Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10574 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-17
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

SFX
'Rainbows End raises frequent smiles through the sheer ingenuity of ideas and technologies, and fully deserve its Hugo shortlisting.'

Synopsis
Robert Gu is a world-renowned poet and recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a new cure, he discovers that the world has changed. 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. 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 and to see the digital context through smart contact lenses. With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination. 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 ...'

In the grand tradition of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge just turned the future upside-down in Rainbow's End' Charles Stross.

Customer Reviews

Complex Tech thriller that grows on rereading
I've been a big fan of Vinge for a long time, but more so after "a fire upon the deep". His last two were big space opera plots with a dash of new technology thrown in, more on the ian m banks thread. This novel goes in a very different direction and moves very strongly into the thriller rather the science fiction territory. The trends explored here, fully immersive technology, difficulty of multi generational family relationships, knowing just who your allies are in a much more connected world and the challenge of sudden technology step change, made this some what jerky in places.
However I found on rereading , a few months later the book grew on me and the multi layer, multi threaded story started to become more coherent.
Vinge's background, as a professor of computing science shines through in places, particularly in his assumption of audience understanding of technology challenges.
Finally there is a real juicy hook here in the presence of a complex "AI" character just crying out for a sequel. What are you "rabbit?"
I'd say "persevere with this book" it rewards persistence

Rather good
Vinge has sometimes left me a bit cold, but I rather enjoyed this Hugo winner. In particular, it was interesting to have a central character whose Alzheimer's is cured, and this is only the start of his and his family's problems.

That's not the main part of the plot, which is a complex tale of intelligence (both agencies and artificial), set in the brilliantly realised environment of UC San Diego a few decades from now. Of course, it's a landscape Vinge must know well, but I think he has brought it to life in loving detail here. Indeed, I have to rate his worldbuilding (of a familiar world) rather ahead of the complex story, involving three generations of the same family in the conspiracy by sheer coincidence.

Have I been reading a different book of the same title??
I do not understand the rather negative reviews this book has. To my mind it is excellent -- way better than "A Deepness in the Sky" and almost as good as (though not at all like) "A Fire upon the Deep". It describes in a satisfyingly complex way a world beginning to accelerate towards Vingean Singularity, with all its glories and terrors. The choice of Robert Gu, a "retread" ex genius poet as the central character is very effective, providing the reader with a link to the more comprehensible point of view. And unlike most SF protagonists, Gu is hardly a one-dimensional cut-out. He's a real SOB, for whom one can't help but feeling some sympathy as the story unfolds and we see his painful adjustments to his new status.

The book starts with a bang, describing the discovery of and the initial responses to the newest Bad Thing, which turns out to be "YGBM". No I won't spoil the joke by unpacking the acronym, but I thought the obvious sly reference to ICBM quite funny. Which brings me to another aspect of "Rainbow's End": it kept me chuckling throughout, without being overtly jokey -- a pretty rare achievement.

All in all, one of the best SF books I ever read (and I've read *far* too many!).