Talk:Vernor Vinge

Getting around the Singularity

I think an edit is needed on the section that discusses the The Slow Zone in A Fire Upon the Deep. Specifically,

"Earth is in "The Slow Zone", in which the speed of light cannot be achieved, but neither can the singularity. Thus Vinge could write a classic space opera despite his belief that the technology required for such stories would push us past the singularity."

This gives the impression that the plot of the book took place in the Slow Zone, when in fact it took place in the Beyond, a zone where FTL is possible (because the advanced computing necessary for it is possible) but the Singularity is not. I'm going to make the following change:

"Earth is in "The Slow Zone", in which the speed of light cannot be achieved. Most of the book, however, takes place in a zone called "The Beyond," where the computations necessary for faster than light travel is possible, but trancendance beyond the Singularity is not. Thus Vinge could write a classic space opera despite his belief that the technology required for such stories would push us past the singularity."

--Jordan Helin (jhelin1@binghamton.edu)

Error of identification

The note that 'Apartness' and 'Conquest by Default' are in the same milieu has been removed with the note that they are not, in fact, in the same. I disagree, they very obviously are. But rather than just revert it, I welcome justification and discussion. --Mark Atwood (mra@pobox.co,)

• They're definitely part of the same milieu. Vernor Vinge comments on this in the introductory material to "Conquest by Default" in THE COLLECTED STORIES OF VERNOR VINGE (pg. 159 of the hardback edition). The fact that the geopolitical entities and future history of both stories are identical would pretty much establish this in any case. It should also be noted that Vinge's commentaries in this collection make "The Blabber" explicitly part of the Zones universe. Justin Bacon 03:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Dates, photo

Locus January 2001 interview says he was born October 2, 1944, and retired from San Diego State in August 2000. This page also says born October 2. His past course page ends at Spring 2000, and was last updated August 4, 2000.

Reginald's Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II also puts his birthdate as October 2, 1944. In fact, someone probably transposed 10/02/44 with 02/10/44. Alvonruff 17:13, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Source of photo? Copyrighted? --Tualha 17:38, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Nearly 2 years later, finally replaced by a definitely free photo! :-) (Just to clear this up for later readers.)Mindspillage (spill yours?) 05:53, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

And nearly one year later, the birth date has actually been fixed. Man, that's embarrassing. (That ChiCon site is down, but the date's verifiable off [the internet archive now.) grendel|khan 06:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Bobbles

Is the link that Ansible added on 28 July the spoiler that the article says it's going to avoid revealing? --Paul A 02:39, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redirects

The link to "The Cookie Monster" is being redirected to "Cookie Monster", which doesn't seem right. I dont' know how to fix that.

I just created The Cookie Monster and moved the analog sf external link there... if anyone would would like to contribute to it. --Motor 09:05, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Nationality

No mention of his nationality ? Seeing as one isn't mentioned and he falls into an 'american authors' category that he's american...

ahpook 16:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Bibliography: Across Realtime

I recently borrowed Across Realtime from the local library, and it contained The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime but not "The Ungoverned". Are there differing editions of Across Realtime, or is the bibliography simply incorrect? --65.147.0.177 21:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

My copy has all three. The ungoverned is very short comparatively, and is in between the other two.

Interlude: The Ungoverned is on page 257 in my copy. — Omegatron 22:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a note that The Ungoverned is set in the same mileu as The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime? This story was also collected in Give Me Liberty https://www.marktier.com/Articles/liberty.php edited by Mark Tier and Martin H. Greenberg

Rainbows End and Fast Times at Fairmont High

The article says "Vinge's 2006 novel, Rainbows End is set in the same universe as Fast Times at Fairmont High". This is a bit misleading: while both feature the same characters in very similar settings, some of the character names are changed (Miriam's grandfather is called William in FTFH, but Rober in RE), and the events are inconsistent (Juan's and Miri's are merely acquaintances at the beginning of each story, and friends at the end of each story, but the experiences that shape their friendship are different.).

Mgedmin (talk) 03:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Article Needs An Early Life Section

Not much detail about how he grew up.

