Rainbows End: A Novel With One Foot In The Future (Hardcover)

by Vernor Vinge (Author)
Key Phrases: silent messaging, library riot, analyst pool, Robert Gu, Mysterious Stranger, San Diego (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Set in San Diego, Calif., this hard SF novel from Hugo-winner Vinge (A Deepness in the Sky) offers dazzling computer technology but lacks dramatic tension. Circa 2025, people use high-tech contact lenses to interface with computers in their clothes. "Silent messaging" is so automatic that it feels like telepathy. Robert Gu, a talented Chinese-American poet, has missed much of this revolution due to Alzheimer's, but now the wonders of modern medicine have rehabilitated his mind. Installed in remedial classes at the local high school, he tries to adjust to this brave new world, but soon finds himself enmeshed in a somewhat quixotic plot by elderly former University of California–San Diego faculty members to protest the destruction of the university library, now rendered superfluous by the ubiquitous online databanks. Unbeknownst to Robert, he's also a pawn in a dark international conspiracy to perfect a deadly biological weapon. The true nature of the superweapon is never made entirely clear, and too much of the book feels like a textbook introduction to Vinge's near-future world. (May)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
A multiple Hugo Award?winning author (A Fire Upon the Deep; A Deepness in the Sky) and former professor of mathematics at San Diego State University, Vernor Vinge writes as if he's spent some time in 2025. This novel's setting, contemporary with the author's Fast Times at Fairmont High, is one of instantaneous technology where accomplished hackers wield profound influence. Reviewers applaud Vinge's avoidance of science-fiction traps like information dumps and rootless "techno-bedazzlement" in favor of emotional storylines and plausible—and sometimes frightening—insights into where technology is moving humanity. <BR>Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312856849
• ISBN-13: 978-0312856847
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #278,861 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed Vinge Fan, July 1, 2006

By	Russell Clothier (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I gave it a shot.

I've never liked cyberpunk William Gibsonesque sci fi, so the jacket description of Rainbow's End didn't sound promising. But come on, I thought, this is Vernor Effin' Vinge! A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are my all-time favorite sci fi novels: rich, complex, with lots of action and endearing, fully-realized alien cultures. Surely Vinge could find gold in the cyberhills.

Now I'm 200 pages into the book, and I've given up. Try as I might, I can't force myself to care - about the unlikable characters, their indecipherable actions, or the unpleasant world they inhabit. The last 50 pages has dealt with the main (?) character learning to use his virtual reality computer interface web browser contact lenses. Yep, it's that exciting. Around him, mysterious virtual entities do mysterious virtual things. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? Who cares? There are interesting ideas, but the world and the characters are dull and off-putting.

Of the hundreds of sci-fi novels I've read, only three have provoked such apathy that I could not bring myself to finish them. That one of them was written by my hero, Vernor Vinge, is a deep disappointment.

47 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful story and prediction of the future of the internet , May 25, 2006

By	Tim F. Martin (Madison, AL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

_Rainbows End_ by Vernor Vinge is an excellent science fiction novel by in my opinion one of the best novelists in the genre. This story is in the same setting as his earlier novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" which he finished in August 2001 and first published in _The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge_. The central character of the novella, a young student at a San Diego high school (really a middle school), Juan Orozco, makes a reappearance in this novel, though as one of several important characters, not the chief protagonist.

The setting of the novel (and the short story for that matter) is San Diego in the year 2025, which the reader discovers is a world in which the internet connects people and places in ways not possible today. Miniaturization has advanced to such a degree that most people, all the time, have operating computers on them, embedded and weaved into otherwise normally looking clothing called wearables (if someone has on clothing with a computer in it with the capacity to go online he or she is said to be "wearing") and are able to interact with these computers and the internet via special contact lenses. When people first start mastering wearables and their associated contacts they often have to type in the air with their fingers on a phantom keyboard, made visible to the user thanks to their contacts, but as a user becomes more proficient they become able to access computer resources by much more subtle gestures, including particular facial and eye movements.

Most areas of the civilized world allow people to maintain a connection to the internet at all times via a vast array of devices embedded in buildings, on the ground, even flying through the air (though areas called deadzones exist, where either thanks to a paucity of devices or a total lack of devices either only a much reduced connection is possible or no connection of any kind can be made; these areas might be found in parts of buildings not normally visited by the public or even those who work there - such as in sewers - or in wilderness areas such as might be found in national parks).

Thanks to their wearables, contacts, and the network nodes that are readily accessible with no effort at all, most people are not only always online but always using some aspect of the internet. Access to online information and computational power is available in seconds. There is no need for cell phones, as one can connect with virtually anyone in the world in seconds. Anyone can interact and collaborate with anyone else on a shared project no matter how distant they are, whether it is a school science project or a business venture. Anyone can virtually attend a play, a sporting event, or just visit with friends, quite visible to those wearing and even able to interact with the real environment to varying degrees depending upon the user's skill and local available resources.

