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.
"Vinge has brilliantly shifted gears, offering a post singularity novel in which the singularity has been destroyed and the formerly advanced humans struggle to cope...the resulting low-tech tale is a sharply crafted masterpiece." --Publishers Weekly"One of the genre's most accomplished writers and storytellers, Vinge has crafted a tale that should captivate his fans and win him a larger and well-deserved audience." --Library Journal, starred review"Imagine bootstrapping a fallen civilization into transcendence using nothing but a collection of hive-mind Machiavellis, a crippled hyper-advanced spaceship, and a pack of surly, scheming orphaned adolescents. Oh, and then there's the vengeful god ramscooping itself to relativistic speeds a mere 30 light years away. Vinge's explosive imagination and deft storytelling make epics sail past like hummingbirds--you'll steal daytime moments to read more, and lie awake at night contemplating what you've read." --Boing Boing"Vernor Vinge's stories and novels have always surprised and entertained me, and The Children of the Sky carries on that grand tradition!" --Greg Bear, bestselling author of Hull Zero Three"A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my all-time favorite works of fiction, so I've been looking forward to Children of the Sky for months. I am a particular fan of Vinge's work because, unlike the work of many science fiction writers, his writing is fiction first, with the science and technology a muted part of the background to the story. Vinge always delivers complex, realistic characters the reader can care about, along with a gripping, well-crafted plot that invariably leaves my fingers paper-cut from turning pages so eagerly. And as for the science in Vinge's science fiction, that is also exceptional in its vision and technical integrity. Vinge is undeniably one of the greatest hard science fiction writers to put pen to paper, and he can easily be compared to such greats as Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, or Stanislaw Lem." --Wired"What a year for Science Fiction it's been and now along comes Vernor Vinge to show us all again how this is really done with The Children of the Sky. The Children of the Sky, in short, was brilliant. No one out there does space opera like Vinge. There are books who have great plots with well thought out ideas, but normally characterization suffers because of it. The book is a showcase for a thought experiment...Vinge does it all. The characters are real and you feel for them. The book is a page turner. And the ideas are wonderful (the Tines are still up there as my favorite aliens I've ever met in a book). I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. This is a great book, but the story is not done yet. The problem is, I WANT TO KNOW THE REST, DARN IT! Now we have to wait for Vinge to finish the story. If The Children of the Sky is any indication, the wait will be well worth it in the end." --Elitist Book Reviews"Vinge makes it feel more like this is a living, breathing world that keeps on going, even if you're not there. And for hard science fiction, that's an accomplishment.... It's hard to say everything I want to say about novels that cover this much ground, but rest assured that this is a worthy follow-up to A Fire Upon the Deep." --Literary Omnivore
The sequel to Vinge's Hugo Award-winning A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) undergoes a jarring but effective change in scope. On a distant planet, 10 years after creating a technology-crippling "slow zone" to defeat the encroaching Blight, Ravna Bergsndot and the surviving cryo-frozen Children attempt to rebuild a civilization with the help of the telepathic, doglike Tines. Their efforts are stymied by hostile Tines and humans skeptical of the Blight's menace. Vinge has brilliantly shifted gears, offering a postsingularity novel in which the singularity has been destroyed and the formerly advanced humans struggle to cope. Vinge throws in political intrigue and even a road trip (complete with characters going incognito as circus performers), and the resulting low-tech tale is a sharply crafted masterpiece. Fans should forgive the shift in subgenre and lack of recap, but will likely chafe at the frustrating ending, which makes it clear that this is the middle book in a trilogy. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Vinge has brilliantly shifted gears, offering a post singularity novel in which the singularity has been destroyed and the formerly advanced humans struggle to cope...the resulting low-tech tale is a sharply crafted masterpiece." --Publishers Weekly"One of the genre's most accomplished writers and storytellers, Vinge has crafted a tale that should captivate his fans and win him a larger and well-deserved audience." --Library Journal, starred review"Imagine bootstrapping a fallen civilization into transcendence using nothing but a collection of hive-mind Machiavellis, a crippled hyper-advanced spaceship, and a pack of surly, scheming orphaned adolescents. Oh, and then there's the vengeful god ramscooping itself to relativistic speeds a mere 30 light years away. Vinge's explosive imagination and deft storytelling make epics sail past like hummingbirds--you'll steal daytime moments to read more, and lie awake at night contemplating what you've read." --Boing Boing"Vernor Vinge's stories and novels have always surprised and entertained me, and The Children of the Sky carries on that grand tradition!" --Greg Bear, bestselling author of Hull Zero Three"A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my all-time favorite works of fiction, so I've been looking forward to Children of the Sky for months. I am a particular fan of Vinge's work because, unlike the work of many science fiction writers, his writing is fiction first, with the science and technology a muted part of the background to the story. Vinge always delivers complex, realistic characters the reader can care about, along with a gripping, well-crafted plot that invariably leaves my fingers paper-cut from turning pages so eagerly. And as for the science in Vinge's science fiction, that is also exceptional in its vision and technical integrity. Vinge is undeniably one of the greatest hard science fiction writers to put pen to paper, and he can easily be compared to such greats as Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, or Stanislaw Lem." --Wired"What a year for Science Fiction it's been and now along comes Vernor Vinge to show us all again how this is really done with The Children of the Sky. The Children of the Sky, in short, was brilliant. No one out there does space opera like Vinge. There are books who have great plots with well thought out ideas, but normally characterization suffers because of it. The book is a showcase for a thought experiment...Vinge does it all. The characters are real and you feel for them. The book is a page turner. And the ideas are wonderful (the Tines are still up there as my favorite aliens I've ever met in a book). I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. This is a great book, but the story is not done yet. The problem is, I WANT TO KNOW THE REST, DARN IT! Now we have to wait for Vinge to finish the story. If The Children of the Sky is any indication, the wait will be well worth it in the end." --Elitist Book Reviews"Vinge makes it feel more like this is a living, breathing world that keeps on going, even if you're not there. And for hard science fiction, that's an accomplishment.... It's hard to say everything I want to say about novels that cover this much ground, but rest assured that this is a worthy follow-up to A Fire Upon the Deep." --Literary Omnivore
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