Marooned in Realtime

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Vernor Vinge: Marooned in Realtime (Hardcover, St. Martin's Press)

Hardcover

English language

Published by St. Martin's Press.

ISBN:
978-5-551-63953-4
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4 stars (2 reviews)

From the back cover:

"In The Peace War Vernor Vinge introduced the technology of bobbles, creating spheres where time stands still while minutes, years, or eons pass by outside. Originally used to counter the nucler threat, then to enforce an oppressive government, they don't really come into their own until the century after the Peace War. What better means for one-way time travel? With the bobble plus longevity treatments, human achievements would seem to have no limits... You can hardly turn the pages fast enough... (Marooned in Realtime) is a winner." -- Locus

7 editions

What if you missed the Singularity?

4 stars

This is basically the starting question of the book (which thus forms one of Vinge's quite different explorations of the concept he coined in 1982), but that only becomes clear as the larger story comes together in the last third of the book. (Sorry if this a spoiler…)

On the way there, we follow a post-civilisational whodunnit through several centuries, compressed into short bursts of subjective time, slowly understand that the difference between the "low techs" and "high techs" that make up the small community of surviving humans populating the book is smaller than we thought, and get thrown a few plot-twist curveballs. Vintage Vinge, so to speak.

Which is also the book's drawback: The political agenda a little too clear, the dismissal of alternative world-views (e.g. an ecological one) a little too quick, the psychology a little too shallow.

But as always: a fun, inspired and at times inspiring …

Subjects

  • Science Fiction - General
  • Fiction - Science Fiction