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Rainbows End

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 5,699 ratings · 499 reviews

Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks...more Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he’s starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts. Living with his son’s family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access—through nodes designed into smart clothes—and to see the digital context—through smart contact lenses.

With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.

In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in, this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated security analysts, including Robert’s son and daughter-in law, two top people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.

As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and satisfying as it is unexpected.(less)

Paperback, 400 pages

Published April 3rd 2007 by Tor Science Fiction (first published 2006)

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Jun 06, 2010 Ceridwen added it

Recommended to Ceridwen by: First Reads

Shelves: america-and-environs, sci-fi, the-future-is-now, abandoned, books-about-books, shit-show, first-reads

Omigod Omigod Omigod Omigod!

I finally won a First Reads giveaway book! And it's Vernor Vinge, and not some crap thing I requested because I was desperate!

*hyperventilating*

------

God, look at how young I was, up there all happy about my First Reads win! I'm still happy - thanks for the free book! But sadly my love of free stuff did not influence my feelings towards this book. Despite being assured by reputable sources that I would find much more truly irritating things in this book, and despite...more

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May 04, 2013 Clouds - (¿head-in-the?) rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-stand-alone, locus-sci-fi, hugo, science-fiction, reviewed

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.

On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.

While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became...more

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Aug 09, 2008 Kris rated it 5 of 5 stars

In the near future, a victim of Alzheimer's has been cured and rejuvinated. Robert Gu must now use his 90's oriented brain to navigate the world of the 2020's. So, like many of the elderly in the latter decade, he goes back to high school.

Among other things, he must learn to understand how to "wear." To wear is to use internet-ready computers embedded into one's clothing and contact lenses. (The I/O for these devices consists for the most part in subtle movements of the eye.) Those who can wear...more

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Aug 03, 2007 Res rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: sff, didnt-finish, locus_poll

The one where a Rip van Winkle figure is cured of Alzheimer's and has to figure out how to live in the future, and apparently gets involved in some sort of plot involving mind control technology.

I gave it fifty pages, and every single one was an effort.

This book has tons of ideas, large and small. As a portrait of the niftiness and danger of the future, I suppose it's reasonably good, though it's rather slow and didactic compared with the pleasant breathless hurtle of cyberpunk (my usual danger...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Sophia rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of cyberpunk

Shelves: own, sff, 2007

I loved Gibson's Neuromancer and I liked Stephenson's Snow Crash , and this is basically the same thing for the current generation except it leans a little more towards the techno-thriller side, like Michael Crichton if he were actually a good writer and knew more about his subject than what he'd just dug up via research. Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist, so his vision of 2025 rings a helluva lot more true than many others.

The major drawbacks to this book are a lopsided plot (the...more I loved Gibson's Neuromancer and I liked Stephenson's Snow Crash , and this is basically the same thing for the current generation except it leans a little more towards the techno-thriller side, like Michael Crichton if he were actually a good writer and knew more about his subject than what he'd just dug up via research. Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist, so his vision of 2025 rings a helluva lot more true than many others.

The major drawbacks to this book are a lopsided plot (the kind that starts off big and then the author seems to realize they've bitten off more than they can chew) and broadly-drawn characters (though he earns back major points for the fact that only two of them are white, and none of the major characters are). Those are literary complaints; from a SF worldbuilding POV it's entirely satisfactory.

Robert Gu, genius poet, wakes up from a decade of Alzheimer's to find himself restored to the peak of youth in a world gone completely digital. This allows Vinge to explain a lot of things to us via Robert, but because the story is intercut with a number of POVs he also does my favorite kind of speculative writing, forcing the reader to understand everything in context.

The speculation is really rather brilliant. Most people "wear" -- their computers are literally embedded in their clothing and their monitors are contact lenses. This allows them to both compute through body movements instead of keyboards (though a keyboard interface is available for older people) and to view the world exactly as they want...or as various corporations and public entities want. Cameras are everywhere, both for the benefit of the consumer and the government, and everything from forklifts to buildings depend on the link between physical reality and the wireless network to function.

The tech-spec is perfect, but I'm even fonder of the social ramifications. Robert Gu gets stuck in vocational high school to catch up, but he's not the only "retread"; older people who have simply slowed down have to do the same, even those who were brilliant and successful in their earlier career. Children are the masters of technology, and the adults in the book rely on them. Best of all, "belief circles" are fandom all growed up -- they fight for the right to theme public buildings, engage in massive-scale RPG-style interaction, and even create their own characters and storylines (for fractions of pennies which are automatically sent to the copyright-holders, be still my fair-use-loving heart!)

