Rainbows End

by Vernor Vinge, Eric Congor (Narrator)

Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025.

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. This is science fiction at its very best, by a master storyteller at his peak.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Hugo Awards, Cyberpunk, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy

Digital Audio

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

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 "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/vernor...

Reviews

[Clouds · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).

Rainbows End won the Locus Sci-Fi (as well as the Hugo) in 2007. I first heard about it on the Accelerating Future blog where Vinge is somewhat revered.

When I started my Locus quest I made this my second port of call (after Accelerando ) because it sounded like my cup of tea. I think I would have enjoyed the book which came second that year ( Glasshouse ) more.

I wanted to like Rainbows End . I really did try to like it. I thought for the first half of the book that I might just actually end up liking it. But I didn’t.

What frustrates me most about Rainbows End is that I’m not even certain why we didn’t gel.

The world building is top-notch – plausible and convincing, thoroughly detailed, interesting and original, memorable, etc – all qualities I normally laud.

I know it can’t be just because the protagonist is a grating grouch. I’ll admit that I spent most my read hoping he’d fall down an open manhole, but I’ve enjoyed other books with even less likeable leads (Donaldson - Thomas Covenant ?).

And it’s not that the protagonist was old – I’m not ageist – I love a good silver-haired sleuth! (King - Insomnia ?)

Could it be that the plot sort of fizzled and drifted into a faux-thriller mystery with a bunny? Maybe.

Or that the supporting cast are utterly forgettable? Perhaps.

Was it because the story lacks anything close to a true emotional hook? Could be.

None of these factors on their own would be enough to put me off a book, but all of them together stopped me from enjoying the wonderful ideas that kicked this book off.

The only reason I can’t outright 1-star the book is that I’m not sure it’s entirely Rainbows End ’s fault. Have you ever had that feeling, when you take an instant dislike to somebody? It’s out of character and you’re probably just having a bad day, but you can’t shake your first impression that this guy is a thoroughbred douche? And you feel bad for being so judgemental, so you end-up being nicer to this douche than you probably should be? Yeah. This is like that.

I think my favorite idea here (and it's one that completely irrelevant to the plot) is the notion of fiction inspired augmented reality overlays of real locations. Minus the tech-speak - that means glasses which make all of London look like Ankh-Morpork, or turn Windsor Castle into Hogwarts, etc. So the grouchy old poet - that was an image my mind could run with!

I've since read The Snow Queen by Vernor's ex-wife, Joan Vinge. I didn't get along with that either. Ah well... my search for a good sci-fi author beginning with V goes on... now where did I put that Verne omnibus..?

After this I read: Anathem

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I did not love this book as much as his Zones of Thought space operas, Vernor Vinge has yet to disappoint me. Rainbows End is not really a cyberpunk novel, but "post-cyberpunk." It takes place in a world that looks a lot like ours, if you just extrapolate out the technology. (Almost) everyone is wired, you can carry petabytes in your pocket (the sum total of all recorded human media on the equivalent of a USB drive), the world is globally-connected in ways we still are dreaming about but have not yet achieved, and sensory overlays can turn the physical world into anything its owners or visitors wish to visualize.

Vinge drops lots of recognizable brands and technology: Google is still around. So is the University of California at San Diego, where much of the action takes place.

The threats now are not so much Great Powers lobbing nukes at each other (though that's still a remote possibility) but the fact that the potential for nuclear, chemical, biological, and network terrorism is now also greatly expanded.

The main character is Robert Gu, who was a great poet at the end of the 20th century, but who has slipped into dementia. Until new medical technologies are able to not just reverse his mental deterioration, but give him the body of a teenager as well. There are a couple of catches. The first is that, like most of his fellow rejuvenated senior citizens, he is hopelessly unskilled and inept in the modern world. He has to go back to high school, in a novel "integrated learning environment," to learn how to function and acquire basic skills.

The other catch is that Robert's immense poetic genius was not restored along with his mind. He can still understand poetry, but he can no longer write it. This, to him, is almost worse than not being restored at all.

Initially, it's really hard to get invested in Robert Gu's trials, because it also turns out that he was and is a mean bastard. His genius for poetry was accompanied by a genius for hurting people and an inclination to lash out at any target of opportunity. Early in the book, that's his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Miri, who's been doing nothing but trying to help him, out of evidently misguided affection and loyalty. At that point, Miri's parents (both of whom have important military jobs that involve standing watch to prevent all those Very Bad Things from happening) almost kick the SOB out of their house, and I was rooting for them to do so.

Then a mysterious stranger shows up and claims he has access to advanced biotechnology that offers a cure for Robert's condition. Robert, desperately, agrees to do one harmless little thing for the mysterious stranger.

The plot involves many other characters, but Robert Gu and his granddaughter are the ones at ground zero. There is a multinational conspiracy, an annoyingly capable rabbit, and a globally-televised LARP battle between (thinly-disguised) Discworld and Pokemon fans which causes a library to dance.

This is true Big Idea science fiction, very futuristic and even optimistic, despite the emphasis on all the new ways that mankind can exterminate itself in a matter of hours. Lots of characters get a turn in the spotlight, some are more interesting than others, and Robert Gu never does become precisely likable, but he does do a bit of a heel face turn.

Highly recommended for those who like their sci-fi hard and wired.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Review Wherein I Postulate The End of Humanity:

...but first the boring stuff:

Ideas ideas ideas ideas ideas ideas :]

Writing, characterization, plot, and dialogue :[

Basically, the plot focus is all wrong. It's incredibly domestic. If plots were pokemon, this one would involve a Magikarp and a Gyrados... and focus on the Magikarp.



I mean dang, look at that BAMF.

Basically, Robert Gu, an old poet with Alzheimer's, has his youth and mind restored by medical science. Unfortunately, his poetical genius is lost somewhere in the restoration and his attempts to get it back embroil him a larger plot involving Mind Control and international intelligence. Alas, this more interesting plot tends to play second fiddle to the family drama Robert experiences with his son, daughter-in-law and, in particular, his granddaughter. It's never compelling. As a traditional story - i.e. a character arc - the story isn't well developed. Robert starts off as a very mean character and suddenly just sorta becomes... not mean. It all takes a backseat to the IDEAS.

So you know what? Failings explained. 3 / 5 stars given. Justice done. Let's move on to the FUN STUFF. The IDEAS:

Rainbows End represents our current society accelerated 20-30 years into the future, and I'd wager a crisp tenner against a dozen homemade donuts that it's more accurate than not.

