Rainbows End

New
Paperback
2007
$8.52

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

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

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Edition: paperback / softback
Publisher: Tor
Published: 17 Aug 2007
ISBN 10: 0330451944
ISBN 13: 9780330451949

Media Reviews

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
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 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
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

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 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

Author Bio

Vernor Vinge is the author of True Names, The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime, A Fire Upon the Deep, and A Deepness in the Sky. A mathematician and computer scientist, he lives in San Diego, California.