The plot is, as noted, kind of a mess, and the book whimpers to a close, but getting there was fantastic. This also feels like the kind of SF that's normative, not just predictive, and I'd be curious to hear industry takes on some of the tech.(less)

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Dec 19, 2008 Tim Lepczyk rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, good-at-first-loses-flavor-like-gum, great-idea-poor-execution, yellow

I'll start off with something positive to say about Rainbows End. The best things about this novel are the ideas about technology and what the world could look like in an even more networked future where information is the form of currency. However, this isn't a new idea at all, here's a quote from Gravity's Rainbow regarding information, "A tragic sigh. 'Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it a wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exc...more I'll start off with something positive to say about Rainbows End. The best things about this novel are the ideas about technology and what the world could look like in an even more networked future where information is the form of currency. However, this isn't a new idea at all, here's a quote from Gravity's Rainbow regarding information, "A tragic sigh. 'Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it a wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange.'" So, while there are these great ideas in the novel, they're not always the most original.
Now, let's talk about the writing. It was terrible. The language was dull and workman-like. I'm sure there are people who will say, but this is science fiction, what do you expect? And to those people, I say that's no excuse. A good novel should have good writing, it can be held together by concept alone. If you buy into the whole genre fiction/pulp fiction argument, that it's not supposed to be good writing, well that's unfortunate. I'm not asking for something amazing, but at least compel me to read your book. At page 150 I started skimming, wanting to see how the novel ended. At the end, there was no real pay-off. Who cares? That's how I felt. So what?
Part of the problem with the end of the novel comes from the beginning of the narrative. The most interesting characters rarely show up. There is an international crisis where some group of people might have access to powerful technology. Three intelligence officers from major countries are combating this problem. These three are the most interesting in the novel. Then it digresses into cliche child characters who are overly bright and a poet cured of his Alzheimer's and in a young body trying to make sense of the world as they are duped into working for the intelligence officers. Who cares about class projects? So what about a man waking up in the future? None of it is terribly interesting.
My last complaint about the writing, is that if you have a character who is an award winning poet of national significance, your writing should at least be better than mediocre.
I haven't read anything else by Vinge, I've heard his other novels are really good. My advice for this one is walk away. (less)

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Apr 25, 2008 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: hard core scifi fans only!

I have enjoyed in my life reading Sci-fi, with Philip K Dick being amoung the strangest (movies Total Recall, Minority Report, Blade Runner, Scanner Darkly, and Paycheck being among the best of his works), but right up there have been the works of Vernor Vinge. None of his have been made into movies, and to be honest, this one isn't his best. However, if you want to read The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, you will not be disappointed!

Rainbow's end is in the not too distant future, when gove...more

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Sep 26, 2007 Talkswithwind rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: hardsf, sf

A book set in an indeterminate period somewhere between 2020 and 2040. This is a nice character driven book that also explores concepts of what a future would look like. In this future computing is nearly ubiquitous and government surveillance is universal, if they know to look. Meanwhile, the world is a much more creative place.

This was a very nice book. A variety of backgrounds allow the reader to explore different aspects of the world. From net-savvy kids, to recovering Alzheimer's senior ci...more

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Jul 12, 2007 Ron rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi

Vernor Vinge continues to delight with well-plotted and offbeat SF. Rainbow's End is a tale about loss, growing old and getting a second chance, and how that affects bad family dynamics, along with the usual gobs of interesting speculation about the future. I didn't quite follow the motivation of the main character's changes of heart during the middle of the book, but by the end it came together reasonably well. The greatest strengths of the story are in the utterly believable future world Vinge...more

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Nov 06, 2007 Henrik rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who like sci-fi with good sci.

This is high-quality science-fiction, and I don't say that lightly since there is so much mediocre stuff out there. Vernor Vinge was a mathematician and professor of computer science before becoming a writer of science fiction. As such, his work in this novel, and others I've read, carries the weight of scientific and technical plausibility. His characterizations are workable and consistent.

This novel is of the near future in a thoroughly wired society which we can contemplate occurring now. The...more

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Feb 04, 2008 Karl Kindt rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: computer nerds

Shelves: 2008

The back-cover blurb says, "In the grand tradition of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson...," but more accurately should read "...William Gibson and Tom Clancy." This has some startling yet realistic glimpses of the future of the Internet, Web, and wearable computers. At times the slangish dialogue borders on Gibson-inscrutable, but Vinge is kind enough to provide a main character from our era who sees things much as a modern reader might. If this wins awards (which it did...Hugo and maybe Nebul...more

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Nov 22, 2011 D.L. Morrese rated it 5 of 5 stars