For example, Vinge predicts that electronics will be woven into clothes and contact lenses. The most techno-savvy (i.e. primarily youngins) control these 'Epiphany' computers via gesture while older people must resort to the more primitive keyboard. Well, I actually once worked in an e-textile lab and while our explorations were simplistic (one of the grad students designed a pair of pants that analyzed your leg movements to guess what type of dance you were doing), e-textiles are a natural evolution of mobile computing.

Combine this with various virtual reality initiatives (Facebook's Oculus Rift, Steam's HTC Vive, Sony's Playstation VR being the three frontrunners) and the likes of google glass, and it's looking like the ubiquity of mobile electronics will continue unabated, not just in terms of adoption and usage but invasiveness, too. Augmented reality overlays anyone? I'll be pleased as plum pie when physical stop signs are replaced by windshield AR.

But what does this all mean?

Well, a major theme of Rainbows End is how such technology must invariably lead to the death of privacy. And aren't we there already?

Only the nuttiest of people believe there's anything close to privacy these days. Edward Snowden heyyyy? Sony, Target, Kickstarter getting hacked? Ashley Madison? Panama Papers? Those annoying Amazon ads that you might well be looking at right now, showing you the last product you looked at on their website? Or how about when the Ukrainian gov't used cell-phone triangulation to text warnings to people who were within a certain radius of a demonstration/riot? I like to put myself in the mindset of people there. Pocket vibrates. Fella's thinking, "Oh man, I bet it's that cute girl I've been wanting to talk to!" Hahahaha NOPE. It's a text from her BIG BROTHER.

Rainbows End also explores what I call "the acceleration of change." When I jog, I sometimes listen to a podcast called Radical History. In the episode on the dropping of the atomic bomb, the historian talked about how the rapid introduction of aircraft prevented military leaders from understanding how to properly use them. When it came to men-on-horses and infantry, military tactics were well understood and war could be conducted in a relatively sane method. But all of a sudden, you had this new technology. Clearly it was powerful - a real game-changer. But how did you utilize that power in the most effective and humane manner?

At first, the idea was tactical bombing. You'd target the actual soldiers. But the precision wasn't there. So a few strategists came up with a brilliant new idea: strategic bombing! You could utterly destroy a major enemy city. The death and destruction would be SO GREAT that the civilians would lose all will to fight and would (somehow?) force their government to surrender.

The idea was we'd have some dense, horrible destruction right at the beginning to spare us all from a much longer war. It sorta made sense. Obviously this didn't happen. But at the time who was to know?

The same such conundrum is now true with regards to modern technology. Cellphones, the internet, genetic manipulation, drones/robots, etc. We're making use of these, sure, but are we doing it the right away? Is technology outpacing our ability to guide its usage?

I'd guesstimate that the amount society changed from 2000 to 2015 is probably about the same it changed from 1970 to 2000. And that in turn was the same amount of change from, say, 1775 to 1850. Consider, for example, that the same weapons used in the American revolutionary war (1776) were essentially the same used in the American civil war (1865). One hundred years and many soldiers were still using front-loaded muskets! Can you even IMAGINE the weapons that will be used in a hundred years? Meanwhile, the Romans wielded the steel gladius from 4th century BC to 3rd century AD. A POINTED METAL STICK. FOR SIX HUNDRED YEARS. HOLY CRAP.

So that's what I call the "acceleration of change." It's kinda like how the universe continues to expand at an ever increasing rate. Well, as I wrote, I believe society and values are now changing so fast that governments and even individual people are unable to adapt. More than at any other time in our history, there exists a gap between our technological power and our grasp of how to properly use it.

For example, let's talk about education and how we test competence. Most modern tests - the bar examination, the FE exam, an AP Calculus exam - involve a student working in isolation with nothing but a calculator, a pencil, and his brain. Does this make sense anymore? When a WEALTH of information and input from other analysts is now readily and easily available? It's rare - and perhaps entirely impossible - to find a job which does not benefit from access to other experts. I mean, hell, I recently dismantled, repaired, and then reassembled my CAR ENGINE purely by instruction via internet.

So it would make sense to structure tests in such a way that online resources can be used. What we really ought to be testing is not just FACTS-IN-BRAIN (which are important!) but also a student's ability to research, elicit expert response, and synthesize online information.

But could you imagine the response if I proposed allowing students to use their laptops during a test? I know of teachers who STILL do not allow their students to cite online resources. I still hear teachers genuinely state that Wikipedia is not a real source "because it can be edited." What is MOST amusing about that is how those teachers don't grasp how idiotic that statement is. As if a book written and researched by a single author is superior to a crowd-sourced document composed by a hundred scholars.

So there's this huge bias against networked intelligence because society has changed so fast. What was considered CHEATING only ten years ago is now basic reality, in the workplace, in social interaction, and so on. And that's due to the Acceleration of Change.

Vernor Vinge, in Rainbows End, takes an optimistic perspective on this, but his essays are more bleak. He believes in something called a Technology Singularity: eventually we're going to create an AI that's smarter than we are. That AI, in turn, will create an AI smarter than itself. Repeat ad infinitum until ultra-intelligent AIs render humanity obsolete.

*shrug* Not exactly a new idea. But I like to think the Acceleration of Change can explain why it's necessary.

And all that discussion is, ultimately, my review. If contemplating the big ideas of the world is your schtick, then Rainbows End can serve as a wonderful springboard. But if you're simply out for a good yarn - and there's no shame in that - Rainbow's End doesn't quite cut it.

[Tim Lepczyk · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Apatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nowadays, Grand Terror technology was so cheap that cults and small criminal gangs could acquire it.”

Don't panic just yet, the above quote refers to nowadays in the narrative, not the actual nowadays, though I suppose that could also be a possibility…

Near future sf is not something I get to read often, it makes a change from the standard far future setting of most sf, no galaxy-spanning human empire, usually no aliens, and never time travel. The setting is mostly recognizable as an environment that has logically developed from today, the places, the people and some objects are still mostly the same. According to Wikipedia Rainbows End is set in 2025. However, the year is not mentioned anywhere in the book so I will have to take it on faith. That makes the setting on seven years from now, but the novel was published in 2006, so Vernor Vinge was writing about nineteen years in the future (if 2025 really is the year of the setting).