Sean7phil (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Futuristic Military Brat Character in Deepness of The Sky

The character Qiwi in deepness of the sky is very similar in many ways to modern-day military brats. Vinge must have either once been a 'brat' himself or must have known them well to have rendered Qiwi so effectively. A character like Lisolet is unusual in literature as the sub-culture of military brats is often semi-invisible to the American mainstream. To be fully accuarate, she is also the daughter of a 'trading' culture, which although mercantile in nature seems also to reverberate with modern day military people around themes of a life of high mobility, and an experience of many nations.

(Perhaps teaching in the San Diego area brought him into contact with military kids?)

Anyway-- Qiwi is exceptionally well rendered and colorful. (I am a former male military brat myself-- and Qiwi, although futuristic, is in many ways dead-on for many bright, country-hopping, warrior-woman military brats of today). The interesting and rich mixture of vunerability and courage, aggressiveness and sensitivity well describe many female military brats and is well-reflected in Qiwi. What a wonderful novel! Vinge is a perceptive psycho-sociological observer as well as being a sci-fi visionary.

This all leads to an edit question--

Can anyone contribute any more on his early life biography (which is scanty in the article)-- and also his later non-literary career track? Anyone aware of any military connections there?

Sean7phil (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Singularity capital S

I fixed each use of a lowercase s when the word Singularity is alone. This is well established and does not need to be discussed.

However...

Should technological singularity have a capital T and S ?

--Petebertine (talk) 06:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

August 2010

I've just made a rather large edit to the article (much larger than I intended to!). Here are some points for discussion, in no particular order, numbered for easy reference.

1. ELs: I reorganized the ELs into 3 groups. I dropped 2 ELs: https://smallworldpodcast.com (dead) and https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009335.html (seems redundant/irrelevant). I changed https://www.spectrum.ieee.org/archive/1552) to a ref. OTOH, I added https://vrinimi.org/.
   Should we keep the EL to https://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/? My guess is that it is useful, but that's only a guess.
2. Refs: I think I've supplied cites for all the requested refs.
   I added a {{cn}} tag for the claim that True Names was "perhaps the first story to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace". In fact, True Names was the first story to present a detailed concept of cyberspace. I remember reading articles saying so, but I've forgotten where I found them. I found 2 relevant-but-not-conclusive references. In the Reason interview, Mike Godwin says that VV was "one of the first science fiction writers to conceive of cyberspace". In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993 edition), John Clute says of True Names that "the cyberspace vision was prescient". Can anyone find better refs? Please?
3. Novels: I moved the <ref> tags which preceded a "," or ";" after the punctuation, per WP:REFPUNC. I also reformatted the WikiSource to try to make it easier to read and edit.
4. References in other works: Should we keep the item about Harmonic 133's album? I suspect not.
5. {{refimprove}} tag: Can we remove this tag now?

I've probably forgotten some of the changes I made. I'm sure my edits can easily be improved upon, and invite other contributors to improve the article and/or discuss it here. Thanks in advance, CWC 10:08, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Other Gestalt Intelligences in SF

Could the Gw'oth from Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner's Fleet of Worlds series be mentioned alongside Greg Bear's Cord race? Technically speaking, the Gw'oth only achieve gestalt status when multiple individuals couple together but due to the rarity of gestalt-intelligence species in science fiction I think it's worth mentioning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jpchamberlin (talk • contribs) 17:57, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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COI tag?

Could the poster of this please unpack it? I didn't see any problems in a quick re-read. Thanks, --Pete Tillman (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I removed it as there doesn't seem to be any questionable content or suspicious looking edits. If someone re-adds it they can post on the talk page what their concerns are.--Savonneux (talk) 18:59, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

references [1] and [2]

Are the calls to these references missing or is there something I don't understand? Cheers. Baba Arouj (talk) 22:26, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

​They're in the infobox, the box in the upper right with Vinge's photograph. Dan Bloch (talk) 23:01, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh thank you, I didn't notice. Since many readers will come to this page to learn about Ref. [2] "The Coming Technological Singularity" (1993), I think it would be good to have a call to this reference in the first lines of the main text. Baba Arouj (talk) 13:52, 18 November 2024 (UTC)