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Vernor Vinge has died

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Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#281

Post by gecko6 »

webmaven wrote: post #259
dekhn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend a non-Dune Herbert book? I recall seeing Dosadi when I was a kid in the sci fi section of the library and just never picked it up. I generally like hard sci-fi and my main issue with Dune was that it went off into the weeds too many times.

A quirky (but nonetheless good) novel is "The Green Brain". It has some of Dune's ecological sensibility, but is otherwise completely different.

I _hated_ The Green Brain, but that was mostly because he had all the characters say everything in Portuguese, then repeat themselves in English. It was as if there was an echo in the room.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#282

Post by ars »

FromOmelas wrote: post #159
throw1234651234 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

not quite the same, but Iain M. Banks is in my top 5, along with Vernor Vinge.

I've so far only read Consider Phlebas, and while it's an interesting dystopia where humans have no purpose, and machines could do everything (if allowed), it's not an actual interesting story.

It's like he had the idea for the dystopia, with the main character fighting against the machines. And then tried to write a story around it. The central idea is interesting I guess, but the story built around it is not.

It doesn't help that the fight is futile, the machines as described are so powerful humanity doesn't stand a chance, so what kind of story can you make?

Maybe the later books are better.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#283

Post by kristianp »

mithras wrote: post #277
Casteil wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you - I love HN for things like this! A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my favorite books/series. RIP

Except for the weird dogs. "A deepness in the sky" is the epitome for me.

I couldn't buy the audio relaying wolf packs either, but enjoyed the other aspects of his fiction.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#284

Post by kristianp »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #28

I just finished reading Children of the Sky and re-reading A Deepness in the Sky. I've been finding with Vinge's work, along with Iain Bank's works, a lot of it is better the second time around. There's just so much to take in.

Unfortunately Banks passed away more than 10 years ago now. It doesn't seem like that long ago that his last book came out.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#285

Post by dwaltrip »

angiosperm wrote: post #65
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.

Let us not neglect The Peace War and Across Realtime . The former introduced memorable tragic figures, besides its singular vision.

Just finished this series literally an hour ago. Very fun reads! The second book was quite the page turner.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#286

Post by Walden98 »

dmd wrote: post #117

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.

[flagged]

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#288

Post by burrish »

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.

Did you ever ask him what he thought of today AI advancement ?

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#289

Post by Baeocystin »

dgacmu wrote: post #225
ptero wrote: post #57

His larger works are getting a lot of praise (justifiably, I read "A fire upon the deep" on a friend recommendation, then everything else Vinge wrote), some of his short stories strongly resonated with me, too. The cookie monster is, IMO, a thought-provoking marvel.

Thank you for recommending this! I hadn't read it, and it was delightful. It's online: https://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe44/lsff-book/Vernor%20Vinge%20-...

Oh, that was a great read! I'd never come across it before. Thank you for posting it.

Re: Vernor Vinge has died

#290

Post by holoduke »

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…

"We should destroy all AI out there before its taking over"
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