Publisher: Tor Books

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])* … Read the rest

Of the three Vinge nov­els I’ve read, I think this is my third favorite, which of course sounds as though it was dis­ap­point­ing. It was not. With intrigu­ing ideas, well-thought-out sce­nar­ios, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al char­ac­ters and keen pac­ing, I’d rec­om­mend *The Peace War* to any­one I liked. 

Yet, some of the themes were cer­tain­ly famil­iar, the char­ac­ters were per­haps not all as fleshed out as they could have been, and nowhere did the clever ideas make my mind reel from forced par­a­digm shift … Read the rest

I think I’ve writ­ten before that Ver­nor Vinge has restored my love for sci­ence fic­tion. For years I’d been mourn­ing the genre and then came across *[A Fire Upon The Deep]([canonical-url:2005/03/27/what-sci-fi-oughtta-be])*, which sur­prised me by not talk­ing down to me. As much as sci-fi writ­ers are wont to make assump­tions about the read­ers’ knowl­edge of tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence, rarely do they break out and assume the abil­i­ty to read and infer the way per­haps … Read the rest

I tried to describe what I liked about this book by telling my father, «it’s con­fus­ing.» I’m not sure that I made any sense then, but this is what sci­fi should be. Vinge presents us with alien races and the­o­ries of galac­tic orga­ni­za­tion almost entire­ly with­out expo­si­tion. There’s no «The Kzin­ti were a razor-toothed war­rior race resem­bling eight-foot tall cats» or any­thing like that. One alien race the read­er is intro­duced to entire­ly through first-per­son accounts from the aliens’ per­spec­tive. … Read the rest

Book #3 of my [50bookchallenge](http://50bookchallenge.livejournal.com/): Frank Her­bert’s *Whip­ping Star*. I’m a fan of Frank Her­bert’s writ­ing and have been for as long as I can remem­ber. Even when he has­n’t writ­ten «high-con­cept» sci-fi, he’s still usu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed in writ­ing smart, high­ly read­able pulp. *Whip­ping Star* is one of these.

I read *Dosa­di Exper­i­ment*, the sequel to *Whip­ping Star* a while back, so some of the sur­prise rev­e­la­tions here were old news to me, but also I … Read the rest