The Alexandrian

Posts tagged ‘wir’

A Deepness in the Sky- Vernor VingeIn 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+

A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor VingeThe 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

The Peace War - Vernor VingeIn 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 20th 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

Marooned in Realtime - Vernor VingeI 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 22nd 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
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Princess of the Empire - Hiroyuki MoriokaImagine for a moment that you have been made aware of a novel with a reputation which places it on the same lofty plateau as the Foundation Trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, or Dune. Its author has carefully crafted an entire culture and society, complete with a language so detailed that many have learned to speak it fluently. Its plot is epic in its scope. Its quality is attested to by a legion of dedicated fans, multimedia adaptations, and widespread acclaim.

In short, it is reputed to be a masterpiece. And you have never read it.

So you go looking for it, but are frustrated to discover that it cannot be had. You are literally unable to discover a single copy of it. But the more you learn about it, the more it sounds exactly like the type of book you want to read.

And then you get some wonderful news: It’s being reprinted! You’ll finally be able to get a copy! Frabjuous day!

So the day finally comes when you hold a copy of the newly reprinted masterpiece in your hands. You crack the cover…

… and discover that the new publishers have decided to not only abridge the book, they’ve also decided to rewrite it as a juvenile.

Imagine, if you will, that you had spent several years searching and hoping to find a copy of the Lord of the Rings or Dune or the Foundation Trilogy. And then, when you thought you finally had a copy, it turned out to be a novelization of the movie which was based on the book.

The emotion you’d be feeling at that moment is roughly akin to the emotion I felt when I finally managed to get my hands on the Crest of the Stars, a space opera masterpiece by Hiroyuki Morioka.

The original novel was written in Japanese. For many years it has been known in English only through the anime and manga adaptations. Starting last year, however, Tokyopop began releasing translated versions of the novel. As is typical for the Japanese market, the book was serialized into three volumes. Tokyopop kept the same format and released it as a trilogy: Princess of the Empire, A Modest War, and Return to a Strange World.

A Modest War - Hiroyuki MoriokaThe novel was translated by Sue Shambaugh. And, unfortunately, the decision was made to release the novel as part of Tokyopop’s juvenile line. The work was minorly abridged, but this was almost a minor sin compared to a translation which fundamentally kiddified the work and stripped out its complexities. The glimmering remannts of Hiroyuki Morioka’s brilliant world-building which shine through in these botched translations is utterly eclipsed by the incessant need to make the characters sound “hip” and “current” (in that utterly artificial way which only a thoroughly dreary adult can achieve when trying to copy “the way kids speak these days”).

Imagine, if you will, an edition of the Lord of the Rings in which Theoden would say things like: “Fine, spoilsport! Oh jeez! I really don’t want to go fight Saruman’s orcs!”

Perhaps you’d prefer it if Frodo’s hair was described using an analogy to a chocolate pudding pop?

Do you feel the pain?

Then you can imagine my pain.

I’d really love to encourage people to go out and experience this wonderful story. But, realistically, you have to be willing to squint your eyes and try to read between the lines to recreate Hiroyuki Morioka’s masterpiece from the wreckage of Tokyopop’s hamfisted translation.

NITPICKING TOKYOPOP’S EFFORTS

(1) The first words of Crest of the Stars consist of a quote from a fictional text. This quote begins: “This crest depicts the Gaftonash. The grotesque eight-headed dragon was long lost to the ages — forgotten, alive only in myth. Resurrected on an Imperial crest, the Gaftonash became infamous…”

When you flip open the book to the very first page you’ll discover a large rendition of the Imperial crest described. Count the heads: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7…

Yup. That’s right. The eight-headed Imperial crest has been rendered with only seven heads. This same image is then reused in miniature throughout the volume to break up the text.

You can literally say that Tokyopop screwed it up starting right on page one.

(2) One of the unique things about the original Japanese publication of Crest of the Stars was the way in which Hiroyuki Morioka worked the fictional language of Baronh into the story. As Tokyopop describes it: “In the original Japanese version, all the text is in kanji, and then above those Japanese characters are the Abh language words (called Baronh) in rubi (a smaller, phonetic alphabet).”

Fascinating. How could you duplicate this experience in an English-language edition?

Well, you could duplicate it precisely: Print the book in double-space print and insert the Baronh words on the interleaving lines. This would be awkward, but I’ve got an edition of Caesar’s Gallic Wars that does essentially this (printing a line of Latin and then the matching line in English and using two different colors to make them easily distinguishable).

You could also use footnotes. Or you could put the notes on the facing page (like the Folger’s Library editions of Shakespeare). Or you could consistently put the Baronh words in parantheses.

Or you could do what Tokyopop did: The first time a Baronh term is referenced the English version is written with the Baronh term appearing in parentheses immediately afterwards. So far so good… But then the English term is never used again. Only the Baronh term is used.

This might have worked if only a few select terms had been selected. For example, if the book refers to the “Imperial Emperor (Spunej)”, I’d have a pretty good chance of remembering that Spunej is the Abh title for Emperor.

But it becomes ridiculous when someone talks about taking a shower (guzas), and forever after the word “shower” is never used again. To the extent where you feel like you’re learning key phrases in a foreign tongue, its fun. But when the latter half of the book becomes an increasingly frustrating exercise in referring to the glossary at the back of the book to parse simple sentences, something has gone wrong.

(3) Making the ubiquitous use of Baronh terms even more painful is that, for reasons beyond comprehending, Tokyopop decided to Capitalize Every Single Baronh Word. It makes Everything look like a Proper Noun, and it makes Parsing sentences difficult even When You understand the Baronh Words to begin with.

What makes this even more absurd is that Tokyopop got it right when they used Japanese terms like “kanji” and “rubi” in their foreward: See how I italicized them in the bit I quoted up above? That’s because they’re italicized in the book.

It would have made sense to capitalize titles and ranks (like Spunej) while italicizing common Baronh words (like guzas). It makes no sense to capitalize everything.

Final analysis? I’m glad I finally got a chance to read Crest of the Stars. I’ve been waiting a long time for it.

But I’ll never buy another Tokyopop novel translation.

GRADES:

PRINCESS OF THE EMPIRE: C+ (A)
A MODEST WAR: C+ (A)
RETURN TO A STRANGE WORLD: B- (A)

Hiroyuki Morioka
Published: 2006-2007
Publisher: Tokyopop
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBNs: 1598165755 / 1598165763 / 1598165771
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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

Tatja Grimm's World - Vernor VingeThe 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 - Vernor VingeThe 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 - Vernor VingeTrue 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!

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