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Rainbows End

By Vernor Vinge

(26)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780812536362

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Book Description

Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025.

Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he’s starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts. Living with his son’s family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access—through nodes designed into smart clothes—and to see the digital context—through smart contact lenses.

With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.

In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in, this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated security analysts, including Robert’s son and daughter-in law, two top people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.

As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and satisfying as it is unexpected. This is science fiction at its very best, by a master storyteller at his peak.

Critics

Rainbows End By Vernor Vinge

Exciting new releases make this a wonderful month for science fiction and fantasy readers. The first piece of good news is the publication of Vernor Vinge's new novel Rainbows End. A mathematician and computer scientist, Vinge came up with the concep ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

Rainbows End

Literature has the rather peculiar potential to thrill the reader. But what is meant by that verb changes depending on the book. We typically want to call lightweight, action-packed books that evoke this emotion "thrillers" and generally dismiss them ... (read full critics)

bookotron published on Sun, 12 Sep 2010

1 Review

I was expecting ... I don't know ... something different. The book spent more time playing with the imagined technologies, than the plot.
There seemed a lot of open plots left dangling, not enough action during most of it, and not enough revelations or "things that make you go Mmm".
Goo ... (continue)

I was expecting ... I don't know ... something different. The book spent more time playing with the imagined technologies, than the plot.
There seemed a lot of open plots left dangling, not enough action during most of it, and not enough revelations or "things that make you go Mmm".
Good writer though. I would definitely check out some of his other works.

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flanderb said on Feb 28, 2008 | Add your feedback