Marooned in Realtime

This is Vinge's sequel to The Peace War. It was about the same quality - not as good as Fire upon the deep but still kept me turning pages. It pulled the same loose sequel trick as "Deepness in the sky" -> "Fire upon the deep", setting it a squillion years in the future, but contriving to keep one character (transformed somehow by their passage through time) to hark back to the history created in the first book.

Ho hum, It's a murder mystery, with a self-conscious Great Reveal at the end. It was still an interesting twist, looking back on the singularity Vinge loves to go on about. In this case the event also involved a mysterious mass exodus/death of most of humankind, just like in Singularity's Ring (or I should say it's the other way around, since Marooned in Realtime was published 22 years prior.)

It has the same weaknesses as his other writing - a mix of real characters and foil role players, all of whom act in overly explained rational or irrational interests as best they know how given the technology Vinge has gifted them with.

I'm coming to realize the thing I love most about his writing is every book has at least one and often several characters gaining super-human abilities. Watching big fish in a small pond is fun to me I guess. Watching little fish in a little pond, not as interesting, no matter what kind of dance they're doing.

Vernor Vinge: The Collected Stories, and The Peace War

I read two more books by Vernor Vinge recently. I still can't get enough.

The Peace War was a good read; definitely in a lower tier than his other work though. Had me turning pages to find out what happens next, but I think it showed off perhaps the one weakness I've seen in his stories. Most of his main characters play minimax optimal decision making strategies in conflict scenarios... and they take the time to explain themselves in dialog or thought as they make the decisions. It makes me want to skim through all the rationalizations, and leaves characters feeling robotic. Which I guess is a common theme in his characters - humans becoming more than human, with the aid of technology - so I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

The better of the two books was the anthology of his short stories. I'm not sure if it was comprehensive, but if it was - holy shit, I liked every single story in that book. They were all so different from each other. The other short story anthologies from single authors that I've read (Greg Egan, Jim Van Pelt) I enjoyed, but by the end of it I had a feeling that I could write a short story in their style with my eyes closed.

Vinge just keeps surprising with new ideas and plot structures in every story. My favorite part of the anthology though was his personal introductions to every story. He wrote what he thought was good writing about each story, and its weaknesses; exaulted in predictions of the future he got dead on, rued the big developments he missed. It was so impressive to hear him speak in plain words about a kernal of an idea he had for a story, and then to see the finished product so nuanced, detailed... and fresh even decades after it was published.