Rest in peace, Vernor. I just finished A Fire Upon the Deep based on your recommendation, and I was so struck by Vinge's re-imagination of what a person or a mind might consist of with the pack-souls of the Tines and the tech augmentation of the Skroderiders. What incredible vision.
A great review. I first read A Fire Upon the Deep just a couple of months ago, after you listed it in your sci-fi novel recommendations. An epic book in the fullest possible sense of the word in the way it reached across scale and technological zones while making each feel like it mattered. I'll definitely be reading more.
Thanks so much for this. I've read all of his novels and most of his short stories. I enjoyed Rainbows End enough to read it twice, and I imagine I'll read it again.
Vernor Vinge is one of my all time favorite sci-fi authors - I read and reread all his books. I discovered his books by accident years ago while searching for more books by his wife - who also wrote sci-fi - Joan D. Vinge.
RIP. I only came to Vernor Vinge recently, but I was blown away by Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky. I’ve read lots of science fiction and I’ve never read anything remotely like those books. This isn’t nostalgia; I read them for the first time in my 40s. The guy was good.
Rest in Peace. Terrific tribute to one of the greats. One thing that always stuck with me was Vernor talking abt programmer-historians as a profession. Someone who dug through the layers and layers of abstraction and software built over time and forgotten. This was pre-Internet… what a giant
I had heard that Vernor was not doing well so this is not a surprise but it is still terrible. I met Vernor in the 1990s and he contributed to our book, The Transhumanist Reader with his classic piece on the Technological Singularity. He was a lovely fellow and a brilliant writer. I second all of Noah's book recommendations. I recently re-read True Names which was prophetic and fascinating.
I wish I had tried harder to get him to make arrangements to be cryopreserved. However, he knew about it and so made his choice. I will miss him and his work.
Ah, I thought it was Ray Kurzweil who came up with the Singularity idea. Thanks for setting me straight.
As a GOFAI person, allow me to point out that the Singularity has already happened, and it is us.
That's because there's an enormous difference between the concept formation and processing (i.e. reasoning) abilities of any of the other life forms on our planet and humans. You can teach your dog tricks, you can teach some cats some tricks, but you can't teach them to handle and reason about days of the week, let alone the standard model. The reason I'm raving pissed at the current round of AI is that it thinks that stupid parlor tricks (e.g. the LLM concept is exactly that, a stupid parlor trick (i.e. statistical processing of sequences of undefined tokens)) can be as or more intelligent than humans. Sci-fi posing "smarter than human" intelligence is fine (heck, it's their job!), academics doing so (without having a clue about what intelligence is, or how amazing it is) is just stupid.
Sorry about the hijack. Seriously, thanks for following and reporting on current sci-fi. I'm still in a The Nine Billion Names of God is the kewlest thing ever written state, so feel free to ignore me. And have fun in Tokyo.
Rest in peace, Vernor. I just finished A Fire Upon the Deep based on your recommendation, and I was so struck by Vinge's re-imagination of what a person or a mind might consist of with the pack-souls of the Tines and the tech augmentation of the Skroderiders. What incredible vision.
“A deepness in the sky” has coloured my view of Human Resources quite strongly. As has Pham’s career as “programmer archaeologist “!
A great review. I first read A Fire Upon the Deep just a couple of months ago, after you listed it in your sci-fi novel recommendations. An epic book in the fullest possible sense of the word in the way it reached across scale and technological zones while making each feel like it mattered. I'll definitely be reading more.
Thanks so much for this. I've read all of his novels and most of his short stories. I enjoyed Rainbows End enough to read it twice, and I imagine I'll read it again.
Rainbows End impressed me so much. What a huge change from his earlier writing. And how close to home it strikes.
Very sad news.
Vernor Vinge is one of my all time favorite sci-fi authors - I read and reread all his books. I discovered his books by accident years ago while searching for more books by his wife - who also wrote sci-fi - Joan D. Vinge.
RIP. I only came to Vernor Vinge recently, but I was blown away by Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky. I’ve read lots of science fiction and I’ve never read anything remotely like those books. This isn’t nostalgia; I read them for the first time in my 40s. The guy was good.
A great writer!! I'm so saddened by this news. He gave us so much to think about and to wonder at. He definitely is among the greatest in his field.
A worthy eulogy for a remarkably gifted author - one of my short list favorites.
Rest in Peace. Terrific tribute to one of the greats. One thing that always stuck with me was Vernor talking abt programmer-historians as a profession. Someone who dug through the layers and layers of abstraction and software built over time and forgotten. This was pre-Internet… what a giant
Amen! One of the greats
Oh man… this is a real blow. RIP, to one of the greatest thinkers in the sci-fi/speculative fiction realm since Asimov and Heinlein. :-(
Not helmets! Goggles!
Thank you!
I had heard that Vernor was not doing well so this is not a surprise but it is still terrible. I met Vernor in the 1990s and he contributed to our book, The Transhumanist Reader with his classic piece on the Technological Singularity. He was a lovely fellow and a brilliant writer. I second all of Noah's book recommendations. I recently re-read True Names which was prophetic and fascinating.
I wish I had tried harder to get him to make arrangements to be cryopreserved. However, he knew about it and so made his choice. I will miss him and his work.
Ah, I thought it was Ray Kurzweil who came up with the Singularity idea. Thanks for setting me straight.
As a GOFAI person, allow me to point out that the Singularity has already happened, and it is us.
That's because there's an enormous difference between the concept formation and processing (i.e. reasoning) abilities of any of the other life forms on our planet and humans. You can teach your dog tricks, you can teach some cats some tricks, but you can't teach them to handle and reason about days of the week, let alone the standard model. The reason I'm raving pissed at the current round of AI is that it thinks that stupid parlor tricks (e.g. the LLM concept is exactly that, a stupid parlor trick (i.e. statistical processing of sequences of undefined tokens)) can be as or more intelligent than humans. Sci-fi posing "smarter than human" intelligence is fine (heck, it's their job!), academics doing so (without having a clue about what intelligence is, or how amazing it is) is just stupid.
Sorry about the hijack. Seriously, thanks for following and reporting on current sci-fi. I'm still in a The Nine Billion Names of God is the kewlest thing ever written state, so feel free to ignore me. And have fun in Tokyo.