The Witling [Paperback]

Vernor Vinge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2006

This second novel by multiple award-winner Vernor Vinge, from 1976, is a fast-paced adventure where galactic policies collide and different cultures clash as two scientists and their faith in technology are pitted against an elusive race of telekinetic beings.
 
Marooned on a distant world and slowly dying of food poisoning, two anthropologists are caught between warring alien factions engaged in a battle that will affect the future of the world's inhabitants and their deadly telekinetic powers. If the anthropologists can't help resolve the conflict between the feuding alien factions, no one will survive.
 
This edition features sixteen full-page illustrations by Doug Beekman.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Vernor Vinge has long been one of the best writers of innovative, thought-provoking, character-as-well-as-science-driven SF."
--Amazing Stories on Vernor Vinge
 
"Vernor Vinge is one of our most notable writers."
--Analog on True Names
 
"Vinge . . . is among the very best of the current crop of hard SF writers, producing work that is not only fast-paced and intellectually challenging, but also stylishly written and centered on carefully drawn characters."
--Publishers Weekly on A Deepness in the Sky

About the Author

Vernor Vinge has won five Hugo Awards, including one for each of his last three novels, A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and Rainbow’s End (2006). Known for his rigorous hard-science approach to his science fiction, he became an iconic figure among cybernetic scientists with the publication in 1981 of his novella "True Names," which is considered a seminal, visionary work of Internet fiction. His many books also include Marooned in Realtime and The Peace War.

 

Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin and raised in Central Michigan, Vinge is the son of geographers. Fascinated by science and particularly computers from an early age, he has a Ph.D. in computer science, and taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University for thirty years. He has gained a great deal of attention both here and abroad for his theory of the coming machine intelligence Singularity. Sought widely as a speaker to both business and scientific groups, he lives in San Diego, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (November 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076530886X
• ISBN-13: 978-0765308863
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #317,865 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent light SF adventure, January 2, 2007

By 

Graham (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Witling (Paperback)

An excellent light SF adventure. Our heroes are captured on a medieval planet where it turns out the locals have telekinetic powers. Lacking such powers, our heroes are regarded as inferior "witlings".

Vinge, as usual, writes well and has thought things through in interesting ways. Conservation of momentum causes interesting limits (and also interesting capabilities) for telekinesis. For example, it is cheap to move between points at the same longitude and opposite latitude. So the Summer kingdom has a single Imperial palace split between the hemispheres, and the Winter kingdom has annual migrations from North pole to South pole.

Not "A Fire Upon the Deep", but that's a very high bar.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book - You Should Enjoy!, April 23, 2000

By 

Aubrey (Jasper, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Witling (Paperback)

Some of the other reviewers have already told about the book, so I'll just say that I've enjoyed it very much. I've had the book for quite some time and I've reread it from time to time. I noticed some of the reviewers didn't appreciate the book at all which totally dumbfounds me! Oh well, we can't all have the same taste.
I also have to add that the book tells a wonderful story about how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When one person may see another person as homely or unattractive - someone else may see beauty. The human female character, Legwott, is seen as short, big-boned and homely by human standards. However, she is seen as lithe, fragil and beautiful (quite the fairy princess) by the alien humanoid race in the story.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Vinge was just getting warmed up, December 12, 2001

By 

Bob Carpenter (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Witling (Paperback)

Vernor Vinge was just getting warmed up with this short, but amusing 1976 offering. With "The Witling", Vinge violates the fundamental rule of fiction -- show, don't tell. There are long rambling internal monologues where all the super-cool technical ideas are introduced and explained. The characters all act and talk like graduate students in a research lab.

"The Witling" is well worth it for the ideas, but nowhere near as complete an offering in terms of either technology or characterization as his as his captivating Marooned in Realtime series or his already classic "A Deepness in the Sky". Like me, you might also enjoy witnessing the evolution of Vinge's craft. And while I don't want to give too much away, there is a notion of discontinuity of time and place in this work that should be familiar to fans of Vinge's later work.