Vernor Vinge, acclaimed author of hard science fiction, died on March 20, 2024. Vinge’s career stretched from the early 1960s to the early 21st century. His mantlepiece accumulated a healthy assortment of trophies over the years, from the Hugo to the Prometheus to the Campbell Memorial1. That said, no author is so famous that everyone knows of them or has read their work. Some of you may have discovered that Vinge existed at all by reading about his passing. Such folk may wonder where to begin with Vinge’s work.
While Vinge had a long career, he was never a prolific writer. Indeed, reading all of his fiction is quite doable. If you’re up for that (or if you’d rather just pick and choose where to dive in), here’s a list of his novels and collections2, with brief comments.
Grimm’s World (1969)
Grimm’s World details the adventures of one Tatja Grimm, a brilliant young woman determined to earn a destiny far greater than any calling her backwater homeworld could offer. Her prodigious abilities make her a valuable asset to potential employers. However, each employer and ally are but stepping stones on the Übermensch’s journey.
Grimm’s World seems consciously crafted to appeal to editor John W. Campbell, Jr.; the plot features a science fiction magazine. Thus I was somewhat surprised to find that Grimm’s World began as a story not in Analog but in Damon Knight’s Orbit 43. Perhaps dissatisfied with the original novel, Vinge later revised and greatly expanded the work into 1987’s Tatja Grimm’s World.
The Witling (1976)
No sooner do the Novamerican scouts land on Giri than most of the crew dies in a mishap, leaving Yoninne Leg-Wot and Bjault marooned on a planet whose biochemistry will soon kill them. Fortuitously, not only is Giri inhabited, and not only do the locals have an extraordinary gift (teleportation), but alien Prince Pelio considers Leg-Wot an exotic beauty. Too bad about that Giri’s cutthroat dynastic politics. Too bad that the plan to return to Novamerica may require betraying Pelio, of whom Leg-Wot is quite fond.
Unfortunately, every author has their worst book. This is Vinge’s. Vinge had considerable fun playing with the implications of psionic teleportation. Other elements disappoint, in particular the fact that Leg-Wat’s happy ending involves a lobotomy.
The Peace War (1984)
Next up, Vinge’s Realtime duology.
In a heartbeat, astronaut Allison Parker was transported from Cold War America to the quasi-feudal world of the so-called Peace Authority. Peace Authority founders wielded the “bobble,” a spherical forcefield, to shatter civilization, kill billions, and smother progress all in the name of global peace. That doing so empowered and enriched the Peace Authority was surely a happy side effect. However, not having invented bobbles, the Peace Authority fundamentally misunderstands their nature. They have also woefully underestimated humanity’s determination to be free.
The Peace Authority’s big mistake (well, second biggest, after being an authoritarian cabal in a novel with libertarian themes) was failing to understand that time stops inside bobbles. As with the teleportation in The Witling, Vinge has considerable fun playing with the implications of spherical stasis fields.
Marooned in Realtime (1986)
Bobbles offer escape from immediate calamity at the cost of being displaced into an uncertain future. The protagonists of Marooned in Realtime emerged from their individual bobbles to find themselves alone in a world without humans. The impressive technology of tomorrow offers hope of survival, but it will not protect the castaways from the killer in their midst.
Marooned is a number of things: a fast-forward tour of Earth’s development over millions of years and a murder mystery are but two of them. It is also an example of the thinking that shaped Vinge’s career: having convinced himself of the nigh-inevitability of the technological Singularity, Vinge then had to figure out how to create characters and events that would not be too alien for modern day readers.
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
All of which brings us to Vinge’s magnum opus, the Zones of Thought trilogy. The Zones of Thought, first showcased in his then-wife Joan D. Vinge’s The Outcasts of Heaven’s Belt, were Vinge’s other solution to the Singularity. Computational prowess depends on location within the galaxy. Earth (which is far off-stage) cannot experience singularity because local laws of physics preclude superhuman intelligence. Migration to other regions facilitates more advanced technology…at a risk.