The odd future described by this book is both depressing and hopeful. It is a world in which humans regularly retreat into virtual reality, often corresponding to their chosen ‘belief circles,’ as an interface to the real world and yet they remain curious, productive and creative. There are large ‘Big Brother’ governments but they are mostly benign. There is very little privacy and yet people seem to respect one another’s individuality. There is an ever looming threat that terrorists will use re...more The odd future described by this book is both depressing and hopeful. It is a world in which humans regularly retreat into virtual reality, often corresponding to their chosen ‘belief circles,’ as an interface to the real world and yet they remain curious, productive and creative. There are large ‘Big Brother’ governments but they are mostly benign. There is very little privacy and yet people seem to respect one another’s individuality. There is an ever looming threat that terrorists will use real weapons of mass destruction against civilians but people in general seem to honestly abhor violence. People group themselves into belief circles with complex mythos based on various things from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld to something that sounds much like Pokemon but these seem to be viewed more as matters of taste than uncompromising religious “truths” so there remains room for compromise and agreement among their followers.
This juxtaposition of positive and negative extends to the characters. It is told from multiple points of view, primarily that of Robert Gu, once a renowned poet and a complete jerk in his personal life who is being successfully treated for several aging related illnesses including Alzheimer’s. Once he begins to regain his mind, he starts out as the SOB he used to be but he grows into far more empathetic person. The antagonist, Alfred Vaz, is attempting to develop something that sounds very much like mind control but he is doing so in an effort to protect people and create a more peaceful world and he is honestly upset when Gu’s granddaughter is endangered because of events that unfold ultimately from Gu’s efforts to stop him.
The book requires some work on the part of the reader. First of all the virtual reality aspect often makes it difficult to tell what is “real” and what isn’t. It also isn’t a simple good guy versus bad guy adventure tale. The characters are more complex than that and they grow and change through the course of the book. And there are a few loose threads left hanging, most notably who or what is “Rabbit?” But I hesitate to call these flaws. This ambiguity is part of the theme of this book and Vinge’s merging of dystopian and utopian views of the future make this an interesting and thought provoking read.
(less)

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Mar 28, 2009 Pam rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, fiction

Ever wonder what it will feel like in 2025 - just before the predicted singularity? Well Vinge takes you on a disconcerting, roller coaster ride through the future. A recovering Alzheimer patient (wonders of future medicine) is trying to learn to live again in a world that he doesn't recognize. His pre-teen granddaughter is the most facile with the technology; she, like everyone else, wears her technology in her clothes and contacts. Literally you become one with your computer allowing it to tra...more

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Jan 17, 2009 Terran rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was prepared to dislike this book, given that Vinge is hardly one of my favorite authors. (E.g., see my reviews of A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.) But this was a gift from a graduating student, so I felt obligated to try.

I was surprised and gratified to discover that I actually rather enjoyed this book. For one thing, it was the closest that Vinge has come to interesting characters. It's also set in the relatively near future, at the precipice of The Singularity, which is an i...more I was prepared to dislike this book, given that Vinge is hardly one of my favorite authors. (E.g., see my reviews of A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.) But this was a gift from a graduating student, so I felt obligated to try.

I was surprised and gratified to discover that I actually rather enjoyed this book. For one thing, it was the closest that Vinge has come to interesting characters. It's also set in the relatively near future, at the precipice of The Singularity, which is an interesting area to play in.

Broadly, the story concerns the interactions of a few people in this society of exploding technology. The nominal A plot is about efforts to discover and foil a group of bio-terrorists who are attempting to develop The Next Very Bad Thing -- a bio-weapon, whose intent is slowly unfolded through the book. There is the requisite high drama denouement, in which the protagonists race against time, all odds, and FedEx to foil the Big Bad's plots.

More interesting was the plot surrounding an ex-Alzheimer's patient who has been renewed by the astounding gerontological technology of the day-after-tomorrow. The book traces the course of his almost complete rebirth, rediscovery of self, his struggles to cope in the strange new world that has emerged while he drifted in hazy clouds of mental deterioration, and his discovery of the changes in self and personality wrought by the disease and recovery. I found this thread -- the development of his character and self-discovery and his struggles to find a new relationship with his family -- to be the most interesting, plausible, and compelling parts of the book.

One sour note was a protracted and (naturally) absurdist homage to Terry Pratchett (and another author whom I'm afraid I don't know). That sequence, involving a massive, partially VR/partially LARP conflict between fervid adherents of the two authors around and within the Geisel Library at UCSD, was fun as a standalone sequence, but really didn't fit into the greater structure of the book. I found it distracting and somewhat annoying.

The technology of the near-Singularity of the book's day-after-tomorrow setting is interesting and semi-plausible. It's largely from a computer scientist's perspective (naturally), so it prominently features "if this goes on" kinds of extensions of existing information technology: omnipresent access to information networks, computers and displays embedded in clothing, tiered access to essentially infinite computing resources and information banks (which baddies are constantly using to try to whip up The Next Very Bad Thing), etc. I see signs of an educated reader of cutting-edge CS research poking through: randomized algorithms and computer vision technologies used to scan books at high speed, massive genetic sequencing and computationally-guided parallel genetic experimentation, and so on. Children are trained in internet search more than in any other single skill.

The part that I find implausible is Vinge's assertion (seemingly common among SF authors) that mere access to infinite amounts of information will make children creative geniuses. For example, we have high school students who solve key technological problems for developing nations as a matter of course. I just can't buy it. High school kids will, I think, still mostly be obsessed with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and will spend rather less time being techno-wizards. And even the ones who want to be techno-wizards will find that it still takes a great deal of time to become expert enough to make a real impact. It simply takes time to see enough designs and play with design spaces enough to be able to put together elegant and powerful things. Ideas that are easy enough for HS students to put together are also easy enough for professional engineers and technologists to put together, only the latter have access to a substantial background of good design ideas and experience, not to mention considerably deeper pocket-books.

