Customer Reviews

The Peace War

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Stumbling upon this book in my local library, I decided to once again enter a world created by Vernor Vinge. Several years ago I read both of Vinge's awarding winning books: A Fire Upon the Deep & A Deepness in the Sky. Simply put, I have yet to be disappointed by Vinge.

In The Peace War, a rogue research group, later calling itself the Peace Authority, takes control of the world after perfecting the art of conjuring and projecting bobbles...impenetrable spherical force-fields. Fifty years after they've taken down nearly every national government on the planet by negating the governments' every weapon with the bobble, a rebellion is finally stirring, a rebellion led by Paul Naismith...a Tinker whose mastery of Banned technology (high-tech stuff was banned by the Authority because it presents a threat to the Authority's power...namely the sole proprietorship of the bobble technology) puts Naismith in the perfect position to help bring about an end (with the help of his fellow Tinkers) to the Peace Authority's tyrannical rule. But Naismith is an elderly man (around 80), and knows his time is waning. Because of this, Naismith takes on an apprentice, someone he can pass his Tinker secrets to...an heir. He chooses (or has thrust upon him, depending on the point of view) Wili Wachendon...for most intents and purposes a thief...but also a mathematical genesis of the highest caliber -- once Naismith instructs him on some fundamentals anyway. Naismith and Wachendon, along with their Tinker friends and a few others, ultimately confront the Peace Authority on their own turf...in more ways than one...where nothing short of the fate of the world lies in the hands of Naismith, Wachendon, and their friends.

Once one puts aside the unbelievability factor -- conqueroring every government in the world, even with a technology as incredible as the bobble -- the book is really quite good. The bobble is an interesting concept that Vinge handles quite adeptly...for instance, in the shadows of the large bobbles that surround entire cities, the surrounding ecosystem is dramatically altered because of a change in climactic patterns brought forcefully on by the bobbles. I found this to be a very plausible and common-sense consequence of using the bobbles that I'm not sure every author would have considered. Also, I found it interesting that at least one of Naismith's devices (I won't say which, because it is one of the minor mysteries that gets solved early on in the book) seems to be an "ancestor" to one of the devices used in A Deepness in the Sky written about 15 years later.

Overall, The Peace War is certainly worth reading if you are a fan of Vinge, a techy, or are just plain interested in good scifi.

I am a HUGE fan of "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky", but this book doesn't measure up. It's got an interesting idea (if implausible), but nowhere near what Vinge came up with for his other two books.

I also found the characters a bit thin. Paul, Wili, and the rest just don't seem real to me. I don't have a sense of how these people got to where they are now. So, Paul is a genius, and has something to do with the origins of the bobbles. Great, but what happened to him in the 50 years that the bobbles have been around? How did he get to where he is? Unanswered questions.

Overall, I'd skip this and stick with the other two books I mentioned.

I'm a big fan of Vinge, and I thought this book was really good, though not at the same level as "Fire on the Deep" or "Deepness in the Sky".

As a scientist, I have to admit that I really liked the idea of scientists forcing peace on the world through their inventions. And, no doubt, it would be a disaster if this were to occur in real life...

The only quip I have with the book is that none of the characters were very compelling, due to a lack of development. Superior character development is one of the biggest reasons why I would recommend reading "Fire" and "Deepness" before this one.

Using its superior weapon, the Peace Authority grabbed control of the world. During the brief struggle an unknown nation released deadly biological agents. Billions died, and the Peace Authority stepped in to pick up the pieces. In many places civilisation was left to revert to feudalism.

So now its fifty years later and the world has had fifty years without a war. The Authority preserves the peace by stamping out all high energy physics research, they do not permit any biological experimentation and all large-scale weapons of war are forbidden.

But everything has its price. Peace has been achieved at the cost of crushing of the human spirit and the stagnation of human potential. The Authority also tries to suppress innovation by siphoning off the young intellectual cream to its stronghold, the former Livermore University campus. There they are trained to work for and think like the Peace Authority.

The organisation's power is derived from the possession of the ultimate weapon. The invincible, impenetrable force fields known as the `Bobble'. Any transgressors are immediately enclosed in this spherical force field and are trapped for all eternity dying slowly from asphyxiation in an airless tomb.

Unbeknown to the Authority, small groups have been working together on low energy, high tech research. The fruits of this research take the form of intelligent weapons, untraceable communications and computing power many orders of magnitude above anything the Peace Authority possesses. These groups known as the Tinkers also have as their ally Paul Hoehler the genius that invented the Bobble and unwittingly unleashed the Peace Authority on the world. Paul has been trying to for fifty years to undo this harm, but time is running out for Paul. He is now old and frail, he needs to find an apprentice to assume his mantle, but genius is a rare commodity and the Peace Authority is finally closing in on him.

This is a beautifully written novel detailing an ` David and Goliath' struggle between the Peace Authority and the Tinkers. It is also a graphic lesson in why totalitarianism doesn't work, no matter how good the intentions of the rulers (the road to Hell is paved with such good intentions!). There is no such thing as a good dictatorship.

While I was reading this story I couldn't help but note the many amusing parallels between the Tinker's struggle with the Authority and the Linux OS developers battle against a certain popular software company. Like the Tinkers the Linux community are innovative, adaptable, fast moving and technically advanced. Like the Authority the popular software company is a ponderous leviathan that is slow to react and frankly has trouble innovating. Who will win the struggle? Read this excellent book and decide for yourself.

