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Vernor Vinge has died

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Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#111

Post by db48x »

KineticLensman wrote: post #87
liotier wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Fire Upon the Deep (predicted fake news via "the net of a thousand lies") Predicted ? A Fire Upon the Deep published in 1993, at which date Usenet was already mature and suffering such patterns - although not at FaceTwitTok scale. But still, I love Vinge's take on information entropy across time, space and social networks. A Deepness in the Sky features the profession of programmer–archaeologist and I'm here for…

> Predicted ? A Fire Upon the Deep published in 1993, at which date Usenet was already mature and suffering such patterns I still remember the moment when I realised that the galactic network in 'Fire...' was in fact based on Usenet (which I used heavily at the time), especially how it was low bandwidth text (given the interstellar distances) and how it had a fair number of nutters posting nonsense across the galaxy…

Skrodes have six wheels, so…

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#113

Post by niplav »

unnamed76ri wrote: post #49
pontifier wrote: post #26

Oh man, I sincerely hope he was signed up for cryonics. If there was someone who deserved to see what the future holds, it was him.

From what I’ve read, cryonics seems like a massive scam pulled on rich people. The tissue damage in these frozen corpses is extensive and irreparable.

What evidence do you base those beliefs on?

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#114

Post by ca98am79 »

griffey wrote: post #99

I had the privilege to interview Vernor back in 2011, and continued to have interactions with him on and off in the intervening years. He was, as others have said, just immeasurably kind and thoughtful. I'm sad that I'll not have the opportunity to speak with him again.

I emailed him out of the blue and asked him to write more stories about Pham Nuwen. He replied and was really nice and we corresponded over a couple of emails.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#115

Post by gumby »

Simon321 wrote: post #20

He coined the concept 'singularity' in the sense of machines becoming smarter than humans what a time for him to die with all the advancements we're seeing in artificial intelligence. I wonder what he thought about it all. >The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge first in 1983 in an article that claimed that once humans create intelligences greater than their own, there will be a techn…

Just to clarify, the “singularity” conjectures a slightly different and more interesting phenomenon, one driven by technological advances, true, but its definition was not those advances.

It was more the second derivative of future shock: technologies and culture that enabled and encouraged faster and faster change until the curve bent essentially vertical…asymptotimg to a mathematical singularity.

An example my he spoke of was that, close to the singularity, someone might found a corporation, develop a technology, make a profit from it, and then have it be obsolete by noon.

And because you can’t see the shape of the curve on the other side of such a singularity, people living on the other side of it would be incomprehensible to people on this side.

Ray Lafferty’s 1965 story “Slow Tuesday Night” explored this phenomenon years before Toffler wrote “Future Shock”

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#116

Post by ViktorRay »

After reading this and all the comments on this thread I think I will pick up some of his books.

Too much science fiction nowadays is dystopian, cynical and pessimistic. I don’t have a problem with any individuals writing stuff like that if they really want to. People should have the freedom to write whatever they want. I just personally feel like there is too much of the cynical pessimistic stuff being written nowadays.

So seeing that Vernor Vinge wrote stores that portray science and humanity in positive hopeful and optimistic ways makes me very interested in reading his work.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#117

Post by dmd »

Please mirror, because more people should have a copy of this: https://3e.org/vvannot

This is Vinge's annotated copy of A Fire Upon the Deep. It has all his comments and discussion with editors and early readers. It provides an absolutely fascinating insight into his writing process and shows the depth of effort he put into making sure everything made sense.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#119

Post by throw1234651234 »

jl6 wrote: post #8

Oh man, this makes me sad. I remember reading A Fire Upon the Deep based on a Usenet recommendation, and then immediately wanting to read everything else he wrote. A Deepness in the Sky is a worthy sequel. He wasn’t prolific, but what he wrote was gold. He had a Tolkienesque ability to build world depth not by lengthy exposition, but by expert omission . A true name in sci-fi.

VV is up there with Stephenson and Gibson as the top 3. I don't put Asimov, etc in there since Asimov was hard sci-fi to the max and couldn't write a character to save his life, much like later Stephenson.

I wish I could find something else like VV's work that's sort of under-the-radar. I do have to mention that things like The Three Body Problem get hype, but are several tiers below VVs work.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#120

Post by throw1234651234 »

SECProto wrote: post #91
moomin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bizarrely, there's a second sequel to A Fire Upon The Deep, but it's never been digitised.

Children Of The Sky is certainly available digitally.

It's a bad book, nowhere close to the first two in any regard.
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