This facet of the story reflects a deeper meme about The Singularity that I find implausible: that the exponentially growing technology of society implies that individuals are growing in capability exponentially quickly. This idea, while attractive, is psychologically implausible. Humans simply take a certain minimum time to learn new things and become proficient in new skills. (For example, psychology and neuroscience have shown that humans can really process and store only roughly 1-3 bits of information per second, it takes 2000-5000 repetitions of a physical action to become truly fluent in it, and it takes something like thousands of hours of practice to become expert in a skill.) Until you're re-engineering the human brain itself, you're simply not going to change the average rate at which people become experts. While I'll agree that having access to more powerful technology does provide a great deal of leverage to increase an individual's capabilities, what that individual can really do with that technology is still band-limited by their personal expertise, which takes time to develop.

So, rants aside, my final assessment is that I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable I found this book. I am indebted to my former student for having picked it out, because I almost certainly would not have picked it out for myself.(less)

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Feb 17, 2013 Lesley Battler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: keeper

Rainbows End: perfect title for this book. Like technology, rainbows shimmer with colour and the hope of escape from an old, fallen world into a transcendent new one. But in this novel rainbows rise, arch and end somewhere back on an earth where everything is both strange and familiar.

I didn't find RE an easy read. The book is layered with several different narratives that continually criss-cross and disrupt each other. Geography does nothing to anchor the reader, shifting as it does from physic...more Rainbows End: perfect title for this book. Like technology, rainbows shimmer with colour and the hope of escape from an old, fallen world into a transcendent new one. But in this novel rainbows rise, arch and end somewhere back on an earth where everything is both strange and familiar.

I didn't find RE an easy read. The book is layered with several different narratives that continually criss-cross and disrupt each other. Geography does nothing to anchor the reader, shifting as it does from physical reality to visual projections. Characters, and the avatars of characters, form alliances, observe each other in secret and exchange private messages. I was often confused as to who was who (or who was what), whose avatar belonged to whom, and where anyone sided. Identity theft becomes literal in the virtual world and the only way of tracing origin or intention is by following a thread into the labyrinth of programming language.

But Vinge does provide some entry points into this world. He provides the confused reader with a protagonist, Robert Gu, an Alzheimer's victim who is returned to lucidity by an experimental medical process. The reader learns about the technological changes in the world just as he does.

Like Gu, the reader discovers that virtually everyone, or the virtual everyone wears clothes salted with microprocessors that instantly connects them to the digital stream. Contact lenses serve as video displays. You can construct your own fantasy-reality through computer networks and send digital versions of yourself anywhere on the planet to meet, interact or influence others. Or you can simply observe. The strange is almost-familiar, even as photovoltaic cells in clothing (“wearables”) become mainstream.

And go figure the black ops embedded in government bureaucracies around the world would use the tech to conspire, consolidate power and control populations through their exploitation of biotech info. Vinge captures the ghost-world of espionage/diplomacy where any borders between the real and the virtual have dissolved. Not knowing who is working for whom, or why, is exactly the nebulous territory the reader should find herself in this near-future world.

The UCSD Library conflict grows directly out of the present-day trend of shutting down brick-&-mortar libraries, digitizing the content and consigning books (cost-centre losses) to “records management” warehouses. Vinge didn't have to stretch too far to imagine private contractors destroying the books themselves. However, he takes the concept and runs with it in a thrilling, if a little creepy, way. The contractors feed the books through a shredder then blow the “shredda” through a tunnel lined with high-resolution cameras, which feed the images into computers which reconstruct them into reconstructions of the pages.

For me, the core of the book lies in the “belief circles.” In the virtual world that overlays the real world, fans of a given fictional or historical setting (members of that setting's “belief circle”) create their own avatars and overlays based on that setting. Skyscrapers become medieval towers. Cars turn into low-flying magic carpets. Multiple belief circles can overlap; onlookers can switch between them as as if moving between tabs on a browser.

In true sci-fi style, Vinge reveals his allegiance to the power of the individual backed up by collective will. The triumph of the “scooch-a-mout” leads to an amazing scene that could have come straight out of Tolkien. Although the path may be difficult to follow at times, this is a rainbow well worth crossing.

(less)

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Feb 11, 2013 Patricia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, mystery

Well written and gave me a new perspective on long life, medical advances, and technological advances in interpersonal communication.

