io9: Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge says that when the Singularity happens, it will be "very obvious"

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:30:47 PST

Last summer I had the pleasure of meeting one of my literary heroes, the author and futurist Vernor Vinge. He'd just published Children of the Sky, his long-awaited sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, and we had a chance to talk about that book as well as some of the other novels in his Zones of Thought series. More »

October Books Bring Vampires, Magic, and A Trip To Hell

Kelly Faircloth — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:07:12 PDT

Just in time for Halloween, this month's new book releases bring vampires! High sorcery! And wine magic! Plus: new books from Terry Pratchett, N.K. Jemisin, Vernor Vinge, and Richard K. Morgan! More »

Science Fiction and Fantasy Books We Can’t Wait For This Fall

Kelly Faircloth — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:17:25 PDT

The next few months are positively packed with literary science fiction and fantasy goodness. Neal Stephenson returns to virtual reality! Vernor Vinge finally delivers the sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep. Plus dueling magicians and digital revolutionaries. More »

Read an excerpt from the first chapter of Vernor Vinge's The Children of the Sky

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:30:00 PDT

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If you've read Vernor Vinge's incredible space opera Fire Upon The Deep, then we've got some awesome news for you. His new novel, Children of the Sky, picks up just a couple of years after the end of Fire Upon The Deep, and is set entirely on the Tines' World, where a few crash-landed children live among dogs who form small packs of creatures with collective consciousness. Vinge has at last returned to this world after two decades, and it's simply terrific. More »

What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 14:57:33 PST

If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's io9 flashback. More »

Vernor Vinge's sequel to A Fire Upon The Deep coming in October!

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:30:00 PST

Vernor Vinge's Children of the Sky, his long-awaited sequel to the Hugo-winning A Fire Upon the Deep, is coming out in October, according to Tor's Spring/Summer 2011 catalog. More »

What would you give up for an Alzheimer's Disease cure?

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 07:00:00 PST

A 91-year-old man suffering from dementia gets offered a new drug that gives him a stark choice, in Walter Mosley's new novel. Are we finally going to get an Alzheimer's disease novel to compete with Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End? Spoilers... More »

What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:29:00 PDT

5 Novels To Help You Wait For The Coming Post-Scarcity Society

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:20:00 PDT

Can't wait for scarcity to end, and the Bitchun Society to begin? Us neither. That's why we're glad visionary writer R.U. Sirius has compiled his list of five positive science fiction novels to pass the time until the Singularity. [H-Plus] More »

20 Great Infodumps From Science Fiction Novels

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:11:37 PDT

A truly great infodump is a work of art. The best science fiction authors can brief you on everything you need to know about their worlds, without making you feel lectured. Here are 20 great examples of the smooth infodump. More »

Can You Still Write Science Fiction Set In The Future?

Charlie Jane Anders — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:00:00 PDT

The future is over! It's no longer possible to write about the future, because the Singularity will definitely happen in twenty years. We'll have artificial intelligence, and the meaning of humanity will be transformed. Is this idea hindering science fiction? More »

The Most Badass Female Space Pilots Of All Time

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:13:55 PDT

Some of the hottest hot-shot pilots in space opera are women. It's a longstanding tradition in science fiction to show women taking the controls of starships, space fighters and star-cruisers, and here are our favorite badass female cockpit jockeys. More »

The Singularity Backlash

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:07:49 PDT

Are you sick of the shiny, high-tech future where humans evolve into superbeings? Join the club. The latest trend is for anti-singularity futures, where tomorrow looks like yesterday. More »

Moore's Law Won't Create The Singularity On Its Own

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:30:00 PST

Moore's Law, which predicts a doubling of transistor density every 18 months, won't give us superhuman intelligence in a reasonable timeframe by itself, says author Vernor Vinge in this new video from the Ideas Project. More »

4 Science Fiction Books Every Social Media Junkie Must Read

Charlie Jane Anders — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:58:29 PST

Social-media nerds need to read more science fiction, says Web 2.0 blog Anthrogoggles. To get you started, they have a list of four must-read novels, including Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End, and two William Gibson books. More »

Gray Goo Can't Do All The Things You Say It Can Do

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:00:00 PST

Science fiction authors give too much credit to nanotech, which hasn't achieved all that much in real life (besides giving us pretty pictures) so far. But science fiction authors claim it can do everything, from destroying the world to turning you into a superhuman. Complains Santa Cruz SF writer Christopher Bradley: More »

12 Coolest Deaths In Science Fiction History

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:17:00 PDT

Click to viewIt's never great to watch a beloved science fiction hero die - but sometimes a memorable heroic death can help turn a science fiction story into a real epic. And some science fiction characters are unforgettable and bad-ass precisely because they died in a memorable way. Here's our list of the dozen greatest deaths in the history of science fiction. With some spoilers, natch. 12) Searle in Sunshine. Okay, I may be the only person who really loved Danny Boyle's blazing space opera about a doomed crew trying to reignite the sun. That's okay, I can be right all on my own. I especially love the way the character of Searle, the ship's psychiatrist, surprises you in his final moments. He's kind of a prurient asshole for most of the movie, obsessed with looking into the sun with as little filter as possible. He's a pretty terrible therapist. But when the chips are down, he knows he's the most expendable crewmember. When four crewmembers from the Icarus II get trapped on the wrecked ship Icarus I, with the airlock damaged, Searle agrees to stay behind so the rest of the away team can get back to the Icarus II. He helps blast the others out the airlock, then exposes himself to the sun, dying the same way as the Icarus I's crew. Click to view If you're going to be a creepy therapist, the least you can do is self-immolate to save the rest of us. 11) Woody in Mission To Mars. This is a pretty terrible movie overall, but a fantastic death scene. Our heroes have to abandon their vessel. And then Woody, played by Tim Robbins, leaves the others and launches himself at the Resupply Module (REMO), but after he attaches the line from the other astronauts at the REMO, he keeps moving towards the planet. His wife, Terri, wants to go after him, but Woody knows she'll die in the rescue attempt. So he takes off his own helmet and dies of depressurization rather than let her die for him. (Thanks to Meredith for the suggestion!) Runner up: Speaking of depressurization deaths, Graeme really wanted me to include Cally's death from Battlestar Galactica. But I didn't really think her death was awesome. Sorry, G. 10) Graham in "The Sleeper Wakes" by H.G. Wells. One of Wells' weirdest stories involves a man known only as Graham, who sleeps for over 200 years and wakes to find that he's not just the richest man in the world, but actually the owner of the entire world. He eventually discovers that the White Council, which governs in his name, is oppressing everyone, and he helps a revolutionary named Ostrog to mount a revolution. But afterwards, Ostrog starts oppressing people just as badly as the White Council had. So finally Graham gets mad. This time, it's personal - he gets into an airplane and rams a whole bunch of Ostrog's air fleet. (Remember, this was written in 1910.) Finally, he rams his plane into Ostrog's, then spirals to Earth, knowing that the revolution will prevail at last. Runner up: Someone suggested Hari Seldon from Forward The Foundation, but I haven't read that book and couldn't find much about it or track down a copy. Was his death truly awesome? Let me know. 9) The Controller in Doctor Who, "Day Of The Daleks" "Day Of The Daleks" is probably not on my list of the 100 greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, but it has a few really amazing moments. The greatest of these is where the Controller finally stands up to his Dalek masters. All along, the 22nd century bureaucrat has been fooling himself that he can help the Daleks govern the human race and actually do some good along the way, helping people when the Daleks aren't looking. But after a few chats with the Doctor, he finally realizes you can't work within the Dalek system. He helps the Doctor escape, and when his coverup fails, the Daleks decide to exterminate him. "Who knows?" he says. "I may have helped to exterminate you." Awesome. Runners up: Various people suggested the deaths of various Doctors, but none of them really jumped out at me as especially cool. One person suggested Adric, and I'll protect his/her identity, to save him/her from the inevitable scorn of the masses. 8) Lt. Paul Wang from Space: Above And Beyond. "Everybody's favorite tortured bipolar guy," Lt. Wang, callsign "Joker," gives his life to hold off the aliens while everyone else gets away. "This is for you!" he shouts as he pours ammo into the enemy. Commenter oconnellmd suggested this scene, and I can see why. 7) Certain people in Blake's 7, "Blake" I'm going to show an unusual degree of restraint and not say who dies in this episode. Let's just say it's an incredibly fitting end for the saga, one which makes all of the stuff that comes before seem cooler because it leads up to this. In my write-up on how to discover Blake's 7, I actually advocate watching the last episode first. At the very least, I think this is one spoiler that makes you appreciate the rest of the show more. But don't take my word for it: watch for yourself. 6) Pham Nuwen from A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge. Pham Nuwen is animated by the Old One, a super-powerful artificial intelligence, and he dies fighting the Blight, another super-A.I. First Pham downloads as much of the Old One into his brain as possible, overclocking his human brain by containing this massive superhuman intelligence, which will inevitably destroy him. And then he launches the Countermeasure, an advanced weapon which moves the boundaries of the Slow Zone far enough to enclose and destory the Blight. But the Countermeasure also has the effect of terminating Pham at the same time:

The Countermeasure's writhing had slowed. Its light flickered bright and then out. Bright and then out. She heard Pham's breath gasp with every darkness. Countermeasure, a savior that was going to kill a million civilizations. And was going to kill the man who triggered it. Almost unthinking, she dodged past the thing, reaching for Pham. But razors upon razors blocked her, raking her arms. Pham was looking up at her. He was trying to say something more. Then the light went out for a final time. From the darkness all around came a hissing sound and a growling, bitter smell that Ravna would never forget.

(Thanks Annalee!) 5) The T-800 in Terminator II. After Arnold Schwartzenegger's T-800 helps Sarah and John Connor defeat Robert Patrick's mean T-1000 by blowing it up and knocking it into molten metal, Arnie knows he has to go too. If there's anything left of the T-800, the technology could be used to reconstitute Skynet and bring the badness down on our heads. So Arnie gets Sarah Connor to lower him - slowly - into the molten metal. He gives a thumbs up as he descends to his robo-fondue doom. (Thanks, Annalee!) 4) Biggs from Star Wars. I was seriously considering making Obi-Wan the coolest death from Star Wars, but really, screw that guy. First of all, as he points out himself, he comes back a thousand times more powerful afterwards. And secondly and more importantly, he's kind of a big martyr, as everyone points out in the awesome parody Hardware Wars. And Biggs doesn't have any super Force powers, or the ability to come back a thousand times more anything. All Biggs has is a X-ing, a can-do attitude, and an awesome porn-stache. And he's the greatest wingman ever, taking enemy fire and blowing up so that Luke can nuke the death star and get all the glory afterwards. And look how stoic Biggs is in this deleted scene from Episode IV, telling Luke he may never come home again because he's off to join the rebels: When does baby Biggs get his own episode of the Clone Wars cartoon? Preferably with a little baby mustache? 3) Spike from Cowboy Bebop. Martian bounty hunter Spike Spiegel gets into a duel with his former best friend, Vicious after Vicious' Red Dragon gang has killed Spike's girlfriend Julia. Spike finally decides to face the past with Vicious that he ran away from three years earlier, and he storms the Red Dragon headquarters, killing a bunch of its members as he climbs. Vicious manages to slash Spike with his katana, but then Spike shoots Vicious dead. Spike comes down the stairs, wounded and weakened, to face all the remaining members of the Red Dragon. Spike makes a gun with his fingers and says "Bang"... then collapses. Most people seem to assume Spike dies of his wounds, and it's not hard to find tons of people online listing this as one of the coolest death scenes in all anime, or all Asian films, let alone science fiction. 2) Someone from Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Since this book just came out and it's a bit of a major spoiler, I won't say who dies and how - click here if you've already read the book and/or don't care about spoilers. 1) Spock from Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. I'm not putting the pointy-eared green blooded Vulcan first just because I know I'd get lynched otherwise. I'm not even including the death of Spock because I pretty much memorized all the dialog from that scene as a little kid. I'm including it because it's the template of how to do a memorable, important death in a science fiction epic. The movie isn't ABOUT Spock at all, but it still feels as though the whole film has been leading up to his death. A lesser film would have been more clumsy and obvious about giving Spock a bunch of cool moments leading up to his death, and trying to manipulate us into feeling the Spock love before he snuffs it. Instead, we do get plenty of cool Spock moments, including giving Kirk his present and mentoring Lt. Saavik. But it's woven into the rest of the movie, and the film's running theme of the "no-win situation" and the impossibility of cheating death every single time help to set up the death of Kirk's best friend way better than a scene where Spock talks about what he's going to do when he retires and goes back to Vulcan. The result is one of the most amazing moments in Trek history, one of those moments where you can really beleive Trek is a sweeping saga instead of just a zany adventure with green women and Saurian brandy. Runner up: I can't believe I left out Roy Batty in Blade Runner, as various commenters have pointed out. Especially since I went on a whole tangent about Roy's amazing death scene in my rant about why there shouldn't be a BR sequel earlier in the day. Suffice to say the Roy Batty death scene is definitely one of the all-time classic, and easily up there with Spock's. More »

Does the New Shape of the Solar System Prove Vernor Vinge is Right About the Galaxy?

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:00:00 PDT

By now you've probably heard the news about our solar system not quite being the shape that everybody thought. A study in Nature today shows results gathered from the two Voyager space probes launched in the 1970s, which are both nearing the edge of the heliosphere, the region where the solar winds end and deep space begins. Based on data the probes beamed back, it would appear that the heliosphere isn't a sphere — it's more of an egg shape (pictured). And the boundary between heliosphere and deep space is shifting all the time. It sounds very similar to the way scifi author Vernor Vinge describes the Milky Way's galactic sphere in A Fire Upon the Deep. If Vinge is right about what happens when you leave a gravitational sphere for deep space, the Voyager probes are in for an interesting ride. More »

What Scifi Teaches Us About Lying, Deceitful Mentors

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:00:00 PDT

In two of this summer's biggest action movies, the hero's mentor turns out to be a lying, manipulative sack of villainy. And nobody in the audience is surprised, because it's a scifi fact of life: mentors lie to you. They feed you half-truths ("Darth Vader killed your dad") and outright lies, to get you to follow their agenda. That's just what mentors do. But the good news is, studying the deceitful ways of scifi mentors can help you to deal with your misleading mentros in real life. Spoilers ahead. More »

Vernor Vinge's Latest Ideas About the Singularity in IEEE Spectrum

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:28:44 PDT

The latest issue of IEEE Spectrum, a journal for speculative engineering geeks, is devoted to "the singularity," that moment when our society changes so dramatically that it becomes incomprehensible to people who lived in the past. The issue is packed with free online essays by singularity thinkers like science fiction author Vernor "Rainbows End" Vinge, Rodney Brooks of MIT's AI Lab, and Ray "Singularity is Near" Kurzweil. The whole issue is well worth a serious read. But my favorite part by far is an essay by Vinge, an SF author and computer scientist whose singularity scenarios in his novels are both compelling and realistic. He breaks down singularity scenarios into the five most-likely possibilities, any of which he thinks could happen by 2030. More »

Vernor Vinge's Forgotten Novel About Scifi Publishers on Another Planet

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:00:00 PDT

Although it's easy to love scifi author Vernor Vinge for his most lauded work, like Rainbows End or Fire Upon the Deep, some of his lesser-known novels are more memorable than the great ones. Such is the case with Tatja Grimm's World, a collection of two novellas Vinge published in the late 1960s, coupled with a mid-1980s short story about the same character. That character is Tatja Grimm, a woman on late-medieval world who mysteriously begins to manifest super-intelligence, super-strength — and a super-ability to edit science fiction manuscripts. That last bit is what makes the novel sheer, strange genius, as well as a fascinating glimpse at the creative coming-of-age of one of today's greatest SF writers. More »

Three Science Fiction Novels Recommended by Richard Stallman

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:15:07 PST

Richard Stallman is the infamous inventor of several brilliant software tools, as well as the founder of the free software movement. He influenced an entire generation of computer nerds who took his ideas to heart and created software that you can freely modify — if you're reading this with free software browser Firefox, and I know that the majority of you are, then you're benefiting directly from Stallman's ideas. He's also an avid science fiction reader, and over the years has loaned me several books from his collection. Here are three of the most interesting book recommendations I've gotten from one of the geek world's greatest living visionaries. More »

Pereira's Conquest Of Planet Earth

charliejane — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:00:00 PST

This is what people thought the future would look like, back in the 1960s. The architecture of William Pereira was inspired by science fiction, and inspired more science fiction in turn. This building, the Geisel Library, stars in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Vinge writes that the Library looks "like something brought down from outer space." Another Pereira building, the UC Irvine Library, formed a stark-looking backdrop for a riot in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. He designed over 400 major buildings, which helped shape other architects' views of the futuristic. Image by Kafka4Prez More »