Has anyone read his books? More importantly, does anyone know if he’s working on anything new? A Deepness in the Sky was such a fantastic novel, I’m unable to pick up any other science fiction (and the majority of regular fiction) without a sigh of disappointment.
Jakub,
Yep, I really dig Vinge’s writing. It’s rare that anyone can do “far future” stuff that’s still believable, but he pulls it off.
Alas, his books don’t come often, but perhaps that’s one reason the quality’s high. He did retire from SDSU, where he was a computer science teacher, a couple of years ago, so perhaps we’ll see more frequent releases going forward.
Here’s his old SDSU faculty page:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/
Have you read his older stuff, like Across Realtime?
A web search turns up some interesting Vinge scientific essays, too, such as http://www.alumni.engin.umich.edu/~jxm/singlar.html
It’s pretty amazing to realize that True Names and A Fire Upon the Deep were written before the Internet was significant, back when online traffic was mostly on BBSs and CI$/GEnie/etc.
“True Names” was just re-relased not too long ago as “True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier”. This new edition has about a dozen accompanying essays on related topics like cryptography, online gaming, etc.
I didn’t know he had retired from teaching - here’s hoping we will see more stories from him soon! I’d love to read another novel set in the “A Fire Upon the Deep” and “Deepness in the Sky” universe.
he just put out a book of short stories that was good, even revisits some characters from earlier books
RIP Mr. Vinge. You created some amazing worlds.
Fire Upon the Deep is my of my favorite novels, and if you haven’t read it, and have any love of space opera with lots of ideas and worldbuilding, you should grab it now. The prequel Deepness in the Sky is also first rate. Both won Hugos.
Aw nuts. I recently reread his Marooned in Realtime – as good as his Fire/Deep/Sky books were, Realtime was great too. I also liked his kindly Rainbows End, which was kind of Gibsonish cyberpunk if the punks had aged into retirement homes, and in the near-ish future setting of the book, religion had mostly been replaced by sects of Dr. Seuss and Terry Pratchett adherents.
For a long time I thought his name rhymed with hinge, but apparently it was Vin-gee with a hard G.
That is a shame, A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my all time sci-fi favorites. I haven’t read many of his other books , need to make time for that.
A Fire Upon the Deep and Peace War/Marooned in Realtime are a couple of my favorites. RIP Mr Vinge.
So sad. Loved his books. A Fire Upon the Deep was one of my favorites.
Now I feel guilty about my negative review of Children of the Sky. Still hoped to read more from him.
RIP, sir. You were one of the greats.
Not unexpected, of course, given his age, but still sad. I consider Vernor Vinge my favorite Science Fiction author of all time. He didn’t write a lot, but pretty much everything he wrote was great, and even the few not-so-greats were interesting.
I am a big fan of Vinge’s works. A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are two of my favorite sci-fi novels by any author. I am sorry to hear of his passing. RIP Vernor.
RIP. Truly one of the greats.