Rainbows End

Vernor Vinge

Macmillan, Apr 3, 2007 - Fiction - 400 pages

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.

What people are saying

Review: Rainbows End

User Review  - Bethany - Goodreads

I found this book on a "best of sci-fi" list, and it lived up to the listing. This book did a lot of things right. I liked that the technology is a logical progression from where we are today in the ...

Review: Rainbows End

User Review  - Clouds - (¿head-in-the?) - Goodreads

Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done. On the spur ...

Contents

• I: 1
• II: 7
• III: 19
• IV: 26
• V: 40
• VI: 55
• VII: 60
• VIII: 68
• IX: 75
• X: 89
• XI: 97
• XII: 105
• XIII: 112
• XIV: 130
• XV: 143
• XVI: 161
• XVII: 185
• XVIII: 201
• XIX: 208
• XX: 215
• XXI: 220
• XXII: 234
• XXIII: 243
• XXIV: 250
• XXV: 257
• XXVI: 272
• XXVII: 279
• XXVIII: 290
• XXIX: 302
• XXX: 308
• XXXI: 319
• XXXII: 323
• XXXIII: 327
• XXXIV: 339
• XXXV: 351
• XXXVI: 361
• XXXVII: 373

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Rainbows End; TOR SF; Tor Books; Tori.; Science fiction
• Author: Vernor Vinge
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2007
• ISBN: 0812536363, 9780812536362
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / General