. The cons themselves are clever, elaborate, and masterfully executed. The entire show reeks of glamour and cleverness and sophistication.

But what really makes the show click is that the writers and directors clearly understand that, when you’re making a movie (or television series) about a long con, the first thing you must do is con the audience. The creators of Hustle are constantly trying to keep one step ahead of you, and it’s a real joy to try to keep one step ahead of them.

So why am I bummed?

I’ve just hit the fourth season of the series, and it all seems to be falling apart. Adrian Lester, for whatever reason, left the show. This has left the show without it’s strong center — it’s become Ocean’s Eleven without Danny Ocean. At the same time, the writing seems to have become sloppy, bloated, and ham-fisted. The cleverness and slickness is gone. Some of this may be intentional since, without Adrian Lester’s character, the team itself lacks that cleverness and slickness. But the result is simply not as satisfying.

And perhaps the creative team has simply used up its ideas. There are only so many ways in which the basic components of a con can be spun, after all, before you’re really just spinning your wheels. I was certainly seeing some weaknesses appearing even towards the end of the third season.

For example, one of the clever storytelling conceits the show employed in its very first episode was the freeze-frame: While the con is running, the action will suddenly enter a freeze frame — except for the grifters themselves, who will take the opportunity to turn to the camera and begin explaining the nature of the con. This was slick and clever and very well done. It has led to a general friendliness with the fourth wall in the series, in which the audience is drawn into the grifters’ inner circle through knowing looks, glances, double-takes, and the like.

But as the series has gone on, this use of the fourth wall has begun to be, in my opinion, abused. This unfortunate trend culminates late in the third season when the entire cast suddenly breaks into a full-fledged Bollywood musical number. They were, at the time, executing a con in which they attempted to convince a mark to invest in a Bollywood film (so there was some semblance of a connection). But, whatever the excuse may have been, the reality is that not only the con, but the characters and the dramatic reality of the sequence were all put on hold for a self-indulgent and utterly unnecessary extravagance.

So, in any case, I’m bummed because I have a strong feeling that this show has jumped the shark on me.

If it has, though, I’m going to keep my eye on the silver lining: I got eighteen really exceptional episodes of television in the show’s first three seasons (of six episodes each). And if that’s all I get, that’s more than most series can ever boast of.

In my previous reaction I described A Fire Upon the Deep as a masterpiece. This is undoubtedly true. If Vernor Vinge had never written another book, A Fire Upon the Deep would have stood as a monumental accomplishment, firmly cementing Vinge’s reputation as one of the best science fiction authors to ever practice the craft.

So it was even more impressive when A Deepness in the Sky, Vinge’s next book, was even better.

I first read A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky back in 1999, shortly after A Deepness in the Sky was first published. Reading those two novels for the first time – back-to-back and in such close succession – was a one-two punch which I could only compare to reading, in my much younger days, Asimov’s I, Robot and Foundation Trilogy back-to-back. Or Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood’s End. It would go unmatched until several years later when I was awed by reading Bester’s The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man for the first time.

Despite the fact that I’d read them before, I still found it hard to accept, as I finished A Fire Upon the Deep, that A Deepness in the Sky was truly as superior as I remembered it to be. But as I picked up the second book, which takes place during an earlier epoch of the Zones universe and serves as a very light prequel of sorts, I discovered to my delight that my memories were not false: Vinge actually managed to ascend even higher on the pinnacle of excellence.

On reflecting on these twin masterpieces, it’s interesting to note that both of them – and Marooned in Realtime immediately before them – feature truly original plots. Looking at Vinge’s earlier works you can find a cornucopia of originality, but the plots are structurally quite familiar: Tatja Grimm’s World is fundamentally a coming of age story. The Witling is fundamentally a great escape story serving as a vehicle for a Campbellian “let’s extrapolate a nifty idea” story. And so forth.

But while you can certainly draw parallels between other stories and various elements of A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky (the former is hardly the only story to feature “rescue the kids” and “defeat the evil menace”), there are deep structural elements in both stories which are only possible because the unique elements of Vinge’s universe. In A Deepness in the Sky, for example, Pham’s lifelong dream and the faux-Singularity offered to him in the form of the Focused can be crudely compared to an Empire based on slavery, but the fundamental differences make a mockery of the premise.

(All those who find personal joy in stripping out every relevant and meaningful distinction within a story so that you can cram it into half a phrase and then claim that there are only thirty plots or seven plots or one plot in the world can calm down: I know you exist. Your obsession with dogmatizing a mildly interesting intellectual game that can occasionally serve as a useful tool is noted. I pity you in general. Let’s leave it at that.)

Moving beyond the freshness of the plot, I am also struck profoundly by the depth of the plot. Vinge creates an utterly unique setting, populates it with dozens of vividly drawn characters (both human and evocatively alien), and then paints his story on a canvas spread across half a dozen centuries – casting his net far into the past and cascading into the future. And perhaps the most remarkable achievement of it all is that Vinge manages to handle the incredibly complex edifice he has erected with such adroit skill that the reader is never left at a loss.

Once again, the familiar Vingean strengths can be found peppered throughout the story: Villains drawn with vivid and believable detail. Myriad casts of deeply drawn characters brought together through chance and fate to form a tale of epic proportions. Complete and detailed realizations of not only entire societies, but entire societies going through massive upheaval and change.

In fact, re-reading A Deepness in the Sky after reading Vinge’s other works was an interesting experience because I had seen Vinge’s earlier experiments with some of the themes and elements which can be found here: A deeper appreciation of the Singularity served to add greater resonance to the work. The society going through a technological revolution was touched on earlier in Tatja Grimm’s World, but is handled in a completely unique fashion here. And so forth.

I find this reaction has become something of a rambling discourse, and not an entirely satisfying one at that. So I will draw it to a close with these words: If you have not read A Deepness in the Sky, then you have almost certainly missed out on the finest science fiction novel of the past decade.

GRADE: A+

The first time I read A Fire Upon the Deep it expanded my mind: I was still a teeny-bopper and the concepts and ideas that Vinge was casually playing with were literally two or three steps beyond anything I had encountered before. For an intellectual junky like myself, the book was like a shot of adrenaline straight to the hippocampus.

In the years since then I’ve read more Vinge; I’ve read Iain Banks; I’ve dabbled with Reynolds; I’ve laid in some more background with Bester’s masterpieces and Brin’s Uplift…

So this time I was able to really savor what Vinge was offering here.

First, let me say this:

A Fire Upon the Deep is cool.

I mean, there’s just no other word for it. Even after fourteen years, with hundreds of other works drawing inspiration from it, A Fire Upon the Deep remains a truly awesome work. If your sensawunda isn’t being kicked into overdrive on nearly every other page, then I name you a jaded and tragically cynical soul.

Second, let me say this:

A Fire Upon the Deep is a testament to Vinge’s growing skill as a writer.

Let me give you an example: Early in the book, Vinge dumps a character into his story as a clueless newbie to the realities of his universe. This clueless fellow allows Vinge to seamlessly integrate the basic exposition of his setting into a series of “as you NEED to know Bob” speeches. He invests these expository lumps with higher meaning because of the immediate and touching impact their revelations have on the character’s emotions and sense of self. That’s pretty good: Smooth handling of exposition in an active and character-focused manner is one of the trickier elements of the science fiction writer’s craft. But what makes Vinge incessantly clever is that he then seamlessly transforms the character’s role within the narrative into a completely different form as soon as his original purpose has been used up.

These types of subtle, sophisticated storytelling techniques can be found throughout the entire book. A Fire Upon the Deep is a mammoth novel, but there’s not a wasted character or scene. Vinge demonstrates authoritatively that he has achieved a mastery of his craft, allowing his work to reach a whole new plateau.

Finally, let me say this:

A Fire Upon the Deep is a complex work.

Its plot stretches across multiple milieus and involves several distinct casts of characters. Its thematic mesh is expressed in varied and active ways. It’s an immensely satisfying work, while still leaving the reader yearning to see deeper into its hidden depths.

Another example: One of the most prevalent themes in Vinge’s work is the way in which technology impacts the life of the individual. He carries that theme further by looking at the way in which the changing lives of individuals reshape society, and then he loops it back around on itself to show how the reshaping of society also impacts the life of the individual.

In A Fire Upon the Deep, Vinge plays with this theme on multiple levels: He shows high technology thrust haphazardly upon a primitive society. He mirrors that theme by showing a transcendant technology thrust forcefully upon a society of high technology. Simultaneously, on the individual level, he is showing a primitive shaped by technology a thousand years ahead of our own thrust into a society of even higher technology. And then he mirrors that by showing the children of high technology thrust into the extremely primitive. Around the edges he shows societies yearning for ever greater technological glories, contrasted by entities raised to the level of godhood by their technology mucking about in the playgrounds of technological children.

And in conclusion let me say this:

It is nearly impossible to satisfactorily summarize the many and varied achievements of A Fire Upon the Deep. I have not even begun to discuss, for example, Vinge’s masterful creation of a half dozen or so alien species utterly inhuman in their countenance, utterly plausible in their nature, and utterly fascinating in their execution. And even that scarcely makes a meaningful touch on the tip of the iceberg.

Vinge’s accomplishments are so varied, in fact, that the worst criticism I have ever read of A Fire Upon the Deep is this: “I liked most of it, but there was this one part/setting/character that did nothing for me.” Vinge keeps so many balls in the air that it’s almost inevitable that some people will find a ball they didn’t like. But for the lucky multitude, the balls are all beautiful creations in their own right, and the juggling act only adds to their magnificence.

There are few artistic creations which truly earn the right to be called a masterpiece. A Fire Upon the Deep is one of them.

GRADE: A+

The Across Realtime universe consists of two novels and a short story. In internal chronological order, these are:

The Peace War
“The Ungoverned”
Marooned in Realtime

There have been two different omnibuses printed under the title Across Realtime. The first contains both novels and the short story. The second contains only the two novels.

More recently, Tor has re-released The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime as separate volumes, while collecting “The Ungoverned” in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge.

I have already dealt briefly with “The Ungoverned” in my reaction to Vernor Vinge’s short fiction. This reaction will deal with both The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime.

THE PEACE WAR

In reading The Peace War I knew I was reading a flawed work, but I had some difficulty in putting my finger on exactly what the problem was.

Part of it is the character dramas don’t seem to be quite brought to life. It’s hard to describe the effect, but it’s almost as if they’re presented in an expository fashion. The characters don’t seem to so much live their thoughts and emotions as think about their thoughts and emotions. (This is a problem shared with Vinge’s earlier novel, The Witling, where the problem was far more pronounced.)

Part of it is a certain clumsiness in the plotting. Again, you can see where the pieces are supposed to hook up… but sometimes they don’t quite make the connection, and at others they’re obviously being forced, leaving a jig-saw puzzle with ragged edges.

The premise of The Peace War is fairly straight-forward: Late in the 20^th century, a lone genius working at a military contractor creates the “bobble” – a silvery, perfectly reflective bubble which seals off its contents completely from the outside world. Rather than share this technology with the world, the military contractor instead triggers World War III and then uses their revolutionary technology to end the war and take over the remnants of the world that’s left behind.

The bulk of the novel takes place several decades later: The military contractor has become the Peace Authority and rules over a broken, suppressed planet. The lone genius, completely disenchanted with the way his work was manipulated, had disappeared into the Californian wilderness. Rebellion is fomenting. And there may be more to the bobbles than meets the eye…

One of the things I love about Vinge is his ability to create plausible villains: It would have been easy to write the Peace Authority as a two-dimensional villain; an organization full of malevolent, cackling tyrants. But Vinge crafts a reality more compelling than that: the founders of the Peace Authority honestly believed that the arms race could only lead to mankind’s destruction. They also believed that technological progress inevitably fed into that arms race. So they took their new technology and used it to take control. And then used their control to suppress technological innovation.

Nor does Vinge allow the Peace Authority to become monolithic: The individuals in both its leadership and its membership are varied in their outlooks, their motivations, and their goals.

The other major strength of The Peace War is, once again, Vinge’s willingness and ability to rigorously and thoroughly extrapolate speculative technology. The basic properties of his bobbles are simple and straight-forward. But Vinge isn’t satisfied with just rubbing a piece of fur against a rod of amber and getting an electric spark. He takes that spark and works out power plants and electric lights, and hints at the possibilities of even more esoteric and unexpected applications.

This type of speculative thinking is exactly what gives rise to the incredibly fascinating milieu of Marooned in Realtime…

MAROONED IN REALTIME

I tend to cut to the chase on stuff like this, so let me do it again:

Marooned in Realtime is a melancholic masterpiece. I think the only reason it’s not given more attention is because of its connection to the other, notably inferior works which make up the Across Realtime future history.

To imagine the setting, fast forward a hundred million years: At some point in the 22^nd century, mankind disappeared from the face of the planet. Only a few lingering survivors remain: Those who were trapped timelessly inside of bobbles while the rest of the human race disappeared. Clueless and lost in time, these straggling remnants now attempt to gather their remaining technology and numbers across countless eons in a final desperate effort to re-establish civilization.

Then there’s murder.

It’s a vicious, ugly, and nearly unimaginable killing. Marooned in Realtime is driven by its mystery – a mystery thoroughly alien; a murder completely impossible in the modern world.

But there’s more to Marooned in Realtime than a murder mystery. What captures your imagination and seizes your mind’s eye is the sheer, daring scope of Vinge’s vision: This is a tale which expands to fill a million years. It’s a story of post-apocalypse and colonization and super-tech and Singularity. It’s about a humanity stretched to the limits of the human condition. It is a work of melancholy and it is a work of hope. And Vinge plays masterfully upon it all.

It’s difficult for me to really quantify the masterful achievement I consider Marooned in Realtime to be. There’s no convenient hook on which to hang a statement of, “This is a great book because of X.” It’s rather an emotional depth and a grandeur of vision.

I strongly recommend this book.

GRADES:

THE PEACE WAR: B
MAROONED IN REALTIME: A+

Vernor Vinge
Published: 1984 / 1986
Publisher: Tor
Cover PRice: $13.95
ISBN: 0-76-530883-5 / 0-76-530884-3
Buy Now!

I’ve been gone for a bit because I quite intentionally sealed myself into a near-complete media cocoon last week in order to avoid spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Once it became clear that what appeared to be a legitimate copy of the book had leaked, it seemed I was left with only three options:

1. Risk being spoiled.

2. Track down one of the leaked copies and read it. I’d feel no guilt about this, since I had already paid full cover price for my pre-order at a local bookstore. But there were two problems with this approach: First, there was no guarantee this was actually a legitimate copy. Second, I really wanted the experience of curling up with the tome, just as I had done with every previous volume in the series. Not only was it a matter of sentimentality and nostalgia and comfort, but also the magical ineffability of simultaneously sitting down with millions of other people around the world and beginning to read a common story…

3. I could stop perusing the web, watching television, reading the newspaper, and — in all other ways — seal myself off from all the likely avenues of spoilerage. I still came very close to still having it spoiled, as a friend of mine (infamous for her ability to spoil something even after you’ve asked her specifically not to) began babbling away at the release party about what she’d read in the New York Times review of the book. But fortunately I bludgeoned her unconscious in time and hid her behind the bookstore’s dumpster.

(I, personally, don’t care that the New York Times “prematurely” reviewed the book. If you don’t want to be spoiled by the contents of a review, then don’t read the review. If you’ve got such poor impulse control that you can’t resist seeking out and reading spoilers even if you don’t truly want the consequences of having read them, then that’s your problem and not the Times. And if you’re just concerned because somebody out there is being spoiled when you feel that they shouldn’t be… well, you’ve simply got too much time on your hands.)

So what did I think of it?

I thought it was excellent. It is one of the best, if not the single best, novel in the entire series — joining the third, fifth, and sixth books in the ever-shifting kaleidoscopic brawl in my mind for that distinction. It is tightly plotted, tautly paced, and utterly satisfying.

It’s also clear that Rowling — who was already a mighty fine writer indeed when she wrote the first book — continues to improve with every passing year. While it is unlikely that the lightning-scar of Harry Potter shall strike twice in the same spot (or at all, for that matter), I’m eagerly anticipating Rowling’s next project. I am completely fascinated by the prospect of what she might attempt next.

At some point in the next few days I shall probably post a spoilerrific reaction to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, giving me a chance to expound on many things I found admirable in the book. I doubt it will be able to expound on everything I found admirable in it, because the book is far too complex, layered, and rewarding for any single essay to completely explore its many excellencies. But I’ll give it my best shot.