Bold archaeologists locate and open an archive on the edge of the Transcend. The archive contains a Blight. This is a terrible mistake, and the last one the explorers make. The sealed evil in a tin wastes no time infecting and enslaving every being within reach. However, the Blight is as overconfident as it is ravenous. A lone spacecraft bearing a handful of survivors, mostly children, flees from the Blight, bearing with them a countermeasure as old as the Blight itself. Will the Blight’s enemies be willing to pay the price that the Countermeasure demands?
While the Singularity appears to have been at the back of the author’s mind when plotting the novel, in Fire Vinge keeps the focus on the struggle against the Blight and the adventures which his plucky freedom fighters must survive in order to save the galaxy4.
Fire is the novel where all of the elements of Vinge’s writing fully came together. If it’s not the novel Vinge fans count as their favorite, then their favorite is almost certainly…
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
Set 20,000 years before Fire, Deepness details the efforts of a sublight human starship manned by Qeng Ho traders to contact a most curious alien race, for the material betterment of both sides. Unfortunately for the humans aboard the ship and the alien Spiders, the authoritarian Emergents also have designs on both the ship and the Spiders—those designs being subjugation and slavery.
Some readers may be fascinated by Vinge’s efforts to imagine what thousands of years of singularity-free civilization might look like. Bad news: it’s an endless boom/bust cycle, spiced with inescapable relics of ancient technological decisions. Others may simply enjoy a tale of struggle between the self-congratulatory evil of the Emergents and their hapless victims. Me, I am here for the Bussard ramjets.
The Children of the Sky (2011)
The third and final book in the trilogy, Children is set ten years after Fire. Remnants of the Blight have survived Countermeasure, and may someday target the backwater world on which Ravna and the other survivors are currently marooned. Ravna sets out to provide the Tines, the local aliens, with the means to fend off the Blight’s remnants…but not only are some of the Tines uninterested in cooperating with Ravna, they have convinced themselves that the Blight was the hero of the recent conflict.
I greatly resent how recent events make it impossible for me to complain that nobody could possibly think the brain-eating monster from beyond the stars was their friend. Still, it is best to focus on the positive: authors now have so much more leeway for characters to plausibly embrace willfully self-destructive courses of action.
Rainbows End (2006)
Rapidly advancing medicine cures Robert Gu’s Alzheimer’s disease. Gu must learn to adapt to the rapidly changing world he expected to soon exit. Also, the grave will no longer protect him from the consequences of his abominable treatment of friends and family. Are rehabilitation and reconciliation possible, or are some mistakes unfixable?
Rainbows End is set right on the cusp of the Singularity, when things are getting weird but are not yet incomprehensible to Mark I human brains. Many readers will most clearly remember the thriller plot that manifests partway through the narrative. Me, I am haunted by the legitimately horrifying approach to archives featured in the novel.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
Finally, the short fiction. Like many authors of his vintage, Vinge began as a short fiction author, first appearing in New Worlds5.
The Collected Stories is (save for one omission) the go-to collection for which the Vinge-curious should search. The contents span Vinge’s career from its beginning to the publication of the collection, allowing readers to enjoy Vinge’s development as an author.
However, my single caveat regarding this collection is a huge one: Vinge’s most famous short story is arguably the Hugo and Nebula-finalist “True Names,” which is nowhere to be seen. For that, readers will have to track down the anthology True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (2001) or the collection True Names… and Other Dangers (1987)6.
Are there upcoming Vinge projects of which I am unaware? Are there individual works that Vinge fans wish to discuss at greater length? If so, comments are below.
- Not the award that is now known as the Astounding, but a different award that is also not a Hugo Award. ↩︎
- I am omitting chapbooks, Binary Stars, and anthologies. ↩︎
- The same Orbit series whose New Wave tendencies so inflamed the outrage of the Science Fiction Writers of America grognards. Despite appearing in Orbit, Vinge was not a New Wave SF author. ↩︎
- Another player in Fire is a galactic communications network oddly similar to Usenet. We now know that if a galactic communications network existed, it would resemble
MySpace LiveJournal TwitterTik Tok. ↩︎ - New Worlds was known for publishing New Wave SF. Nevertheless, Vinge was in most respects the antithesis of a New Wave SF author. ↩︎
- You might want to keep an eye out for the Vinge collection Threats… and Other Promises (1988)as well. ↩︎
I wonder how long it took the post-Peace Authority world to realize small bobbles make great ball bearings?