In Rainbows End, Robert Gu is a man re-born. Alzheimer’s disease was slowly destroying him. But modern technology came to the rescue. Gu is a Rip van Winkle returned to a time he no longer understands. He has a newly functioning brain and body, and that’s a great gift. But he’s lost something. He was a world-famous poet. Robert Gu knows what he used to be. He stil...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Klytia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Quanti argomenti in questo Rainbows End.
La realtà virtuale nella quale ormai tutti vivono, tanto da indossare lenti a contatto e abiti sempre interconnessi, contro la realtà vera.
Il possesso delle informazioni: il primo che riesce a digitalizzare tutte i libri presenti nelle biblioteche potrà vendere il sapere ma il prezzo è la distruzione dei libri cartacei.
Il controllo delle menti attraverso virus trasmessi tramite la rete informatica a cui tutti sono collegati.
La medicina che puoi guarire...more Quanti argomenti in questo Rainbows End.
La realtà virtuale nella quale ormai tutti vivono, tanto da indossare lenti a contatto e abiti sempre interconnessi, contro la realtà vera.
Il possesso delle informazioni: il primo che riesce a digitalizzare tutte i libri presenti nelle biblioteche potrà vendere il sapere ma il prezzo è la distruzione dei libri cartacei.
Il controllo delle menti attraverso virus trasmessi tramite la rete informatica a cui tutti sono collegati.
La medicina che puoi guarire malattie ritenute incurabili e ringiovanire gli anziani, geni dell'arte e delle scienze della loro generazione, i quali però si ritrovano in un mondo altamente tecnologico con il quale faticano a stare al passo.
Il tutto condito da complotti che coinvolgono studenti, giovani e anziani, universitari che vogliono salvare la biblioteca, enti governativi e militari coinvolti nella manipolazione delle facoltà mentali.
A tirare le fila...un Coniglio, con tanto di carota! Un genio informatico o un'intelligenza artificiale? Non ci è dato saperlo ma l'ho trovato uno dei personaggi più interessanti del romanzo.
Molta carne al fuoco non sempre gestita al meglio. La prosa di Vinge non è difficile ma è spesso infarcita di acronimi e talvolta prolissa, alcune pagine sono decisamente inutili (ovviamente questo non giustifica i tagli effettuati nell'edizione italiana) soprattutto verso la fine.
Vinge si diverte un po' troppo a giocare con le invenzioni tecnologiche a discapito dei numerosi personaggi, non sempre ben delineati, e una storia carica di premesse che però fatica a decollare e diventa confusionaria.
Ma ha anche lasciata un po' perplessa l'ambientazione in un futuro un forse troppo vicino, il 2025; l'evoluzione tecnologica mi è sembrata un po' troppo veloce. Tuttavia ho letto di recente un articolo relativo a studi su lenti a contatto che permetterebbero di connettersi alla rete, forse allora ha ragione Vinge.
Resta il mistero su come abbia vinto l'Hugo, non conosco i romanzi degli"avversari"; ma ultimamente diverse assegnazioni di questo premio mi lasciano perplessa.(less)

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Oct 09, 2012 Zach rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is another competent but ultimately disappointing vision of the relatively near future by Vinge, much more akin to The Peace War than A Deepness in the Sky. But it does share one thing with the Hugo winner: a not-so-rosy outlook on humanity's chances of surviving its fringe elements in a world of cheap-as-free technology.

The future is a marvelous place, thanks mostly to truly ubiquitous high-speed network access and wearable computing devices. With the help of these two innovations, base re...more This is another competent but ultimately disappointing vision of the relatively near future by Vinge, much more akin to The Peace War than A Deepness in the Sky. But it does share one thing with the Hugo winner: a not-so-rosy outlook on humanity's chances of surviving its fringe elements in a world of cheap-as-free technology.

The future is a marvelous place, thanks mostly to truly ubiquitous high-speed network access and wearable computing devices. With the help of these two innovations, base reality is merely the substrate upon which to paint any one of thousands of fantastical realities, and you can choose between them with a simple twitch or gesture. Like-minded people create belief circles, consensual realities layered on top of the physical world, that they all experience to be as believable and important as reality itself, albeit with an off switch. These virtual worlds have utterly transformed the way that ordinary people experience their daily life.

But the future is also incredibly dangerous, because the ever broadening circle of technological advancement means that once prohibitively expensive weapons technology, for example, is priced within the reach of a lunatic fringe that just wants to watch the world burn. Nuclear weapons, biological agents, and engineered plagues are really just the tip of the iceberg in this terrifying eventuality, and Vinge does a creditable job of imagining a security state apparatus that is able, just barely, to keep them in check.

I have some hard questions about this future, though, the answers to which don't appear to be forthcoming. The world of Rainbows End seems teetering on the verge of post-scarcity, if not already there. The main characters are all either employed by the government, retired, or schoolchildren. There's not a single instance of a normal person working a normal job outside these three roles. How do people earn a living in this brave new world? I assume they must, because money is still obviously around (although in the form of encrypted data packets), and people do things like attend university. But the cars all drive themselves, and the basic components of all machinery are mass-produced black-boxes labeled "no user serviceable parts inside." I suppose there must still be mechanics and plumbers of a sort, but we never meet them; nor do we hear about the inevitable teeming underclass of people whom automation has rendered completely unnecessary to the functioning of civilization, the Ned Ludds of the digital age that we already see in our own society. What is the future going to do with these people? I don't know, and it seems Vinge doesn't either.

