Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End fails to thrill | Hacker News Reader

Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End fails to thrill

keepingthedoor.com

13 pointsrenai429 comments

I found Rainbows End mindlessly boring; most of the technologies are obvious extrapolations from today, with nothing exciting or surprising about the consequences. It's sort of like a fiction writer realizing his character could have a PC with 1T of RAM.

Great science fiction is about ideas, not technology per se.

I don't usually bother to criticise stuff I don't like, but I loved his two previous books (Deepness in the Sky, and Fire upon the Deep, and before them, True Names). Those seem like labours of love; whereas this one feels like it was to pay the bills. I don't know what's up with Mr Vinge (except he retired from his comp sci academic position...); I would just love to have some more of his old output. Not all such wishes can be granted, of course, nor are necessarily even possible.

While I found the book boring, I do like to read explorations of a world where the "obvious" (to us!) technologies grow and see what aspects of society change. In essence, that's really what any Sci-Fi book must accomplish especially if they don't have a good story to tell behind that.

While a lot of the key thoughts weren't really new versus what I was reading in short stories a decade ago, it did offer some further "what if" scenarios that are interesting with (especially) the wearables and contact lens UI. In addition, the (sometimes jumbled) interaction of people with their certificate authorities and groups was something that wouldn't have been discussed at all in older scifi-- those are problems we'll need to think about more eventually and I liked seeing those ideas explored a bit.

Overall, I think I like Rainbow's End more as a touch on a lot of different near tech since a good bit of SciFi focuses on one or two far-out tech concepts that become "magic" versus tech.

This one covers a lot of not-so-distant and not-so-magic tech concepts we can almost see on the horizon:

  * Wearable computing
  * Augmented reality
  * GPS-guided air-mail
  * Virtual amusement parks
  * Library digitization
  * Networks of trust and authentication
  * Emergent AI (slightly more "magic", but has always been "any day now" in scifi)
  * Ubiquitous software development
  * Auto-pilot vehicles
  * Virtual reality learning
  * Virtual tribes/cliques/social groups
  * ... lots more ...

Pretty much everything he discusses (maybe aside from body regeneration?) is near enough in possibility that you can see how we might get there and it's interesting to think about the interactions of all of the concepts at once.

While he's not a good story teller, the high number of topics he was tackling at once made the story something I kept reading. I think it's unfair to give him a low grade because he didn't come up with lots of "new" revolutionary ideas-- just exploring the interactions between them is compelling enough that I'd like young scientists to read this, even if they see a different future ahead.

I would also like to read more stories of the "near cool" future rather than only have access to deeper stories like Diamond Age, Ender's Game, and Steel Beach.

You might like "Halting State" by Charlie Stross.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/

I enjoyed it.

I mean, gosh. There weren't even any aliens!

I didn't find it anything like the ride his previous two were, but I'm not sure it was meant to be. That's not to defend the book; I definitely think character took a bit of a back seat to the technology, but in a sense, I think technology -- rampant and out of control -- is a character.

One thing, speculatively, along those lines: I think (or perhaps merely hope) Rabbit is another Pham Nuwen. Remember, Fire upon the Deep was written first; Deepness seven years later. When I read the former, I kept wondering what Vinge was on about with the crazy reanimated historical dude. Then I read the second.

Rabbit felt a little like Nuwen like that.

This was the first book I read of Vinge's and I didn't think it was that great. Later I read A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep, which I thought were awesome. These are the smartest science fiction books I have ever read. After reading these, I ordered all the rest of his books. I also really liked Marooned in Realtime and The Peace War.

I was very disappointed with Rainbow's End. Even the politics bothered me. Judging from the prominent role terrorism and the Department of Homeland Security play in the book, Vinge has abandoned the libertarianism of his earlier books and become a dyed-in-the-wool Bushie.

Well, it was a dystopia.

I much preferred the novella Fast Times at Fairmont High, which had many of the same characters and setting.

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