Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future - Softcover

Vinge, Vernor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812536363 ISBN 13: 9780812536362

Publisher: Tor Science Fiction, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky
Winner of the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
"A Deepness in the Sky more than justifies the old tag 'eagerly anticipated.' It's a space opera dealing with the age-old themes of exploration, first contact, different cultures, exploitation and, inevitably, conflict. An intriguing and mind-stretching epic. Highly recommended."
--SFX

A Fire Upon the Deep
Winner of the 1992 Hugo Award for Best Novel
"When I was young and had to write my address in a school notebook, I would begin with my street and apartment number and then go on through city, county, state, country and continent in a litany of ever more grandiose place names that did not end until I reached 'Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, The Universe.' In those days, it thrilled me that my small corner of the Bronx was just a one part of the vastness I could see in the sky at night. This is the feeling I got from reading A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge."
--Gerald Jonas, New York Times Book Review

Marooned in Realtime
"Marooned in Realtime is a cracking good story that leaves the reader with plenty to think about. Vernor Vinge draws fine characters and writes a compelling plot. In the end, almost all the mysteries are solved--the only loose ends are those which will leave you pondering the future of Mankind and of the earth for weeks after you finish the book"
--The Baltimore Sun

About the Author:

Vernor Vinge has won five Hugo Awards, two of them in the Zones of Thought series: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. 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, Rainbows End and The Peace War.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0812536363
• ISBN 13: 9780812536362
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400