5 ms·

Vinge's ideas about galactic organization (Powers, breakdown of automation near center) are very original and make enjoyable scifi.

pyinstallwoes 4y ago
Can you expand in summary?
- PicassoCTs 4y ago
  His slow zone traders are the only constant in civilization. Meaning, planets are unreliable destinations. You set out to trade and arrive at a medieval kingdom 500 years after a nuclear apocalypse. You set out for a meh-destination and find upon arrival a high tech civilization, that is so integrated its even eaten up the error margins, due to thinking itself infallible. The only constant is the traders, reviving and stabilizing societies, which its why information exchange without a known listener (basically a Wikipedia radio edition) is most important for keeping a slower then light traveling galactic civilization alive. He also has some quibs about how society is basically a attempt to overcome the flaws of the individuals psyche comprising it. That and murder AI. He tried to explore AR in Rainbows end, but it was insubstantial. Another great man ruined by california.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
  - e40 4y ago
    I followed everything you said until the California comment. Please explain.
    - Shorel 4y ago
      I think that's just the setting of the novel, but not the plot. The plot of Rainbows end is more about... this would be a spoiler.
    - 867-5309 4y ago
      I think it refers to the curse of celebritydom
    - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
      Author known for highly imaginitive galaxy-spanning settings writes a novel about AR and a down-on-his-luck poet on a UC campus. (IIRC!) The story is good, but it is a book about California in the proximate future as imagined from the 2010s and so it doesn't feel as timeless as the spacefaring universes of his other work.
- flir 4y ago
  I think it's reasonable to give mild spoilers for a 30(!) year old book: Maximum possible intelligence is a function of the speed of light. The speed of light is a local constant, not a universal one, and is a function of the amount of mass in the local area (maybe). Thus, if you dive towards the core of the galaxy you get dumber, but if you head up and out you have the potential to get smarter. The reason we haven't all been eaten by the Borg is that, two thirds from the centre of the galaxy, the universe only supports boring, mundane, human-level intelligence, and everyone wants to get up and out, to where they can become Sufficiently Advanced. Sidenote: Sufficiently Advanced intelligences don't seem to hang around for long, and nobody down here is quite sure what happens to them when they stop communicating. Marooned in Realtime is almost as good as the first two Zones of Thought novels, IMO: what if time travel, but only forwards?
  - KineticLensman 4y ago
    > what if time travel, but only forwards? Just to expand on that a bit (also teasers for an almost 40 year old novel). They don't have time machines as such, but instead indestructible stasis fields ('bobbles') in which time stands still. These are initially thought to persist infinitely, but early in the first novel ('The Peace War') it becomes apparent (in 2048) that the bobbles eventually pop releasing whatever is inside them back into real time. This causes problems for the baddies who control bobble technology and have long been using bobbles as way of imprisoning their enemies. In the follow-up novel, Marooned in Real Time, various characters who have been bobbled for various reasons travel to the far future of the Earth, long after an apparent singularity has left the planet almost devoid of human life, and witnessing changes to the planet on geological timescales. The bobbles are now a pervasive technology used in a whole range of applications (from solar mining to deep space combat), which Vinge has fun exploring.
    - flir 4y ago
      Thanks, I was sure there was a second book but Google wasn't turning it up.
      - 4y ago

pyinstallwoes 4y ago

Can you expand in summary?

PicassoCTs 4y ago
His slow zone traders are the only constant in civilization. Meaning, planets are unreliable destinations. You set out to trade and arrive at a medieval kingdom 500 years after a nuclear apocalypse. You set out for a meh-destination and find upon arrival a high tech civilization, that is so integrated its even eaten up the error margins, due to thinking itself infallible. The only constant is the traders, reviving and stabilizing societies, which its why information exchange without a known listener (basically a Wikipedia radio edition) is most important for keeping a slower then light traveling galactic civilization alive. He also has some quibs about how society is basically a attempt to overcome the flaws of the individuals psyche comprising it. That and murder AI. He tried to explore AR in Rainbows end, but it was insubstantial. Another great man ruined by california.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
- e40 4y ago
  I followed everything you said until the California comment. Please explain.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    I think that's just the setting of the novel, but not the plot. The plot of Rainbows end is more about... this would be a spoiler.
  - 867-5309 4y ago
    I think it refers to the curse of celebritydom
  - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
    Author known for highly imaginitive galaxy-spanning settings writes a novel about AR and a down-on-his-luck poet on a UC campus. (IIRC!) The story is good, but it is a book about California in the proximate future as imagined from the 2010s and so it doesn't feel as timeless as the spacefaring universes of his other work.
flir 4y ago
I think it's reasonable to give mild spoilers for a 30(!) year old book: Maximum possible intelligence is a function of the speed of light. The speed of light is a local constant, not a universal one, and is a function of the amount of mass in the local area (maybe). Thus, if you dive towards the core of the galaxy you get dumber, but if you head up and out you have the potential to get smarter. The reason we haven't all been eaten by the Borg is that, two thirds from the centre of the galaxy, the universe only supports boring, mundane, human-level intelligence, and everyone wants to get up and out, to where they can become Sufficiently Advanced. Sidenote: Sufficiently Advanced intelligences don't seem to hang around for long, and nobody down here is quite sure what happens to them when they stop communicating. Marooned in Realtime is almost as good as the first two Zones of Thought novels, IMO: what if time travel, but only forwards?
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  > what if time travel, but only forwards? Just to expand on that a bit (also teasers for an almost 40 year old novel). They don't have time machines as such, but instead indestructible stasis fields ('bobbles') in which time stands still. These are initially thought to persist infinitely, but early in the first novel ('The Peace War') it becomes apparent (in 2048) that the bobbles eventually pop releasing whatever is inside them back into real time. This causes problems for the baddies who control bobble technology and have long been using bobbles as way of imprisoning their enemies. In the follow-up novel, Marooned in Real Time, various characters who have been bobbled for various reasons travel to the far future of the Earth, long after an apparent singularity has left the planet almost devoid of human life, and witnessing changes to the planet on geological timescales. The bobbles are now a pervasive technology used in a whole range of applications (from solar mining to deep space combat), which Vinge has fun exploring.
  - flir 4y ago
    Thanks, I was sure there was a second book but Google wasn't turning it up.
    - 4y ago