I had high expectations after reading Deep Space. This one is a let down. The story concept had tremendous potential,but mostly was unrealized. I sense that he was in a hurry to finish this one. Many subplots could have been developed, more background story leading up to the Peace taking over, more character development, etc, etc. I expected much more.

Vernor Vinge is an extremely talented writer and mathematician. I say he's a very talented writer because he writes detailed, deep, believable characters that you can relate to very well and he introduces mathematics into his writing.

This is one of two books that I know of that deal with a mathematical concept that Vinge invented called the "BOBBLE." In the not so far future, some scientists discover that using novel technologies and lots of power they can create these things called bobbles which are giant bubbles that can be used to encapsulate cars, cities, pretty much anything. The bobbles are roughly spherical aberrations of space time - nothing can get inside a bobble and nothing can get out, not light, not air, not a nuclear blast -- nothing can destroy a bobble. Bobbles reflect light and heat perfectly and are perfectly smooth (no dents or anything) and has no friction...if a human puts his hand on a bobble's surface, it feels warm not because the bobble is warm but because it reflects the warmth of the hand that rests on its surface. If the contents inside a bobble are lighter than the outside, it floats, etc. Bobbles can't be built inside bobbles and they can't intersect each other. The concept is dizzyingly cool and makes for a great science fiction premise.

These scientists who invent the bobbles decide to end all wars and as such they set out to bobble up nuclear silos, cities, anything that can be used to wage war. In the end they wind up bobbling most of the major metropolises of the world - thereby killing hundreds of millions of people who were trapped in the bobbles and there is writing in the book that poses some conjecture about how those poor people must've perished inside the bobbles soon after they were encapsulated.

The book Peace War then is about the inventor of the bobbles technology who did not agree with its use and who escapes early after the "Peace War Started," and this scientist is a leader of a resistance against the Peacers, as they are called. I particularly love how Vinge uses mathematics to find shortcuts which is so very in line with how mathematicians think - what wonderful minds they have.

I won't give much more away just save to know that bobbles are much more complex mathematically than I described above and there are many secrets and peculiarities that Vernor Vinge comes up with as the book progresses.

Overall, I found the concept very attractive and I found the characters warm, comfortable, and very believable - its one of the best sci fi finds in quite some time.

This book is from an earlier era of science fiction maybe middle 80s when publishers and the market rewarded writers who came up with unique and wondrous ideas for sci fi settings.

Lets just say that Peace War is great. There's a second book called Marooned in Realtime and the both were once put into a omnibus titled Across Realtime. I purchased and read Across Realtime - a title which gives away some other fantastic properties of bobbles.

So:

The Peace War is the book of how the Peace Authority (the ones who bobbled up the cities and war machines of the world) are brought down by a rebellion.

Marooned in Realtime - is a detective story about a crime that is committed in a very unusual way using bobble technology. Also worth reading but very different from the Peace War

Across Realtime - is the omnibus that includes both The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime.

Good luck exploring bobbles.

Some do good folks come up with a technogology that can enclose objects withing a large mirror like sphere that cannot be penetrated. Presumably all within it are killed. That does not stop them from using this device coupled with computer tech and large power sources to bobble up all of the major weapons systems and weapons bases in the world in an effort to create peace on earth.
We begin the book with a plane crash. We discover a severly depopulated planet that has suffered from numerous man made plagues that were released just after the Peace Authority bobbled all the major military powers into ineffectiveness. None but the authority can utilize mass production or large power sources. We are introduced to an old man who may have some insight to what happened 50 years ago when the Authority came to power and he burns with the desire to bring them down. All of this is predominantly seen through the eyes of a teenager with remarkable intelligence as he is saved from homelessness and perhaps slavery in the predominantly feudal world he was brought up in.
I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to picking up Marooned in realtime. My only question is how the heck did I not read this 1984 novel or hear about it between then and 2007.

This started off a little dry as there were quite a few characters to establish and a lot of bouncing around between them. Eventually, many of these characters come to the same location and the story becomes easier to follow and more fast-paced.

The ideas in the novel are relatively unique and clever. I definitely enjoyed the creativity.

This is a very entertaining hard-scifi novel set in the near future. Vinge imagines our world with a single technological advancement -- the bobble -- introduced. The imagined future is sufficiently credible to make this an entertaining story.

The characters are interesting, but insufficiently fleshed out. We read an "explanation" of Miguel's motivations, but that explanation seems a little to facile. Allison notes that Paul seems to want her to leave, but we don't really get into the internal conflicts that must be racing through Paul to give her that impression. That Della would fall for Miguel seems only to move the story, not to reveal Della's heart. The examples could continue.

The plot, however, is briskly paced and well structured, with victory wrapped around defeat, wrapped around victory, in an interesting overlay.

There are some minor problems with timing. Della seems to contact Avery while still under Wili's quarrantine. And Avery doesn't seem to have enough time after he fully understood the bobble to use that knowledge in the Renaissance plan.

Don't look for deep insights into philosophy, science, politics, or the human person in this book. (Contrast it with Jablokov's "Carve the Sky," which is a moving, poetic meditation on the significance of aesthetics.) Instead, it is a well-paced, entertaining visit to a fairly credible future.

I tend to steer clear of fiction in general but read this because I was going to meet the author... Thank goodness! Thought provoking ideas abound, excellent characters that behave realistically in a 'realistic' story - suspended disbelief is not merely hanging by a thread here. I won't spoil it, but the ending does not blow sunshine up one's rear in an attempt to have that 'happily ever after' that I absolutely loathe about fiction. AND the author is a nice guy. Excellent book.