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.