Can someone explain this? One three occasions in the essay, including the title. he adds a cryptic "2001 Tor". What does that mean? It does not exist in the many other mentions of the same book title. Also, Amazon believes the publication year is 2002. What is "2001 Tor"?
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
41–50 of 73 posts
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#42Can someone explain this? One three occasions in the essay, including the title. he adds a cryptic "2001 Tor". What does that mean? It does not exist in the many other mentions of the same book title. Also, Amazon believes the publication year is 2002. What is "2001 Tor"?
2001 is a year. Tor is a publisher.
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#43Can someone explain this? One three occasions in the essay, including the title. he adds a cryptic "2001 Tor". What does that mean? It does not exist in the many other mentions of the same book title. Also, Amazon believes the publication year is 2002. What is "2001 Tor"?
Per [0], the book was published by Tor in 2001.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Verno...
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#44I really like his books. A fun anecdote is that I had him as a college professor in the early 90's before I knew that he was a SciFi author. Among other things, he taught me how to write pre-emptive task switching in 68k assembly language. Fun times!
I liked his test structure: write "I don't know" for minimal credit opposed to wasting his time with a false paragraph. Also, a very prepared prof.
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deepness has the same "split brain". Half the story is set in the future, but the other chapters are told as a picaresque fantasy in what appears to be a kind of fictional alternative reality circa World War I, that is eventually revealed to be a "humanized" version of the alien civilization's history (similar to how the aliens are described in The Three-Body Problem). I didn't love A Fire Upon the Deep because, whil…
Just a note that the dogs/Tines aren’t telepathic but communicated via high frequency sound. The idea was exploring an entity that existed as a society of minds and how that would look from a practical perspective. There’s a story in the compilation discussed here that feature the Tines in another setting one may find interesting.
Ah, it's been a while. It doesn't change anything, though. They might as well have been telepathic, since it appeared they formed a sort of hive mind when close to each other.
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deepness and Marooned in Realtime are his favorites of mine. Both sequels to less impressive novels imo. I like his writing in general but those two were really brilliant.
Marooned in Realtime is probably my all time favorite work of science fiction. It altered my perspective on a lot of things.
I love a good murder mystery. And the libertarian/anarchist setting is really fun.
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deepness has the same "split brain". Half the story is set in the future, but the other chapters are told as a picaresque fantasy in what appears to be a kind of fictional alternative reality circa World War I, that is eventually revealed to be a "humanized" version of the alien civilization's history (similar to how the aliens are described in The Three-Body Problem). I didn't love A Fire Upon the Deep because, whil…
Just a note that the dogs/Tines aren’t telepathic but communicated via high frequency sound. The idea was exploring an entity that existed as a society of minds and how that would look from a practical perspective. There’s a story in the compilation discussed here that feature the Tines in another setting one may find interesting.
I had to read the book a couple of times before I completely understood this, but I'm pretty sure there's an implicit metaphor that ties the two plots together, and it's about the feedback between technological progress and intelligence, and how physical constraints (or accidents of evolution) limit progress. The society of the Tines is constrained by their peculiar path to sentience - they can't split up pack members and they can't co-mingle packs without losing coherence. From their perspective, early 20th century electronics are the equivalent of neural prosthetics, and might as well be gifts from the Transcend.
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marooned in Realtime is probably my all time favorite work of science fiction. It altered my perspective on a lot of things.
I love a good murder mystery. And the libertarian/anarchist setting is really fun.
If you haven't already read "The Ungoverned" I recommend it as well - although much shorter it's effectively the second part in a trilogy, bridging the two novels and featuring the same main character as "Marooned in Realtime".
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#49The fact that the malevolent AI could escape by buffer-overflowing a sensor, but didn’t realize that only ram-drive ships were being targeted was insulting plot-wise.
Note the zones, though: the AI was far smarter in the environment where it did the former.
Re: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first Hyperion book is excellent, the second is decent, but for anybody not in the know - do yourself a favor and skip the two that follow.
Strongly agree. There are some enjoyable bits in 3&r4 ( I just enjoy episodic travel adventures), but for the most part they are pretty bad, especially compared to the masterpiece of the first one (the second was an adequate ending to the story).
Endymion and Rise were to Simmons what The Dying Earth was to Silenus. ;)
They're sequels set in the same setting, with a few cool ideas, but the literary flair -- the magic -- just isn't there.