In this near-future augmented reality (AR) is ubiquitous, as a technology that has advanced from today’s internet and gaming technology. Most people wear smart clothing and contact lenses that add a layer of digital reality to all aspects of life. PCs, smartphones and anything with a screen are generally obsolete as people are constantly online and information can be accessed by gestures. Rainbows End focuses on Professor Robert Gu, a world renown poet and former Alzheimer's sufferer who has been cured by a state of the art treatment. Professor Gu has to adjust to the new world he suddenly finds himself in as he emerged from his Alzheimer's condition. Now everything is online and basic unaugmented reality just does not cut it anymore. This necessitates that he goes back to school to learn to adapt to the modern world, fortunately, the medical treatment has also de-aged him to the extent that he looks like a teenager. Elsewhere, a high-level intelligence officer is plotting to implement a mind control technology on the populace. The scheme requires manipulation of Professor Gu to help with a certain task…

The Machiavellian mind control plotline is the thriller aspect of the book but most of the book is taken up by the exploration of this future setting and how Professor Gu adapts to it. Vernor Vinge clearly depicts how life would be with virtual overlays of reality always in place. Yes, the overlays can be switched off but the default setting is “always on” and most people are content to leave it like that. In some ways this a cautionary tale of what can happen if we are always blurring the line between reality and fantasy virtuality. Much of the technology depicted in this book seems possible, some of them even probable, such as 3D video calls so advanced the caller seems to be with you in your room, the caller ID can also be hacked so that somebody could pose as your friends and relatives. Vinge also puts a lot of effort into his characterizations but somehow none of them really strike a chord with me, I appreciate the effort though, it does give a little more depth to the story underneath all the high tech.

I like Rainbows End a lot, it gives what seems to be a convincing glimpse into the near future. It does, however, suffer from some pacing issues and is not always compelling. It is more interesting than it is riveting. Nevertheless, I recommend for anyone who is interested in how the near future is likely to turn out, and it did win a Hugo Award for Best Novel.



Notes:
• Vernor Vinge has a lot (well, two things) in common with David Brin. An actual scientist, and follicly challenged.

• His A Fire Upon the Deep is a classic epic space opera, the follow up A Deepness in the Sky is also – uh – quite good…



Quotes:
“Many people were talking to themselves, sometimes gesturing into the empty air, or jabbing fingers at unseen antagonists. Nothing new in that; cellphone addicts had always been one of Robert’s pet peeves. But these folks were more blatant about it than the kids at Fairmont High. There was something foolish about a fellow walking along, suddenly stopping to tap at his belt, and then talking to the air.”

“In all innocence, the marvelous creativity of humankind continued to generate unintended consequences. There were a dozen research trends that could ultimately put world-killer weapons into the hands of anyone having a bad hair day.”

“Terror via technical surprise is the greatest threat to the survival of the human race.”

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Mucho más exitoso en cuanto a las ideas manejadas que respecto al argumento ofrecido.-

Género. Ciencia ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Al final del arco iris (publicación original: Rainbow’s End, 2006) nos sitúa en un futuro próximo hiperinformatizado en el que varios servicios de inteligencia detectan un virus muy particular en funcionamiento e intención sobre cuyo origen tratarán de saber más, lo que llevará al lector a conocer a un laureadísimo poeta recién curado de Alzheimer que trata de ajustarse a su nueva situación y a la sociedad en la que vive, a varios familiares del poeta con circunstancias muy diferentes y a varios personajes más.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a near future SF. I read is as a part of monthly reading for November 2020 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. The novel won Hugo in 2007 as well as several other awards.

The story has very interesting concept: with development of technology, dangerous tech, which can lead to massive death toll becomes available to even minor and relatively poor groups – from modified viruses to chemical and nuclear weapons. The story starts with an innocuous variation of virus spreading in Europe and then a strange hike in purchases of an item after watching a TV ad (the buyers were mostly infected people). Several secret service agencies join hands to find out who tests such mind-control tech.

The main protagonist is Robert Gu. It is roughly 2020-2030s, and he, who was an influential poet in 1970-1990s suffers from Alzheimer. Wanders of tech return him to relatively normal life, but he has to re-learn what happened during his disease – a great way to infodump, with internet of things, virtual reality overlays, and machines with ‘No User-Serviceable Parts Within’ on all its parts…

The setting is very strong, with ideas of what a near future may bring in their power similar to The Windup Girl (even if stories and styles are quite different), but execution is less than spectacular. There are a lot of characters, but almost no one of them make you want to like them, e.g. the protagonist has a sadistic feature to find out what will hurt a person most and use it. The book would have been better with a smaller number of characters and side quests so to speak.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Geschmackssache. Eine Art Cyberpunk-Thriller, der deutlich zu lang geworden ist. Freunde des Genres werden aber sicher Freude an der Lektüre haben.

„‚Genau. Noch schlimmer, man brächte dafür Mut. ... Und das ist das Problem mit den Leuten von heute. Sie haben Freiheit gegen Sicherheit eingetauscht.‘“ (S. 178)

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook. DNF at 40%. Futuristic but not at the same time. Novels wherein the main character is a writer suffering from writer's block really bother me. Writers who don't write, yet consider themselves incredible writers. Why do they make such poor main characters I wonder? Yeah. Disengaged by the wandering around the library commenting on books. Too conversational. Concepts were introduced and abandoned for mundane antics. Vernor Vinge is probably a talented idea-oriented author who sometimes wanders off in aimless digressions. I'll have to read some of his more meaningful work. I doubt I'll ever pick this one up again. There are simply too many more engaging S-f books out there.

[Kara Babcock · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, Bruce Sterling shared his thoughts on hacking and activism three years after first discussing the Wikileaks scandal. One thing he said really stuck with me:

Even the electronic civil lib contingent is lying to themselves. They’re sore and indignant now, mostly because they weren’t consulted — but if the NSA released PRISM as a 99-cent Google Android app, they’d be all over it. Because they are electronic first, and civil as a very distant second.

They’d be utterly thrilled to have the NSA’s vast technical power at their own command. They’d never piously set that technical capacity aside, just because of some elderly declaration of universal human rights from 1947. If the NSA released their heaps of prying spycode as open-source code, Silicon Valley would be all over that, instantly. They’d put a kid-friendly graphic front-end on it. They’d port it right into the cloud.

It’s sad because he’s right. And I think we are moving in that direction.

In Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge capitalizes on a lot of upcoming technology that is quite hot today (but, when this was published seven years ago, made him slightly ahead of the curve). One particular novum is the proliferation of wearable computing surfaces. Not only are there flexible touchscreens, but one can get virtually any type of clothing with embedded microprocessors, haptic feedback, and sensors. (Vinge does not go into how people make use of Internet-enabled underwear, but I think we all know.) This isn’t actually science fiction—it’s science fact. Google Glass is just the first step towards the contact lenses that Vinge’s characters use. I see 2025, the book’s setting, as a totally realistic time-frame in which wearable computing becomes ubiquitous in the richer countries.

