Murder by old age

This is a sequel to Vinge’s *[The Peace War]([canonical-url:2005/11/16/im-still-fan])*, and although I enjoyed it much more than *The Peace War* I cred­it some of that enjoy­ment to hav­ing the rich­ness of this par­tic­u­lar uni­verse spelled out with the ear­li­er book.

There were a num­ber of ele­ments here which made me curi­ous about the poten­tial con­nec­tion between the *Peace War*/*Marooned* uni­verse and the uni­verse shared by*[A Deep­ness in the Sky]([canonical-url:2005/09/21/spiders-no-not-mars])* and *[A Fire Upon The Deep]([canonical-url:2005/03/27/what-sci-fi-oughtta-be])*. There’s just some spec­u­la­tion about this, but I found a cou­ple of hints that might link them togeth­er, and the impli­ca­tions are a bit stag­ger­ing, as they would place the rise of the Qeng Ho empire lit­er­al­ly tens of mil­lions of years into the future. The rise of very large and rel­a­tive­ly intel­li­gent spi­ders sev­er­al megayears into Earth­’s future and the bleak prospects for sus­tained civ­i­liza­tion on Earth after much of the pop­u­la­tion goes explor­ing gives rise to sus­pi­cions about the nature of the plan­et cir­cling the On/Off star in *Deep­ness*.

Vinge’s char­ac­ters in *Marooned* were rich­er and more nuanced than those in *Peace War*. While the idea of super­im­pos­ing a mur­der-mys­tery over a «hard» sci-fi back­ground may seem a bit hack­neyed, Vinge address­es the irony of the sit­u­a­tion the char­ac­ters have encoun­tered and brings up some vital ques­tions about the nature and neces­si­ty of gov­ern­ment. What pur­pose can a police­man serve in a world after gov­ern­ments have ceased to exist? It’s almost sweet how well Vinge estab­lish­es that the inves­ti­ga­tion of the death is nec­es­sary both from prac­ti­cal and per­son­al standpoints.

As usu­al, Vinge takes very lit­tle for grant­ed and kept me engaged through the nov­el. It’s hard for any book to rise to the lev­el he set in *Deep­ness*, but damned if this guy does­n’t write a good novel.

Rumor mill has it that Vinge’s next nov­el will be a direct sequel to *Deep­ness*. I’m wait­ing with bat­ed breath.

(It’s the mid­dle of Octo­ber and I’ve only got­ten through six­teen books.… I may have to start read­ing short and easy books in order to get through anoth­er thir­ty-four in the next ten weeks!)