Across Realtime [Paperback]

Vernor Vinge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1991

'The intricately plotted progress of characters from near to farfuture...on an Earth which, like an abandon playground, has long ago been left behind by an evolving humanity...human-scale action within a vast canvas' The Excyclopedia of Science Fiction. Encompassing time-travel, powerful mystery and the future history of humanity to its last handful of survivors, Across Realtime spans millions of years and isan utterly engrossing SF classic. 'You can hardly turn the pages fast enough. As sheer entertainment, it's a winner' Locus

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'You can hardly turn the pages fast enough. As sheer entertainment, it's a winner' -- Locus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Baen; First Edition edition (November 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671720988
• ISBN-13: 978-0671720988
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #804,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget Asimov, read this!, January 26, 2001

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Across Realtime (Mass Market Paperback)

It has been said that 90% of everything is crap. This is not strictly true; for example, 95% of science-fiction is crap. When I was younger I read science-fiction indiscriminately. Now that I am older I'm starting to pay a great deal more attention to questions of literary quality and I often find myself frustrated by the incredibly bad writing in most science-fiction. However, I found that Across Realtime very definitely falls in the remaining 5% that makes sci-fi worth reading: in fact, Vinge has written some of the best genre fiction I have ever read.

Across Realtime is actually two closely related novels and a short story. The first novel, The Peace War, introduces Vinge's star concept, the "bobble", and also chronicles the demise of the Peace Authority. Following The Peace War is Vinge's short story The Ungoverned, which introduces contract police officer Wil Brierson, further develops the bobble concept and serves as a nice little tract for the author's libertarian-anarchist political views. Finally, and in my opinion the crown jewel of the book, comes Marooned in Realtime, a masterfully plotted mystery story spanning 50 million years into the future. Marooned in Realtime is centered around Wil Brierson and a small band of friends trying to restart the human race in a post-post-apocalyptic world of decaying high-technology. Marooned is so excellent that it alone is worth the price of admission.

I think that there are primarily two reasons for Across Realtime's success.

First, the book deals with strong, unique and thoroughly expounded ideas. Almost by definition science-fiction is supposed to deal with ideas, but more often than not the ideas that authors choose to examine are old-hat and stale by the time they deal with them. Vinge's ideas definitely aren't though: the bobbles are a fascinating concept and he handles his post-apocalyptic society with real style. He not only comes up with original ideas but he carries them all the way through to their logical conclusions. He realizes that "ideas have consequences" and that you can't change a society's technology and organization without fundamentally changing the people who live in that society.

Secondly, Across Realtime is written with outstanding characterization, especially for a science-fiction novel. The only other sci-fi I've read with better characterization is Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (which, incidentally, I also highly recommend). All too often the left-brain writers who dominate this genre play fast and loose with their characters, destroying their character believability and thus savaging the value and truth of the entire story. Good characterization requires right-brain and emotional thinking. Even though Vinge is a mathematician and computer-scientist with the University of California in San Diego (really left-brain), he proves that he is more than capable of the kind of thinking that makes for strong characters. The young genius hoodlum Wili, the tinker-scientist Paul Naismith and police officer Wil Brierson are all memorable people and they carry the events of the story very well.

The copy of Across Realtime I read seems to be difficult to obtain; I read a copy that my Dad bought through ABE Books for $25. We may have overpaid a little, considering that the book that was originally a $6 paperback, but even so the going rate is easily $18+ from what I've seen on the 'net. If you want to read Across Realtime you can either buy it from Amazon.com for $19 and accept the four to six week wait or you can try to find it used.

Highly Recommended.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mind-blowing-idea SF at its finest, August 20, 2000

By 

Omer Belsky (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Across Realtime (Mass Market Paperback)

Across Realtime (My version) is an omnibus collection of two novels by Vernor Vinge: The Peace War, and Marooned in Realtime. The Second book, especially, is among the best SF books I've read.

The Peace War is, seemingly, a fairly standard SF novel: in a post apocalyptic world, a dictatorship took over, and the brave heroes fight it off. Except that it is much more than that - Vinge's talent, his characters and his ideas all turn this B movie premise to an original, powerful SF novel. Especially important is Vinge's simple but brilliant invention of the 'Bubble's - spheres which are completely shielded off the world, in which time doesn't move.

'Marrooned in Realtime' takes the premise established in the first novel, and pushes it beyond belief. The beginning of 'Marooned', especially, is idea oriented SD at it's finest - you read going WOW every two seconds.

Idea oriented SF is probnably the hardest thing in the universe to write - you need not only to know how to write well, not only to understand science, but also to come up with a scientific idea which has mind opening reprecussions. I think I can count on 1 hand the number of times I've seen Idea oriented SF done right - this is one of the prime examples.

If you're a lover of SF, Across Realtime will be a parade of ideas, characters, action and thrills. So don't miss it.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard Science Fiction At It's Best, May 27, 2001

By 

Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Across Realtime (Mass Market Paperback)

I shall not bore you with another rehash of the outline of this novel, other than to say it is a sweeping saga spanning millions of years. Vinge really illustrates how we rely on our technology, and have largely lost our survival skills to cope with nature on an individual basis. Could we survive as a species if there were only a few hundred humans left? Vinge is a scientist by trade and it shows, he definitely makes you think! This novel has a very good base of scientific fact mixed with a great plot and excellent character developement, and can stand up to anything well known writers such as Asimov or Bradbury or Heinlein ever wrote, and that is saying a lot. As I began to read this book, I read perhaps ten or twelve pages a day, but I became so entranced by the story that later I found it hard to put down, it was so good. I loved the ending of the book, especially the last few paragraphs.