And when that happens, when you are literally wearing a camera on your body (one that can pan 360°), conventional ideas of privacy as we know it are over. Vinge portrays this perfectly when he demonstrates how easy it is for Miri and her gang to track Robert when he is in public (i.e., not at home). Having ambient intelligence in one’s clothes and in public spaces will be a great boon, but it will also usher in the perpetual surveillance society. (The upside, if you can call it that, is that everyone has access to this surveillance, not just the government.)

As you might be able to tell, Rainbows End struck a topical chord for me. I wouldn’t say this made me enjoy the book more, but it definitely made me sit up and take notice. I began to track the way that Vinge explores the logical consequences of his technological extrapolations in order to see how it compares to what I observe in society today. In this respect, as a work of social science-fiction, Rainbows End is absolutely fascinating. It’s also, unfortunately, rather shallow.

Vinge gives us a world that is completely believable. Machines are all iPod-like tethered appliances with “no user-serviceable parts inside”. Teenagers in 2025 are much teenagers kids in 2013, in that they have their own dialect of slang and jargon that adults can barely penetrate. Wearable computer has also cemented the place of augmented reality, and teenagers are the digital natives of that brave new virtual multiverse. But for all these broad strokes, Vinge never really convinces me that the world has changed much as a consequence of all this technology.

For example, what do people do? How has wearable computing, ubiquitous surveillance, and self-driving cars changed the job market? There are occasional references to elderly people retraining because their jobs no longer exist. But Miri’s parents are conveniently military. Aside from academics, we don’t really see many other professions or trades in play. I think this is a shame. While it does not behove an author to give everyone a tour of their entire world, they do need to show off enough for it to feel tangible. I believe that the technology in Vinge’s future could exist and work like it does, but I’m not as convinced he explores the consequences as fully as he could.

Rainbows End combines a fish-out-of-water story with the threat of an international conspiracy to control the world through subliminal viral engineering. We learn almost immediately that a character who is ostensibly a good guy is actually a bad guy, a revelation that I found was a flattering form of dramatic irony—oh, you trust me, the reader, enough to let me in on this from the start? The antagonist’s motivations are a little melodramatic, in the sense that I understand where they come from, but I’m not sure that I can believe a single person would actually undertake a project of this scale.

There are also rumblings of nascent artificial intelligence in the persona of Rabbit. I won’t go into spoiler territory by explaining any further, but I will say that I was disappointed. (This is probably the least realistic technology as well; I find the predictions of 2050 for an AI far too optimistic.) It’s not that I was disappointed by how Vinge clears up the mystery so much as, again, he doesn’t seem to explore much of the consequences.

A part of me wonders if this is meant to be satire. If that were the case, a lot more would make sense. Robert’s one-dimensional surliness, Rabbit’s behaviour, the villain’s one-dimensional megalomaniacal power trip … this would all be excusable, laudable even, if Vinge were satirizing, as a form of commentary, the society that he sees us becoming. The gross and excessive use of force during a university protest would demonstrate how we are growing used to the escalation of police action. The digitization of books through destructive shredding would, in its very absurdity, demonstrate how our obsession with the newest, greatest digital technology can be shortsighted.

And part of me really hopes this is satire, because if not, then it’s a flat book. It’s full of brilliant ideas and a scarily believable depiction of the distribution of technology in twelve years … but as a story, and that is the essential metric, it barely registers.

Alas, as with so much in this book, Vinge does not quite convince me that this is a satire. It might be the marketing, which seems content to sell this as a straight-up techno-thriller. Or it could be the few, genuine attempts at tragedy—the way that Alice and Bob’s relationship is on rocky ground because she has gone back into the military’s dangerous just-in-time training program, the fact that Lena still won’t return Robert’s letters.

I don’t regret reading Rainbows End, for it was a reliable romp through a pre-Singularity vision of the future. It pushes some of my technophilic geek buttons, and as far as the plot goes, it is at least coherently written. I just wish its characters had been more captivating and its story much more meaningful.

[Mike Moore · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really love 'A Fire Upon the Deep,' and I feel like I keep waiting for Vinge to recreate that, in some form... and it keeps not happening.

I felt like 'Rainbows End' aimed at being a near-future cyber-thriller a la William Gibson - but the 'thrilling' part was missing.

There's a conspiracy to infect the world with some sort of suggestion-susceptibility, which its proponents see as the only way to 'save the world.' There's another group of NSA-types trying to stop the plan, but they don't really know what the plan is. There may be some overlap between the two sides.

Meanwhile, there's a program in place to send rejuvenated old folks to high school to learn new skills which are supposed to help them re-integrate as productive members of society.

And there's a big plan to destructively digitize the libraries of the world...

There are a lot of interesting ideas in the book, but so many aspects of it are just too vague. I think I would've enjoyed it more if it were tightened up; if the reader was given a few more clues as to the goals of each character and what they're working toward. It's very amorphous: "We have to stop... someone... from doing... something." The reader doesn't know enough about what the ramifications might be to take a stance either way... or care.

For a bit I was leaning toward two stars, but it's scraping in at three because there are actually lots of fascinating, thoughtful bits in here on a multitude of topics, especially regarding rapidly changing societies, the intersection (and conjunction) of personality and technology, interpersonal communication and understanding, the nature of talent and genius, etc...

But it still feels oddly out-of-balance... plodding at times, and unsure of whether it wants to be humorous and tongue-in-cheek, or serious drama.

[Jeraviz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dentro de la Ciencia Ficción, las novelas de "futuro cercano" creo que son las más difíciles de escribir porque, con la velocidad a la que va todo, en un par de años quedan obsoletas. Sin embargo, lo mejor que hace Vinge aquí es proponer un futuro en 2007 que hoy en día ya se está cumpliendo (fake news, análisis de datos para influir en la gente, epidemias descontroladas, incluso hace alusión a un laboratorio en Wuhan y la liberación de un virus por parte de una gran nación). Las personas que hayan leído este libro después del 2020 les sonará de algo todo esto. Así que en cuanto a propuestas y predicciones le pondría 5 estrellas.

¿Por qué le pongo 2? Pues porque a pesar de que el marco es muy creíble y detallado, el contenido es un aburrimiento de principio a fin. Los personajes me caen mal, los temas que desarrolla son lentos y sin gracia y mete párrafos larguísimos con mensajes de texto entre los personajes que hace que se frene mucho la lectura.

