[extropy-chat] Vinge's next novel, Rainbow's End

[Hal Finney]

I see that Vernor Vinge's next novel, Rainbow's End, is available for
pre-purchase at Amazon, with a release date of May 2, 2006.  It is based
on the same world as his Hugo-winning short story "Fast Times at Fairmont
High".  An excerpt called Synthetic Serendipity is available online at
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jul04/0704far.html
Here is the description from Amazon.

(Note that this should be considered a spoiler for those who want to know
nothing about the novel before they read it.)

> Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths
> of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon
> the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction
> thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future
> world: San Diego, California, 2025.
>
> Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he
> remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties
> through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline,
> he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He
> was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though
> by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he's starting over,
> for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts . Living with his son's
> family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information
> age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers
> of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions,
> depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world
> is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you
> know how to wear your wireless access - through nodes designed into smart
> clothes - and to see the digital context - through smart contact lenses.
>
> With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont
> High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri
> and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging
> conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.
>
> In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in,
> this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated
> security analysts, including Robert's son and daughter-in law, two top
> people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect
> her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.
>
> As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked
> to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all
> the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He
> and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the
> change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the
> conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and
> satisfying as it is unexpected. This is science fiction at its very best,
> by a master storyteller at his peak.

I have to say that this starts off sounding interesting but degenerates
into a rather bizarre ending.  A worldwide protest over eliminating the
physical books at the library (presumably to replace them with online
versions)?  Perhaps as a science fiction author Vinge would see this as
a terrible catastrophe, but next to the prospect of world domination
that is mentioned in passing, it doesn't seem like such a big deal.
Or maybe the secret plot of the nefarious world-dominators is to make
books disappear?  Such a plan would be worthy of Dr. Evil, but it reads
more like satire than the hard sci-fi Vinge is known for.

One of the interesting aspects of Vinge's localizer technology is that
it offers tremendous utility but would also be extremely effective for
political repression.  At first when I read the part above about world
domination, I thought that was what he meant, that governments would use
the information from ubiquitous localizers to crack down on protest.
But then he goes on in the next paragraph to suggest that Homeland
Security is a good thing and is keeping the network safe, and that
it is some other force that is infiltrating the net and threatening
everyone's freedom.

I think Vinge needs to come to grips with the potential of a localizer
net for misuse by facist governments.  I don't know what his politics
are but this description makes it sound like this threat is somewhat
being whitewashed and government presented solely as a benevolent force.

The localizers in Deepness were in fact used as tools of the oppressive
Emergent government, while good-guy Pham was able to subvert the network
using secret backdoors and eventually defeat the Emergents (with help).
I don't know whether Vinge is flipping the roles in this book or what,
but it should be interesting to see.  That last scene at the UCSD library
still sounds strange though.

Hal

P.S. Here's a picture of the library, it's an interesting building that has
gotten a lot of architectural attention:
http://admissions.ucsd.edu/old_stuff/old_images/UCSD_lib640.jpg