The plot is interesting enough, with a believable villain and some nice twists, and Vinge provides a great guide character, an elderly man brought back from Alzheimer's with no memory of the fantastic future technology that will be unfamiliar to the reader. There's real feeling brought to this protagonist's struggle to redefine himself, to re-find himself in a world that is no longer his own, that I found genuinely moving at times. Still, there's something missing in this vision, something that I can't put my finger on. The whole work just doesn't seem to hang together very well. It's not just the little nit-picky aspects, such as the lack of plumbers -- the novel has the feeling that it's paper-thin, that it won't stand up to close scrutiny at the level of character motivations or technological speculation without breaking. And that's a shame, because there's a lot here to like. This is still worth a read, but A Deepness in the Sky it ain't.(less)

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Sep 14, 2012 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel paints a portrait of a near-term future that is quite compelling. It has a good grasp of the aspects of technology that are likely to come to into actual use in the time frame that this story takes place, which I would guess to be 20-25 years from now.
I'll probably read this again, especially because there are parts of this story that are very hard to visualize, and events move so quickly there's a definite strain on the imagination. Character development is generally good, but thr...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Nikki rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: speculative-fiction

I remember hearing a lot about this, somewhere, at some point, so I picked it up in the library. I was rather bored in the first fifty pages, but decided to keep on going to a hundred pages and see if I could get on with it once the plot got going. But it's so heinously slow, and Robert Gu's mind is not one I want to be familiar with -- his obsession with his granddaughter being overweight, in the early chapters, and the sentence, "It was hard to dominate people when you didn't know what they we...more

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Jun 02, 2012 Allan Dyen-shapiro rated it 2 of 5 stars

Most genre fiction is character-driven. Uniquely among genres, science-fiction can be idea-driven. This book is. So, that I didn't really empathize or care about any of the characters isn't a valid criticism. Idea-driven science fiction can be brilliant (for example, most Phillip K. Dick, Crash by JG Ballard, etc).

In this book, the main plot is the attempt to investigate a use of media and neurochemicals to operate on learning/memory as a weapon of control. That would have been very cool if it...more Most genre fiction is character-driven. Uniquely among genres, science-fiction can be idea-driven. This book is. So, that I didn't really empathize or care about any of the characters isn't a valid criticism. Idea-driven science fiction can be brilliant (for example, most Phillip K. Dick, Crash by JG Ballard, etc).

In this book, the main plot is the attempt to investigate a use of media and neurochemicals to operate on learning/memory as a weapon of control. That would have been very cool if it was actually described. It wasn't. For all of the hard science fiction aspects of this book, I was expecting the mechanism to be the final "reveal."

Instead, the "reveal" was that the Indo-European alliance has someone within it developing this technology in secret, keeping the Japanese, Americans, etc in the dark. The politics could have been interesting--a Sino-US war was mentioned several times, but it wasn't developed. Indeed all action in the book was in San Diego aside from a few virtual actions.

The book was largely intrigue, the politicians trying to get control over the biosciences labs in San Diego. The man-on-the-ground may actually have been a sentient artificial intelligences--that aspect of the book was never resolved.

Much of the rest of the hard sci fi aspects were minor variations on tales told by others. The "just in time training" seems a simple variant that certainly goes back to Gibson's Johny Mnemonic and probably all the way to Flowers for Algernon. The mental dysfunction suffered by those who got it is also not new, although the getting stuck on a particular sort of knowledge (one character who blurted out in Chinese, another who could only think in molecular biology) was interesting. Vinge did indeed take the idea of augmented reality further than Gibson did--Gibson anticipated "Google glasses" by ten years but didn't see landscapes as made up of completely altered realities. "Time travel" and the traveler being out of step with the current reality is as old as the second Aliens movie at least; although curing Alzheimer's as a way of getting there did have some novelty.

Bottom line, the book dragged and the ideas were largely derivative. The technical aspects--especially on computer security--were sometimes interesting, but I frankly can't understand why this one was such a huge critical and commercial success.(less)

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May 25, 2012 agent zero rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anglofoni

Il rischio, con autori come Vinge, è che l'attenzione alla plausibilità scientifica prevalga sulla fiction.
In questo romanzo ci sono decine di trovate che proprio trovate non sembrano.
Vinge si è fatto un giretto nei prossimi vent'anni e ci ha descritto quel che ha visto.
Però manca il racconto.