Este es el tercer libro que leo de Vernor Vinge (y tercer Premio Hugo) y tampoco me ha parecido que merezca tal galardón. Creo que pasará mucho hasta que vuelva a coger algo de él.

[Michael Nielsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vinge was one of the most remarkable thinkers about the future ever. Rereading this in 2025 I'm struck how much more I get from this upon each reread (and, in some sense, feel a little silly for how much I missed earlier).

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so disappointed with this hot mess of a novel. After the innovative Peacewar duo and the extraordinary Zones of Thought trilogy, I thought Vinge would impress me again, but I was incredibly disappointed. He went back to the weak (and stereotyped) characters like in Peacewar and just introduces too many characters with too little backstory. None of the Gu family characters held the slightest interest other than the tear-jerk moments with the granddaughter and her idiot grandfather. A lot of the action made no sense and the outcome took like 30 pages to play out. The writing, especially towards the end of the book, came off as stilted and unimaginative. I guess Vinge is far better at projecting out 10s of thousands of years than a few decades. The ideas here are not incredibly original (again, especially after the multitude of innovations in his two epic series I mentioned) - smart contacts, virtual reality, smart clothes, omnipresent tech, etc. - are not particularly original and come off as hokey. The bad guys never seem to figure out what or why they are bad guys and they just kind of evaporate at the end, no consequences. Really, Vinge should have written another Zones of Thought book and told us whether the Blight gets to the Children and the Tines or not. That I would really have enjoyed!

Fino Reviews of Joan and Vernor Vinge Books:
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Res · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 dangerous-nifty-future source).

As fiction, it doesn't work for me because the characterization is so perfunctory. The dialog is stilted and implausible, and all the voices sound the same. And there's a weird disconnect from the emotions, which are described and analyzed from a distance. Maybe I would have warmed to Gu if I'd given him more time, but it's hard to know how to get involved with a character who thinks things like, "It was hard to dominate someone if you didn't understand most of what she said" -- surely even people who want to dominate other people don't think that's what they're doing?

(Locus poll: #1 SF novel of year.)

[Evie]

This was a book club pick and we collectively decided to DNF. Made it to 60% and still had no idea what was happening. Not my vibe.

[Tomislav · Rating 5 out of 5]

2008 January 14 - This winner of the 2007 Hugo Award is set mostly in San Diego of twenty years in the future. It's a future where current trends in network computing are extrapolated. The internet isn't just some box in your house that you log into, but is embedded in the clothes you wear, is read on the inside of your contact lenses, and where the consensual reality of your affinity groups overlay the real world. Robert Gu is a suddenly medically recovered Alzheimer patient, essentially a visitor from our own time who wakes up into that world. He finds himself involved in a high-stakes plot to disseminate YGMB (You Gotta Believe Me) technology - aka mind control. Events take place in multiple overlays of reality and persona are cloaked in multiple layers of disguise. The book is fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

The last chapter is entitled "The Missing Apostrophe", and I'm guessing it refers to the absence of an apostrophe in the book's title. So the title does not mean "the end of the rainbow" as in Rainbow's End, but somehow the ending of plural rainbows. Not sure what that has to do with the story, though. If someone figures it out, let me know...

[Allan Dyen-Shapiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me an absurdly long time to track down this book, and then when the dust settled, I somehow found myself in possession of two mass market editions. (I bought one at the big library sale last year, but forgot I had done so, and then picked it up again at a used bookstore.) None of the libraries in town had it, even though it was a Hugo nominee not all that long ago.

Note: The rest of this review has been withheld due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before I wrote my review, I listened to Luke Burrage's review on SFBRP, and the recent podcast discussion of it on SFF Audio. I was curious to see if the discussion would make me like it any more, and it might have boosted it to 3.5 stars, but I'm still going with 3.

Some of the story was really relevant to my work in the academic library world, and the story of all the books being destroyed in the UCSD Geisel Library didn't seem like very far future to me, especially with the premise that they would still have access to the information in the books. The hyper-reality isn't that far off either, in fact we use it on our campus (in Layars) to have enhanced reality information of our lake and other spots on campus, with plans to create campus tours, etc., that way. I know some cities are full of that kind of information, you just have to have the appropriate app.

During the time Rainbows End takes place, the biggest difference technology-wise is that everyone has the apps. Everyone "wears," meaning they all are constantly plugged into this enhanced reality. There have also been major terrorist activities leading to increased military presence and regulations of technology, as well as advances in science.

These concepts are all interesting. I liked the characters of the poet who has been "cured" of Alzheimers and the mother who has had JITT (Just-in-Time Training) so frequently it is only a matter of time before her brain shuts down from the overload. The kids in the story could have been more compelling, especially since we're supposed to believe they are the only generation with an understanding of all this new tech. The entire story was rather like being told how amazing a new movie is by being given a slideshow of the actors doing the first read-through of the script. There was something to a behind-the-scenes feeling of it, and I felt like the real action, the real story, was happening everywhere our characters weren't. I didn't like that. I didn't like not fully knowing who the rabbit was, and I've heard several theories about it but it isn't really fleshed out in the story.

The behind-the-scenes feeling coupled with the somewhat off pacing and unbalanced character development all mean I won't be reading this again. I've heard some of his other stuff is better, so I may try another book.

ETA: Forgot to include my little quotes, mostly having to do with libraries.

"You don't go into the stacks expecting the precise answer to your burning-question-of-the-moment. It doesn't work that way. In all the thousands of times that I've gone hunting in the stacks, I've seldom found exactly what I was looking for. You know what I did find? I found the books on close-by topics. I found answers to questions that I had never thought to ask. Those answers took me in new directions and were almost always more valuable than whatever I originally had in mind."

"The Library had chosen." <--- really fun moment, actually

[ambyr · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worldbuilding here is fascinating, which makes it a pity that the plot is pedestrian and the characters wooden. I was willing, grudgingly, to give two stars out of respect to the astonishing inventiveness of the near-future tech, but the ending annoyed me enough that I can't even muster enough enthusiasm for that.

I'm particular unhappy with the way the book handles abuse. Robert Gu was, we are told repeatedly, an abusive husband and father. His ex-wife wants nothing to do with him; she wants nothing to do with him so badly that she fakes her own death to avoid him . . .

. . . so why is half the cast so determined to make her see that He Has Changed and get them back together, to the point of betraying her confidences? I hate the implication that if he has changed, she has some sort of obligation to forgive him. None of the characters seem to take a single second to consider that whether present-Gu is a better person or not, past-Gu hurt her terribly, and it is fully within her rights to never speak to him again. Instead, she is consistently presented as unreasonable for her unwillingness to reconsider.

