Vinge was an exception to my usual rule that the quality of the characters is inversely proportional to the quality of the setting. Could not put down Fire or Deepness. What an imagination. (And I liked Rainbow's End, too!)
I thought Rainbows End was quite a good novel. The scene where Alice Gu falls victim to JITT as a result of an arcane biological attack, and explains the whole situation, but in language that no one else can understand, strikes me as brilliant every time I read it. And the whole book manages the same kind of long sustained climax that Vinge achieves in A Deepness in the Sky, something he did better than any other writer I've encountered.
On the whole, though, I think I would have to pick A Deepness in the Sky as his single greatest literary achievement. Among other things, he managed to come up with a newly imagined form of totalitarianism, one dependent on technology beyond anything we're capable of—and rather than putting it into a grim dystopia, he showed an ongoing struggle between the totalitarians and the much more libertarian Qeng Ho. (That novel won his second Prometheus Award.) I have to say that, having worked for a large corporation, I found a grim irony in the Emergents' concept of "human resources."
It's been a while since I read "Rainbow's End", so I don't remember that scene well; maybe I'll pick it up again.
But yes, I love that in "Deepness in the Sky"! I would say it is a grim dystopia, but only when you think about it. It's grim, but effective, and from a certain angle you can totally see how it might come about. All that makes it even so much better.
Sad, I liked Vernor's, A Deepness in the Sky. And others in that universe. I also gave up on Rainbows End about 2/3rd's of the way through. But I'm writing to thankyou for giving me a few more books to try.
Vinge was an exception to my usual rule that the quality of the characters is inversely proportional to the quality of the setting. Could not put down Fire or Deepness. What an imagination. (And I liked Rainbow's End, too!)
Thanks very good assessment of VV. I think the short story True Names 1981 deserves a mention as an amazingly prescient founding text of cyberpunk.
I thought Rainbows End was quite a good novel. The scene where Alice Gu falls victim to JITT as a result of an arcane biological attack, and explains the whole situation, but in language that no one else can understand, strikes me as brilliant every time I read it. And the whole book manages the same kind of long sustained climax that Vinge achieves in A Deepness in the Sky, something he did better than any other writer I've encountered.
On the whole, though, I think I would have to pick A Deepness in the Sky as his single greatest literary achievement. Among other things, he managed to come up with a newly imagined form of totalitarianism, one dependent on technology beyond anything we're capable of—and rather than putting it into a grim dystopia, he showed an ongoing struggle between the totalitarians and the much more libertarian Qeng Ho. (That novel won his second Prometheus Award.) I have to say that, having worked for a large corporation, I found a grim irony in the Emergents' concept of "human resources."
It's been a while since I read "Rainbow's End", so I don't remember that scene well; maybe I'll pick it up again.
But yes, I love that in "Deepness in the Sky"! I would say it is a grim dystopia, but only when you think about it. It's grim, but effective, and from a certain angle you can totally see how it might come about. All that makes it even so much better.
Sad, I liked Vernor's, A Deepness in the Sky. And others in that universe. I also gave up on Rainbows End about 2/3rd's of the way through. But I'm writing to thankyou for giving me a few more books to try.