...Poi ho saputo che il testo è stato sottoposto a tagli e adattamenti in fase di traduzione.
Infatti si obietta che una pubblicazione integrale sarebbe incompatibile con una collana da edicola quale è Uran...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Maurinejt rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the story of a future where the elderly no longer die. Instead, science can cure most disease, affliction, or ailment. Robert is a victim of Alzheimer who has lost years waiting for a cure. Now cured, he must go back to high school to "retrain" to figure out how to navigate the new world he finds himself in. Something is horribly wrong, however: the creative core of who he used to be is missing--even as technology fascinates him the way it never has before. Desperate to reclaim that part...more

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Apr 20, 2012 Randy Ray rated it 2 of 5 stars

The first half of the book is really strong. It's set in the near future, and the protagonist has been cure of Alzheimer's disease. He used to be a famous poet, but the world has changed so much because of technology that he's forced to go back to high school to adapt to the changes. This part of the book is strong and well-written, and the reader thinks that the book is going to be about the poet's struggle to become a productive member of the new cyber society as presented in the novel.

But the...more

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Mar 21, 2012 Nathaniel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

This is the third Vernor Vinge book I've read, and it had some things in common with the first two: A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep. For starters: all 3 books won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. In addition: the all feature protagonists that aren't very easy to love (for me, at least) but who transition believably into somewhat realistic heroes by the end. They also feature lots of innovative science fiction ideas that are integral to the plot and generally dark universes.

But there...more This is the third Vernor Vinge book I've read, and it had some things in common with the first two: A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep. For starters: all 3 books won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. In addition: the all feature protagonists that aren't very easy to love (for me, at least) but who transition believably into somewhat realistic heroes by the end. They also feature lots of innovative science fiction ideas that are integral to the plot and generally dark universes.

But there are some differences too, and for me they are all negative for Rainbows End. Both A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep involved richly imagined alien cultures and a huge, sweeping background for the action (those two novels share a common setting). Rainbows End, by contrast, is a near-future sci-fi book set entirely on earth. There are lots of interesting ideas, but near-future sci-fi is a pretty crowded field these days, and none of them really stood out to me.

Deepness in the Sky and Fire Upon the Deep are also long books that--at times--feel long. Rainbows End, on the other hand, was just an average book that felt long. The climaxes of Deepness in the Sky and Fire Upon the Deep were richly rewarding and action-packed. I really didn't know what was going to happen (at least not all of it) and I felt like the stakes were incredibly high. In Rainbows End I knew more or less exactly what was going to happen and the only surprises were when things failed to happen: the most important plot-arcs in the book were left tangling. A super-villain tries to take out the world... and escapes unscathed. No one even really knows who he is. Nothing has changed. A man embarks on an odyssey of self reinvention and finds his estranged wife and tries to rekindle a relationship, but it's all confined to an inconclusive epitaph.

In short: there are a lot of ideas in Rainbows End, but none of them are new. There's rejuvenating health treatment. Done. Someone is more-or-less brought back to life from a past era. Been there. Modern technology separates the young generations from the old, and traditionally valuable skills are worthless. Seen that. Computers are ultra-portable, wearable, and you can use them to augment reality. :Yawn: It's true that Vinge adds a little bit to each of these old standards, but never in a groundbreaking or interesting way: either for the technology or the story.

At the end of the day Vinge still contributes some of his best talent--which is his ability to imbue characters in fantastic settings with genuine humanity--and that made the book readable. It's not a bad book. It's just not a very good one either.(less)

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Mar 15, 2012 Andrew rated it 1 of 5 stars

I tried. I really wanted to love this book and its protagonist Robert Gu, a world-renowned poet who at age seventy-five was given treatment that not only reversed his Alzheimer's, but gave him the body of a twenty-five year old in the process. It's a novel about connecting with a lapsed generation and also generations of family long neglected. There are also global conspiracies, library riots and Fahrenheit 451-style book cleansings, and far too much needless HTML-based artifice—the silent messa...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Mitchell rated it 4 of 5 stars

4-time(!) Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge brings us an amusing look into the not-too-distant future, wherein people wear computers that are woven into their clothing, many of the ravages of old age can be reversed, and terrorism is so well-controlled that it's practically benign. But there's one threat that is still extremely dangerous: YGBM (You Gotta' Believe Me) mind control programming.

A formerly famous poet, who has been brought back from Alzheimer's to a physical condition 30 years younger...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Andrewcharles420 rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A fun tale about a day (months to a year probably) at school with wearable, interactive, virtual reality environments. I really liked the development of technology hypothesized in the book--building-stabilizing tech, knowledge distribution on the web, wearable computers with augmented (and virtual) reality contact lens overlays. Huge bio labs. Strangely I didn't find many of the characters very likable (Robert's a pompous jackass, likewise Winnie, Lena, and Alice (though she's more like a robot...more A fun tale about a day (months to a year probably) at school with wearable, interactive, virtual reality environments. I really liked the development of technology hypothesized in the book--building-stabilizing tech, knowledge distribution on the web, wearable computers with augmented (and virtual) reality contact lens overlays. Huge bio labs. Strangely I didn't find many of the characters very likable (Robert's a pompous jackass, likewise Winnie, Lena, and Alice (though she's more like a robot than any emotion-inducing character), Miri's a bossy brat, Xiu and Juan are whiny idiots (he was actually the most likable, but was frequently called an idiot by the other characters), and Bob was probably the most rational, perhaps the most easy to relate to person?).

