Re: Novelist thanks the group (OT)

From: Timoleon (Timoleon_at_gmail.com)
Date: 05/18/05 

Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 23:44:18 GMT

Jim Gillogly wrote:
> On Tue, 17 May 2005 12:23:39 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:
>
>>Yes, that's one of the premises of the book, remember that it's
>>science fiction. Hey, there's a Wikipedia article about it:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep
>
>
> I agree that Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" is brilliant,
> and well worth reading. He's also the author of what I consider
> the finest short novel I've ever read, "True Names". It was
> written in 1981, before Arpanet had really taken off and when
> the only multi-player games were things like Empire, which were
> played on the same computer. However, he did a brilliant job
> of extrapolating the computer science of the time toward the
> present, predicting any number of social changes and networking
> breakthroughs. *Still* well worth reading!
>
> I should add, though, that I still enjoy reading Heinlein,
> even when the sidekick genius starship navigator "Slipstick"
> Libby pulls out his slide rule to calculate a course change.

Vernor Vinge's follow-up novel, "A Deepness in the Sky", is almost as
good. For anyone who's interested, Vinge was a professor at San Diego
State University in the Department of Mathematical Sciences (he's
retired now). Other than his scifi writings, which are among the best
in the genre, he is perhaps best known for his birthing of "The
Singularity."

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html

Tim 

-- 
Remove the three Roman numeral fives to reply

Quantcast