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Vernor Vinge does a great job with this in A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. I do wish that he had written more about Pham Numen and the Qeng Ho,
by mirimir 7y ago
Vernor Vinge does a great job with this in A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. I do wish that he had written more about Pham Numen and the Qeng Ho, back in their Slow Zone heyday.
Alastair Reynolds also does a great job with this in his Revelation Space trilogy, with his lighthuggers.
- newsbinator 7y agoOne of the most interesting parts to me of Pham Nuwen's character was his relationship to his distant descendants. Humans just aren't wired to consider family members beyond 3 or 4 generations up and down. Perhaps I'd feel the same general apathy as Pham Nuwen 20 generations down. Then again, he had other familial issues that played a part.
- mirimir 7y agoOne started with him hiding in a nursing home, after faking his death. I don't recall specifics, but I suppose that it's possible that all of the other characters are his descendants. And they had spent a long time looking for him. In the other, he'd been resurrected by some godlike AI as a meatspace agent. Millennia after the Qeng Ho era, I think.
- the_pwner224 7y agoI have yet to read Vinge's books, but Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is an excellent book that also makes good use of this effect.
- gattr 7y agoI absolutely recommend all of these. And of course Reynolds's "House of Suns", which sort of takes the "lighthugger" concept up to eleven.