I didn't think the story flowed very well, I also thought there were jumps between scenes and stories that did not make sense. Did Juan ever get paid for his befriending old folks (of course he did IRL, i.e. with love/kindness/knowledge/etc, but what about the certificates and online credit?)? Book shredder?? (The computer power required to sort through so much induced entropy is beyond the scale of the technological achievement they write about). Who/(what) was rabbit? YGBM/JITT tech would have been great to hear more about, but again, they served more as plot devices than meaningful story elements.

Further I felt like what came to be a major battle--the Hacek v. Scoochi library battle--was led into without any introduction or background. Who the hell were they and what did they believe? Why? Were these characters/species from some Vinge book I haven't read yet (they were at a point compared to the "Tines" web-culture (or something), referencing 'A Fire Upon the Deep')? Maybe my ebook was missing a chapter.

With the library battle essentially being the climax of the book I felt very unfulfilled not knowing at all what was going on, or by whom. I liked the ideas in the book a lot more than the execution. The best ideas here would have fit together well as a series of short stories. I'll stick to higher rated (or perhaps shorter form) books by this author. Would only recommend to a young audience.(less)

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Nov 25, 2011 Jeroen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction-hard

Vinge's previous novel, A Deepness in the Sky, really blew my mind -- weird enough, especially in retrospect; I keep thinking about all the events that took place in that novel and am still amazed by its structure and the concepts it touches upon.
With Rainbows End, Vinge switched from stellar space opera to near-future cyberpunk and, in my opinion, this turned out quite alright. More interesting concepts are introduced by Vinge as in any of his novels, but these are certainly not as far-flung as...more

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Oct 08, 2011 Mike Moore rated it 1 of 5 stars

I'm a fan of Vinge's work, and I've had to wrestle a little with the idea that my dislike for this book might just be the result of it being different from the other things he's done. On balance, I don't think that this is the case. This is a book with serious flaws in both credibility and storytelling. On the credibility side, Vinge creates horrific inconsistencies in his visions of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and augmented human interaction which he doesn't even try to paper over...more I'm a fan of Vinge's work, and I've had to wrestle a little with the idea that my dislike for this book might just be the result of it being different from the other things he's done. On balance, I don't think that this is the case. This is a book with serious flaws in both credibility and storytelling. On the credibility side, Vinge creates horrific inconsistencies in his visions of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and augmented human interaction which he doesn't even try to paper over. Ultimately, we're left with a world where everybody behaves in outlandish and dangerous ways out of something like inertia, with technological threats that the author doesn't seem willing or able to explain. The initial promise of YGBM almost immediately meanders into garden variety mind control. The AI that's wandering around is such a cliche that half way through the book a bunch of characters have to have a conversation about why they're so sure that an AI can't exist (by the end of the book there might be two AIs wandering around, but Vinge doesn't give any clarity).

But that's not the worst part of the book. In fact, more stress on the technology and international espionage would have been welcome. The vast majority of the book is given up to the dysfunctional family life of one Robert Gu, and how he goes back to high school as a ninety year old man who medical science has rejuvenated. We hear about shop class, term projects, high school teachers... but it's all just flashy nonsense (wouldn't it be cool if...) without any development of the rationale behind the teaching method or the results on society of this weird and utterly implausible school system. In fact, the society is a lot like the technology: it doesn't make any sense on its own and Vinge can't be bothered to explain anything.

But that's still not the worst thing about this book. The worst thing is how completely unsympathetic all of the characters are. They veer wildly between pathetic and pretentious, Vinge can't seem to decide whether any given one of them is a earth-shaking genius or a total idiot, so every character is both, with irritating and incomprehensible results. The plot is mostly driven by mind-bogglingly bad decisions, most of which are never recognized as possibly sub-optimal by the characters (as master spy with a super secret project that I'm trying to hide from my compatriots who trust me implicitly, is putting together an investigation of the lab where the project is being developed, outsourcing all of the work to an unknown quantity and creating a ridiculously convoluted plot involving literally thousands of players really the best way to allay suspicion?) Actually, the actions of all the characters are a lot like the society and technology for the same reason cited above.

In summary, there is no part of this book that makes a lick of sense. There are no characters in this book that I care about. I'm honestly not sure whether there's any reason for the book to exist... a lot of it reads like Vinge had a bunch of random notes about futuristic high schools and being a Terry Pratchett fanboy and decided to round it out with some unpleasant characters being snippy with each other.
(less)

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About Vernor Vinge

Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon The Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999) and Rainbows End (2006), his Hugo Award-winning novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1993 essay...more

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Books by Vernor Vinge

A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

Marooned in Realtime (Across Realtime, #2)

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“So much technology, so little talent.” — 19 people liked it

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