Vernor Vinge

[Jojo999]

I was surprised to not find any references to Vernor Vinge here since he seems to have a bit of a fan base. I had thought that this was where I got the recommendation for his book 'A fire Upon The Deep'. I recently completed the sequel to this book and thought I would put a short critique/review of sequel up here while trying not to reveal too detail.

Despite weaknesses in character and story construction, I enjoyed 'A Fire Upon The Deep' and found it to be an interesting read with the unique concept that physical laws (such as ability to exceed the speed of light) did not work the same in different parts of the galaxy. To steal from Wikipedia:

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'A Fire Upon the Deep' is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge, a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a conversation medium resembling Usenet. 'A Fire Upon the Deep' won the Hugo Award in 1993.
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At the end of this book, I felt that there was much left hanging, so I was happy to hear that a long overdue sequel was finally set to come out in Oct 2011 (a near 20 year gestation period!, Whew). I managed to secure a copy of the sequel 'The Children Of The Sky' (which occurs 10 years later) at the library with anticipation that the characters introduced in 'A Fire Upon The Deep' would be further fleshed out and the loose ends wrapped up.

Unfortunately, while I happy to make a better connection with the world and characters introduced in 'A Fire Upon The Deep', reading the sequel turned out to be a rather slow and plodding experience. Vinge just doesn't seem to have a knack for good character development or plotting.

In the sequel, I think part of his problem was his choice of making the primary race on the Tines world a small group mentality that had built a medieval level civilization before the arrival of the space farer's. I found it difficult to imagine these beings capable of the level of communication, coordination, technology and physical building they had accomplished given their physical limitations.

As I struggled through this book, Vinge often droned on about details of myriad situations that just didn't need that much detail. However, despite all the detail, for me, Vinge wasn't able to bring life to the characters and the Tines world. Vinge's characters and the world environment descriptions felt like cardboard.

Finally and worst of all, after 444 plodding pages, much was still left hanging. Hopefully there won't be a wait of another 18 years until the next obvious sequel follows.

 

[biodroid]

I would definitely give it a shot but I do hope it would be better than John Scalzi's Old Man's War. I sort of enjoyed that book but the ending was a let down and he tried to be too funny. I see Vernor Vinge is rated quite highly.

 

[Jojo999]

IMO, Scalzi's Old Man's war books are written on an adolescent level. They are easy to read without complex characterizations or plotting.

These two Vinge books are much more complex than anything in the Old Man's War series.

 

[Snowdog]

The only one I've attempted is A Fire Upon The Deep based upon it's reputation. About 100 pages in I suddenly lost interest. I thought the opening was good but then it just lost me. I didn't think the aliens at all remarkable or interesting.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Well, Vernor Vinge has won 5 Hugo awards, but he rarely ever seems to be discussed here. I'd certainly be open to thoughts about how he compares within the rest of the SF genre.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

I visualize authors as having a bar on my "readability" spectrum. Heinlein, Niven, Gould all sit firmly above the midpoint, although Niven has been moving down the last couple of years. Vinge, for me, straddles the line. I loved The Witling, enjoyed Grimm's World, The Peace War, and Marooned in Realtime. Slogged through A Fire Upon the Deep (although I loved the concepts in it) and really haven't been able to finish any of his other books. Rainbow's End, in particular, made my forehead hit the desk.
I'll be the first to admit this is all personal preference. A writer can capture me with their writing, or they can capture me with the concepts or plot of the book. I've read books where the writing was marginal, but the story was so good I pushed myself through. And vice versa. I think Vinge falls into the first camp. His writing itself really isn't captivating, but the stories are big, sweeping ideas.

 

[Bugg]

I've read and enjoyed all but one of his books, so far. A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky rank near the top of my all-time favourites list. He's created some of my favourite aliens - the Tines, the Skroderiders, the Spiders. Just thinking about them makes me want to read those books again

 

[J-Sun]

Similar to Bugg, I've enjoyed all of his books (except I haven't read one novel and one collection), but one much less than the others. Unfortunately, I read them so far apart and initially casually that I can't say much intelligible about them. One of these days I'll go on a "Vinge binge"[1] and could say more.

Tatja Grimm's World (1969, 1987) was a story, expanded to a book, expanded further and revised. The Witling (1976) only had the one form. Both seem superficially to not be my kind of thing, being sort of "primitive colony" stories and not especially high tech but Vinge brings a sort of hard SF high tech mentality to them so that they have a weird feel of a trace of almost pseudo-fantasy, but not. They're really SF (allowing, at least, for some (rigorous) psi stuff in The Witling).

Then he did the Peace War novels (The Peace War (1984), Marooned in Realtime (1986), with related story) and I don't recall them well at all beyond liking them. Small-scale stasis fields as anti-nuke defense.

Then most people know the Zones/Deepness series (A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999)) which was space opera and was a blast but I gather the third volume (The Children of the Sky (2011)) was not as successful as the first two - that's the novel I haven't read yet.

Between the second and third, he put out Rainbows End (2006) which brought his streak of consecutive Hugo novel wins to three but that's the one I enjoyed much less than others. It was still pretty neat and worth a read but didn't impress me - Vinge was a professor at a California school through the computer/net explosion and this is about a California school through a sort of VR/ubiquitous computing overlay on reality.

Meanwhile, he'd produced a couple of collections of short fiction (True Names (1987), Threats (1988)) and I liked the first one a lot but haven't read the second. All but the novella "True Names" were gathered into The Collected Stories (2001, including a couple/few newer uncollected stories) while that one novella formed a piece of an otherwise non-fiction collection in a pretty chintzy move, IMO. "True Names" (1981) is a great novella that was cyberpunk almost before there was cyberpunk coming from a very non-punk guy.

One of my few basically "completist" authors but he retired from teaching in 2000 (which enabled him to complete Rainbows End so quickly ) and he may be suffering the Zelazny effect if The Children of the Sky is no better than its rep or Rainbows End.

Also, you can't mention Vinge without mentioning that he's a major proponent (and perhaps originator) of "The Singularity" which may have done more harm than good to SF and other things but which is interesting and doesn't hurt his own work.
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[1] Apparently his "true name" rhymes with "stingy" rather than "binge" but I persist in pronouncing it wrong.