There was a limiting size to bobbles, as far as I recall. Below that size, they just wouldn’t form. Parker’s spy shuttle was as about as small as they could get…
Someone realized during the revolt against the Peace Authority that small bobbles make great shrapnel, if you manifest a cloud of them right in front of the air intake of a jet’s engine.
Hopefully they set those bobbles on a short clock. Otherwise, if you think there’s a pollution problem now…
If I recall correctly, the length of existence is inversely proportional to the size of the bobble.
They’re completely independent. (The nascent Peace Authority, with their incomplete theory, tended to make bobbles that lasted longer the larger they were – first bobbled mushroom clouds opened (oops), then Love Interest’s space shuttle, and it was expected Vandenberg AFB had some time to go.)
Given that you can’t bobble bobbles, pretty much every government would ban that use of bobbles. Pretty much every government would attempt to ban private use of bobbles, and those that couldn’t or wouldn’t – as well as the folks who thought they were ungoverned – would not fare well in a world where nuclear war was extremely winnable for those who kept a tight control on bobbles in their territory.
And yet, whatever happened to humanity, it wasn’t a nuclear war.
Though there was that one guy who thought it would make a more interesting narrative…
(Also, there was a strong ideological thumb on that particular scale.)
Wow, the variable font size thing is annoying.
Doesn’t show on my end, nor does the old “we will erase the last character you typed; isn’t that what you wanted?” behavior of Tor Classic. I guess New Tor actually likes my device.
Huh. Abe seems to have at least one reasonably-priced True Names… And Other Dangers but the Alibris prices are… ambitious.
It was published by Dell in 1980 as a Binary Star edition, with George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers (forgettable). There are a few copies for a reasonable price on abebooks (plus shipping from Australia), then the prices jump up a lot.
Vinge’s Hugo run is one of the most impressive in SF. From True Names to Rainbows End, a span of twenty-five years, every longform piece he published[*] received at least a nomination.
Of course, the same is true for Connie Willis…
[*] I’m not counting Tatja Grimm’s World since it’s a reworking of an earlier book.
If you stretch the definition a little you could include Tatja Grimm’s World. The difference between Grimm’s World and Tatja Grimm’s World is that TGW added “The Barbarian Princess”, which was a Hugo finalist the previous year.
I wonder who had the highest Hugo to published work ratio? Was there someone who had one work published that subsequently won a Hugo?
if not Hugos only, the highest ratio has to be Ted Chiang. He writes few stories, but all are excellent.
I’m probably overdue for a Vinge reread…however, “Rainbow’s End” struck me as having elements of an idiot plot, particularly in regards to the character of Alice Gu.
No apostrophe in Rainbows. The title without the posessive ‘s is a clever wordplay about life and its ending and the impossible to reach “end” of an actual rainbow.
As I type this, I note that one of the tags (“See All Posts About”) reads “A Dire Upon the Deep” rather than “A Fire Upon the Deep”. Someone may wish to correct this.
Fixed, thank you!
Children of the Sky is now the final book by default, but surely it couldn’t have been intended as a conclusion of a trilogy. It seems rather to be a middle book of a trilogy consisting of Fire, Children and something we will presumably never get to read that might have actually addressed the threat of the Blight (which had really only been postponed rather than avoided at the end of Fire, and which Children spends a certain amount of effort on reminding us is still on its way).
Deepness (which is my personal favorite) isn’t really part of the same story. I’d call it a sort-of-prequel, set in the same universe. Although it’s perhaps arguable that Fire, Deepness, Children, and “The Blabber” have enough mutual inconsistencies that they can’t really be considered a continuity. Not that I would let that stop me from reading them (again), of course.