I'm also annoyed that after building up Alice Gu's considerable martial and diplomatic skills (and, for that matter, Miri's), the book's action/adventure climax ends with . . . Alice having a mental breakdown and collapsing while her husband rescues their joint operation, and Miri passing out and leaving Robert to try to defend her from flowing lava. And then. And then. When Alice at last recuperates and returns home, we get this passage:

"Alice Gu was a ghost of her former self. The steel of the last fifteen weeks of their acquaintance had been torn out of her. The result was . . . charming. More evenings than not, Alice and Miri were down in the kitchen, attempting to make hard work out of modern cookery."

Charming.

CHARMING.

Her steel is gone, she's back in the kitchen where women belong, and that's charming.

Fuck you, book. If this is the "reformed" Robert's view of the world, no wonder Lena wants nothing to do with him.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 have constant and immediate access to a world of information and imagery that leaves those who can't wear seeming almost blind by comparison. To young people, like Robert's granddaughter (who is in the same high school class as he), wearing seems as natural as breathing. To someone in Robert's position, though, it seems artificial and pointless.

As the book progresses, Robert and granddaughter, with some friends, end up embarking on a kind of updated Hardy Boys style mystery caper--though the stakes this time turn out to involve the fate of the human race itself.

The way into the caper involves the concept of "hijacking." To hijack someone is to hack into their computer and manipulate the information it is feeding them. By this means, a hijacker can make someone act in the hijacker's own interest. It's like mind control, but different.

Who is being hijacked, and by whom? This question is asked all over the place in the book. And so it turns out the book is largely about people trying to discover the significance of their own actions. Another way to put this is, they're trying to discover the meaning of their own life.

Any book that successfully shines a new light at a new angle on that old quest must be pretty good. And it is.

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

_Rainbows End_ by Vernor Vinge is an excellent science fiction novel by in my opinion one of the best novelists in the genre. This story is in the same setting as his earlier novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" which he finished in August 2001 and first published in _The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge_. The central character of the novella, a young student at a San Diego high school (really a middle school), Juan Orozco, makes a reappearance in this novel, though as one of several important characters, not the chief protagonist.

The setting of the novel (and the short story for that matter) is San Diego in the year 2025, which the reader discovers is a world in which the internet connects people and places in ways not possible today. Miniaturization has advanced to such a degree that most people, all the time, have operating computers on them, embedded and weaved into otherwise normally looking clothing called wearables (if someone has on clothing with a computer in it with the capacity to go online he or she is said to be "wearing") and are able to interact with these computers and the internet via special contact lenses. When people first start mastering wearables and their associated contacts they often have to type in the air with their fingers on a phantom keyboard, made visible to the user thanks to their contacts, but as a user becomes more proficient they become able to access computer resources by much more subtle gestures, including particular facial and eye movements.

Most areas of the civilized world allow people to maintain a connection to the internet at all times via a vast array of devices embedded in buildings, on the ground, even flying through the air (though areas called deadzones exist, where either thanks to a paucity of devices or a total lack of devices either only a much reduced connection is possible or no connection of any kind can be made; these areas might be found in parts of buildings not normally visited by the public or even those who work there - such as in sewers - or in wilderness areas such as might be found in national parks).

Thanks to their wearables, contacts, and the network nodes that are readily accessible with no effort at all, most people are not only always online but always using some aspect of the internet. Access to online information and computational power is available in seconds. There is no need for cell phones, as one can connect with virtually anyone in the world in seconds. Anyone can interact and collaborate with anyone else on a shared project no matter how distant they are, whether it is a school science project or a business venture. Anyone can virtually attend a play, a sporting event, or just visit with friends, quite visible to those wearing and even able to interact with the real environment to varying degrees depending upon the user's skill and local available resources.

Perhaps even more interesting, one can choose to see one's surroundings in an online, artificial format, one created by others. Utility workers for instance can choose a viewpoint that to their eyes reveals all underground cables and pipes with words floating in the air above these structures conveying valuable information. Many buildings - though not generally private homes - can be seen through, revealing the inhabitants within.

Even more startling, entire fantasy landscapes can be seen instead of the real environment. Cities, chambers of commerce, entertainment businesses, and groups of private individuals called belief circles can construct simple or very elaborate virtual realities which overlay the real environment, visible through a user's contacts. Many different realities co-exist, the user needing only to choose the one he or she wants to view. These realities can be just better looking versions of the real world, such as a city with nicer looking buildings, better views, fuller and healthier trees, etc. or completely fantastic realms based on the works of say Tolkien, Pratchett, or even Pokemon-esque settings, the user seeing instead of a person's two story home a castle, instead of a police helicopter a dragon, etc. The fact that no one drives anymore - cars are all automatic and computer controlled - makes this a great deal safer than it may sound.

Well, enough about the setting. The story is a very good one, involving what are at first two seemingly unconnected plot threads. The first thread we are introduced to involves the security agencies of Europe and Asia, whose alert monitoring of the world's communications, mass media, advertising, and sports events discover two rather unusual anomalies, perhaps unconnected, perhaps not. Though the two events are seemingly innocuous (whether taken together or separately), the vast resources of computer power and analysts that are brought to bear on these events suggest to security personnel that someone is very subtly testing a new weapons system, perhaps a YGBM weapon (YGBM stands for You-Gotta-Believe-Me, jargon for mind control weapons). In a world nervous after decades of fighting terrorists and leery of increasingly easily available weapons of mass destruction, an investigation is quickly and quietly launched.

The other thread focuses on the life of Robert Gu, a noted poet from the late 20th and early 21st centuries who nearly succumbed to Alzheimer's but thanks to modern technology has been saved and even made seemingly younger, getting a whole new lease on life. Having to reenroll in high school (along with his granddaughter, Miri, and Juan Orozco) to learn how to live and work in today's society (along with other much older students, trying to reconnect with a world quite different from that which they were born in), Robert, Miri, Juan, Miri's parents (Bob and Alice) and others somehow manage to become involved in the covert action to find the YGBM weapon.

The two plot threads connected very well together and made for a great story. I would love to see more novels or short stories in this setting.

[Whitney (SecretSauceofStorycraft) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up.

Think snow crash cyberpunk sarcasm but mixed with very distinct human element overlay one that in the end matters more….

It begins with an elderly poet, Robert Gu, being cured of alzheimers and slowly coming back to himself in a younger body to a world he realizes he is no longer significant in and does not recognize, even his own family.

He teams up with other older colleagues in a protest of the digitalization of the local campus library, which rapidly becomes national event that is used as a distraction for a more insideous plot involving a hacker known only as the Rabbit and a plot to mind control the human race!