Perhaps even more interesting, one can choose to see one's surroundings in an online, artificial format, one created by others. Utility workers for instance can choose a viewpoint that to their eyes reveals all underground cables and pipes with words floating in the air above these structures conveying valuable information. Many buildings - though not generally private homes - can be seen through, revealing the inhabitants within.

Even more startling, entire fantasy landscapes can be seen instead of the real environment. Cities, chambers of commerce, entertainment businesses, and groups of private individuals called belief circles can construct simple or very elaborate virtual realities which overlay the real environment, visible through a user's contacts. Many different realities co-exist, the user needing only to choose the one he or she wants to view. These realities can be just better looking versions of the real world, such as a city with nicer looking buildings, better views, fuller and healthier trees, etc. or completely fantastic realms based on the works of say Tolkien, Pratchett, or even Pokemon-esque settings, the user seeing instead of a person's two story home a castle, instead of a police helicopter a dragon, etc. The fact that no one drives anymore - cars are all automatic and computer controlled - makes this a great deal safer than it may sound.

Well, enough about the setting. The story is a very good one, involving what are at first two seemingly unconnected plot threads. The first thread we are introduced to involves the security agencies of Europe and Asia, whose alert monitoring of the world's communications, mass media, advertising, and sports events discover two rather unusual anomalies, perhaps unconnected, perhaps not. Though the two events are seemingly innocuous (whether taken together or separately), the vast resources of computer power and analysts that are brought to bear on these events suggest to security personnel that someone is very subtly testing a new weapons system, perhaps a YGBM weapon (YGBM stands for You-Gotta-Believe-Me, jargon for mind control weapons). In a world nervous after decades of fighting terrorists and leery of increasingly easily available weapons of mass destruction, an investigation is quickly and quietly launched.

The other thread focuses on the life of Robert Gu, a noted poet from the late 20th and early 21st centuries who nearly succumbed to Alzheimer's but thanks to modern technology has been saved and even made seemingly younger, getting a whole new lease on life. Having to reenroll in high school (along with his granddaughter, Miri, and Juan Orozco) to learn how to live and work in today's society (along with other much older students, trying to reconnect with a world quite different from that which they were born in), Robert, Miri, Juan, Miri's parents (Bob and Alice) and others somehow manage to become involved in the covert action to find the YGBM weapon.

The two plot threads connected very well together and made for a great story. I would love to see more novels or short stories in this setting.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to Vinge's usual standards, April 30, 2007

By	W. Timothy Holman - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Rainbows End (Mass Market Paperback)

Vernor Vinge is absolutely my favorite scifi author. ""True Names", The Peace War", "Marooned in Realtime", "A Fire Upon the Deep", and a "Deepness in the Sky" are absolute masterpieces. When I heard that "Rainbows End" was nominated for the Hugo, I simply assumed that Dr. Vinge had hit yet another one out of the ballpark, and that he would be picking up his third Hugo for best novel in 2006.

And then I read the book.

"Rainbows End" is not a bad book. Vinge does a good job of world building, although many of the concepts had already been already covered in his short stories. The problem is the plot. First, Vinge spends too much time on Robert Gu relative to other, more interesting characters. Second, Vinge leaves a huge number of plot threads dangling. What is the Rabbit, exactly? What happens to Vaz once his scheme collapses? What happens between Robert and his ex-wife? Clearly Vinge intends to write a sequel, but unlike his previous novels, "Rainbows End" reads like part one of a two-part story, with all of the attendant drawbacks.

Another problem I have with the book is Vinge's proposition that by 2025 a sufficiently sophisticated interface will effectively provide below-average kids with the ability to perform programming and engineering feats that would tax the capabilities of modern-day experts. As an engineering professor, I don't really buy it. I deal every day with young men and women who have been raised with computers since they were toddlers. Most of them are simply users of devices and programs they do not and cannot understand. Only a hardcore minority are the true geeks who can create something new, just as in every generation past. While I have no doubt that technology will make some amazing strides by 2025, it won't make geniuses out of people who lack the ability to critically analyze what the software tells them. I am a techno-optimist in the sense that I do believe that the Singularity or some reasonable approximation will be hitting us sooner than we think, but I tend to believe that most people will simply be along for the ride when it happens.

Hopefully we'll see Vernor Vinge return to greatness in his next novel, which I've heard will be another "Zones of Thought" novel. As many others have commented, any author is entitled to an occasional so-so story, and this one is clearly Vinge's.