Vinge said that he planned to write several more books which would tie them all together, including “The Blabber”, which he said takes place thousands of years in the future of the other books. Ah, well…
I just regret that I won’t get to read them.
Yes, Children of the Sky reads to me like the first half of a story, rather than a self-contained entity. Which is not to say it’s not worth reading, but where it ends is not satisfying (IMHO).
Being my late 20s as so many people born in 1961 are, I am used to series where each book is stand-alone.
As another of the late 20’s folk, I agree.
Somehw Ive managed to not read Vernor Vinge and not much Joan Vinge- time to recalibrate!
Sure, but not every three (yes, or five, Mr. Adams) book series is a trilogy.
We can, as Vernor himself said, treat his novella The Blabber as the final part of the Zones sequence.
I seem to recall The Blabber had early-installment weirdness but I no longer remember what it was.
If I recall, in “The Blabber” Tines’ World was in contact with the Beyond and got visited by ramships once in a while.
I did love the Usenet-style communications in Fire. Mostly for the recognition factor, but also because of the information in the headers. Who is this message ostensibly from? How sure are we about that? What network nodes has this passed through? How reliable do we think the translation is? Metadata as a storytelling device, awesome!
that was one of my favorite things too.
The Children Of The Sky ends in a way that strongly implies a sequel, but I’ve not heard anything about another book in the Zones of Thought.
“Still, it is best to focus on the positive: authors now have so much more leeway for characters to plausibly embrace willfully self-destructive courses of action.” This is a very sad thing to say, alas, you have good reasons on some many levels, it is hard to count. :(
Back to Vinge: the Tines are my favorites, because they are so alien to us with their collective minds and their special kind of immortality. I wish the alienness would be a more common trope in the genre today.
This is one of the reasons I hold Ancillary Justice so dear– multiple visual and emotional viewpoints from a single “consciousness” is so fun to read.
I discorvered Vinge from a random comment on an article on this site about 2 weeks ago and fell in love with A Deepness in the Sky. Very sad to have him pass so soon after finding him.
Sorry, testing to see if I can post a comment from my laptop. (I can’t from my phone.) If you can see this, I apologize for this test spam.
I feel the need to put in a good word for VV’s short story “The Accomplice” (1969) which, while not a particularly great story, is the earliest story I know of with a fairly accurate prediction of the home computer revolution. (The logics in Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe” (1946) are centrally controlled terminals for a world-wide computing system, not independent processing units; the distinction is key to the resolution of “The Accomplice”.)
“Me, I am haunted by the legitimately horrifying approach to archives featured in the novel”
This is essentially what has happened to academic publishing. All journals, as far as I know, are completely electronic, with most of the old archives now also online. It has been decades since I have stepped inside an academic library. Stuff online is so easy to get that it can be faster pulling a paper down from the web than to get out of my chair and walk to my bookcase, if I even have it in paper anymore.
What I found most interesting was the parallel to how genomes are sequenced, chop the book into tiny pieces and then reconstruct it electronically. Of course, that creates huge reconstruction problems that for gem ones you get around by replicating the chopping many, many times. In the novel, each book is unique, so the process that Vinge describes is both terrifying and totally impractical. Rather, you would just tear out all of the pages and copy each whole, which is what has been done to create electronic archives of old journals.
With regard to your first point – some unsettling reading here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/study-finds-that-we-could-lose-science-if-publishers-go-bankrupt/
Fewer and fewer academic libraries are carrying a wide range of journals in hard copy – subscription rates are becoming astronomical. And I won’t get into the whole business of academic publishers getting their material for nothing, usually from researchers who are publicly funded, and paying reviewers nothing. And journals frequently levy a page charge on anyone publishing a paper. Open -access journals charge a hefty fee as well. The costs of publishing one’s work can be a significant portion of the costs of one’s research.
Being able to download PDFs of the papers you want to read is very convenient, but so often academic journals are paywalled, and if you aren’t associated with an academic institution, you pay through the nose for access.