This book is for all those who strive to matter and find their place with the rapidly progressing digital world.

I had a blast with this underrated 💎 gem of a story. Its not quite up to fire upon the deep but it was still a cery solid story done well. Lots of very cool ideas.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book - as a "concept" story, it's extremely engaging, exploring a not-too-distant possible future where our "plugged-in", multitasking, social networking culture becomes ridiculously pervasive (in conjunction with an economy that increasingly value those who collate and analyze vs. those who produce), with all the amazing advantages and frightening disadvantages that confers. I especially liked how our viewpoint character was a man who, successful to the point of arrogance in his own (read: OUR own) era, now has to start from square one and go back to high school in this brave new world which is as alien to him as it is to the reader.

Other than him, however, the characters in this book just seemed like cardboard cutouts that existed in order to showcase this new world, and to forward the larger plot of international intrigue and information warfare...which, frustratingly, (Spoiler alert!) never really resolves. We never find out just what exactly the villain's scheme was, nor why he felt it would save the world. We never find out just who or what the mysterious "Rabbit" character that serves to forward so much of the plot is, and what he really wants. The protagonists don't really have much of a hand in saving the day, and many of the somewhat compelling side characters just kind of get "dropped" by the end. We never even get to find out why "Rainbows End" doesn't have an apostrophe as it should, even though there is a chapter called "the missing apostrophe!" Maybe I am just not "LEET" enough to "get it." After all, I only have a PhD.

Maybe this all would have worked as a short-story, and I know there is a certain Gibsonian school of cyberpunk that treats the plot and characters as kind of irrelevant next to how "awesomely cool and LEET" the technology is...but frankly, I could have dealt with 50% less technobabble and 200% more character development, and been even more impressed. Still, I think at least PORTIONS of this book should be required reading for the training of new teachers and new librarians, entering into this brave new "information frontier"....

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading Rainbows End has been an unexpected pleasure. I remember its satire of Google Books taking paper copies apart for scanning. (By the way, in Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky goes Vinge one better on that score.) This time, I noticed his updating of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. His hero, Robert Gu, is a retired literature professor and poet from the University of California at San Diego, where Vinge taught. When he wakes from the mental fog of years of Alzheimer’s disease, cured by some post-singularity medicine, he finds himself in a brave new world where he doesn’t fit. Poetry has been supplanted by multimedia creations that augment reality. He must return to high school to learn the computer skills every kid now knows. He is as much a displaced person as Huxley’s John Savage. He is finally saved from the tragedy that ends Brave New World by becoming a new man who can connect with others in ways that have nothing to do with technology.
Vinge bought into the idea of a rapid, near-future technological singularity that strains credulity. If you grant him his premise, Vinge writes a good story.

[drowningmermaid · Rating 1 out of 5]

5% This is the best thing I've read this year, the style is dense but all of me is screaming: Yes! Talk about this!
10% Kind of a slow start, but we're establishing things . . . Getting the band together... right?
30% So. Nothing has actually happened at this point.
40% This is now a hate read. How many times, and in how many different ways do I really need to witness Robert Gu being a dick?
50% How many times do I have to go back to the library and listen to people talking about the same things over again?
70% If I manage to ignore the interruptions (Bob Gu is-- riding a railgun?) this is actually the most interesting part, where things are starting to come together.
95% Board games. Fucking board games. I actually stopped reading twice because 10% of this book is denouement and there's a paragraph where, with Henry Jamesian attention to detail, I have to hear the history and meaning of the BOARD GAMES that they play in their FUCKING HOUSE NOW THAT THEY'RE ALL HAPPY. I am five pages from the end and it and I want to quit.

Part of me still might bump this up to two stars because of how the good some of the ideas in here are, but right now I just want to talk about how this book failed me.

Let me start by telling you how much of the target audience for this book I *should* be. This book has been on my radar for a long time-- I kind of love the idea of "second shot at life" concepts and VR and AIs. I have been to the Geisel library, the one described and where most of the action (and also "action") takes place. I actually believe in YGBM technology, that it exists and is used in rudimentary form.

And . . . I couldn't stand this.

The fundamental failure that I see is this: Genres are promises.

And this book keeps none of those promises.

The overall plot setup is a heist story. Think Ocean's Eleven. Heist stories go like this: you get the band together. You attempt to get the MacGuffin (diamond/virus/list of spies). You probably succeed but there will be an additional twist-- betrayal, raised stakes, comedic interference. Confront the ultimo baddie. Victory or partial, bittersweet victory.
None of that happens here. I loved Rabbit and Alfred from the beginning but they comprise a very marginal fraction of all these many, many pages. Most is devoted to one of their pawns.
So we get the band together. Hem and haw for about 40% of this book, literally having the same conversations over and over again and worrying about school projects. Engage in an action that turns out to be a heist but none of the POV characters knew that it was. Abruptly introduce a random character who may or may not be dead by the end of the night. Watch the ultimo baddie shuffle off into the night. The unnamed henchmen just sort of disappear. Meddling kids. Ruh-roh. No one gets the MacGuffin. No one even learns what the MacGuffin is. Character growth? That is then squashed.

There are secondary plots: a romantic interest with his ex-wife. (Who now appears to be seventy years older than him . . . Okay.) This goes no where. She stalks him but never makes contact, even when he tries to contact her. Is it for the pleasure of spurning him after all the pain he caused? If that's all the resolution she needed, that's really not established since she's only POV for a few paragraphs. Kudos for a mirroring of her intrusiveness without communication vs. his non-intrusiveness with letter writing? Sort of. The whole thing only takes up a paragraph or two.

Also, coming-of-age with minor character Juan Orozco. It seems Juan's story is only in here because Vinge had previously written his two chapters as a short story and decided this would be a good place to have that story in a book because Juan is deeply unimportant to the novel overall, his contributions are forgotten or invalidated by everyone-- except for his school project at the end which takes up an inordinate amount of time. Mostly he is dropped and his friends, Fred and George, just flat out disappear completely.

Worse, Robert Gu is a douche. Not an evil genius, although he is described as "evil" -- he's just cantankerous and scummy. An emotionally manipulative user but in a really facile, obvious way that makes it seem unlikely that anyone would fail to see through him. He's not portrayed as dangerous, as a gaslighter-- not chaotic evil, just neutral ugh. Basically, he's a Karen. He's excited and empowered by his own hysteria and that doesn't make him interesting as an object of his own tragic evil-- he's just contemptible and easy to dismiss. While I think there are other ways of interpreting the book's last line, I hold to the opinion that Robert Gu regains and redoubles his genius and douchiness. So this isn't a book with a Moral Arc of Redemption, either.

So it fails as a thriller and a mystery and a romance and a bildungsroman, but there is also one real way in which this fails as a science fiction novel.

Overall it's good science fiction, as shown by its redeeming characteristics-- which is the flashiness of the ideas in it. And there ARE some really good ideas here:

- I love the concept of JITT (Just In Time Training) which is basically Matrix-style learning only it has terrible side effects. People are often stuck between learned downloads-- unable to communicate intelligibly and sometimes catatonic. It's still used by the military.
- The whole world is Pokemon go. Only your phone fits onto your eyeball and your clothes are the controls so you can experience the world in a variety of different games and fandoms.
- Full regeneration after Alzheimer's.
And above all
-- YGBM. The next nuclear bomb. The bomb to end all wars. A combination of viral load and flash hypnosis that combines to cause instantaneous belief in the viewership. Mass numbers of people will instantaneously be drawn to whatever the YGBM is attuned to. A product? A hero? A flag? YGBM stands for Ya Gotta Believe Me.

But here's the thing: Science fiction isn't just a bunch of flashy ideas about future tech-- it's also about the ways that tech shapes people and influences social constructs and relationships. And that's the aspect of this book that fails as science fiction.

There's a side character with JITT, but he's not POV. There's the threat of JITT in a more majorish character but a super Mary Sue escape clause out of the logical consequences that were previously established. Nothing is talked about the possibilities this poses for society, except for a single dismissive line about kids using the tech to cram for tests. Seriously? Wouldn't there be a whole network of crystal healers who promise to bring you back after a JITT stick? Why not have one of the characters being hauled in by the Homeland Security goons, not because of their heist activity, but because they are wanted for their ability to upload a lot of STUFF? Was I supposed to infer that Robert had JITT done to him by an AI at the end? Because that was not stated.

So the whole world is Pokemon Go-- and robots are given fur and scales to be the animatronic bones behind the imaginary worlds you can choose to see. And everyone has their own avatar who can be on the other side of the world as a hologram of themselves. But there's no exploration of the breakdown of society that comes if huge swaths of people can and do live their whole lives seeing only what they want to see and hearing only what they want to hear. To be fair, that would be eerily prescient but I feel like even Ready Player One talked more about the dangers of escapism.

There's the medical miracle of awakening from Alzheimer's -- but somehow all this does is land the MC back in high school. That's right. Actual high school. I'm somehow supposed to believe that people thought it was a good idea to send retreads back to High School. And not special ed classes within the high school, regular classes-- despite the fact that children are basically born wearing these tech goggles. The obvious question of-- what happens when a fifteen-year-old falls for an 80-year-old?-- is not explained in the slightest. Nothing that high schoolers actually talk about is discussed. Even Old Man's War gave me more of the experience of getting a healthy body back.

It also becomes eminently unclear by the end why anyone would care about YGBM tech, because, apparently, the government is clearly already using something equally terrifying, without any oversight and on children. Namely, the ability to literally erase physical memories. (This, by the way, was never established anywhere in the book prior to the last 20 pages.). Everyone is just completely okay with this. But somehow I'm supposed to believe that the MacGuffYGBM is actually in some way dangerous?

Overall it has all the compelling drive of the average user's manual, but with a bunch of involuted repetition punctuated by a heavy sprinkling of meaningless special effects. Most of the interior dialog is essentially in a series of different languages because of the heavy use of slang. And I don't mean Jabberwocky slang or Clockwork Orange slang. I mean acronymns, interjections of random references to made-up fictional worlds, digressions into technoblather for non-existent devices. There is no characterization here, no poetry, no plot. There's a cool setting that is never explored in any meaningful depth, only tacked onto. But most keenly absent is a theme. There is no unifying concept or idea being explored here. And a fireworks show is not a novel.

I'm . . . actually surprised anyone likes this.

[Ignacio · Rating 3 out of 5]

El comienzo de Al final del arco iris es uno de los mayores mcguffins que recuerdo. Varias agencias de seguridad descubren la existencia de un virus biológico capaz de modificar el comportamiento humano y se ponen manos a la obra para descubrir quién lo ha creado y con qué fin. Una vez hecho este planteamiento, con un actor desconocido destinado a sacudir el argumento cuando sea necesario, esta cuestión se difumina para supeditarse a una doble historia: la de un personaje que se ha curado del Alzheimer que padecía y debe confrontar todo el mal que hizo a su familia, y la de la comunidad escolar en la que vive empotrado, con sus aprendizajes, sus proyectos científicos, sus duelos de poder, sus batallitas entre "grasientos" y "beatnicks" en el mundo virtual... Ambos son los vehículos para que Vinge te cuente el mundo que ha ideado; un futuro cercano modelado por la conectividad, la realidad aumentada y las comunidades de usuarios.

Esas trescientas páginas que van desde la introducción hasta el clímax plantean un escenario posibilista en contraposición a tantas historias cyberpunk establecidas sobre una base científico-tecnológica (al menos) cuestionable. Una sensación que se ahonda en las últimas cien páginas cuando ya Vinge reescribe sobre sus mimbres argumentales la trama de Neuromante. Sin pudor. Y aquí está mi mayor problema con Al final del arco iris. La albañilería de mundos arrincona muchas veces el relato de superación de su protagonista, con una trama en particular (el enfrentamiento entre facciones, aquí llamados grupos de opinión) que sobra.

Para Vinge, la poética de lo proyectivo, la estética del escenario y sus elementos, y lo que cuentan sobre nosotros, está siempre supeditada a su verosimilitud respecto a nuestro conocimiento actual, lo que le lleva a desarrollar mucho la cacharrería y perder el pie de la metáfora de nuestro presente. No hasta estrellarse pero sí para convertir demasiadas páginas en una descripción de ese mundo posible tras la llegada de la realidad aumentada, con unas migajas de singularidad. Y ahí Al final del arco iris se ha quedado pelín vieja.

Aun así, cuando Vinge deja de escribir largos capítulos de puesta en situación para entrelazar las diferentes tramas que se suceden, y regresa a la historia de redención de su protagonista, Al final del arco iris mejora. Hay un corazón utópico latiendo debajo de los ladrillos y la argamasa que abre las puertas a un futuro donde la tecnología mejore nuestra vida, material, psicológica, sin por eso dejar a un lado ideas aterradoras, caso del completo desprecio por siglos de cultura, caracterizados a través de la digitalización y privatización de las bibliotecas.