Re: WIR 46: The Short Stories of Vernor Vinge

Michael Grosberg wrote:


Justin Alexander wrote:
What I'm Reading: The Short Stories of Vernor Vinge

<snipped a very long and interesting post but it was too long to
quote>

I completely agree with the worthiness of this collection. Vinge is an
extreme example of quality vs. Quantity and I thoroughly enjoyed this
collection.

I'd like to disagree to some extent with the idea that the singularity
was implicit in Vinge's work before the 80's. It was there in the very
first story as a question asked by one character, yes. But in most of
the stories written from the late 60's to the early 80's the shape of
history Vinge seems to believe in is a cycle of technological rise and
fall - similar to the one experienced by every human colony in
_Deepness_ or the one made famous by Niven and Pournelle's _The Mote
in God's Eye_.

Earliest use I know of is in Olaf Stapledon's _Star Maker_. The
intelligent species which has such a cycle at least has the comforting
thought that their present civilization is the first to have risen to a
high level of technology. And then archeologists find a fossilized
radio.

If I recall correctly, Vinge has acknowledged taking the idea from
Frederic Brown's short story "Letter to a Phoenix."

_the Peddler's apprentice_ hinges on this and the
background to the Tatja Grimm stories is of a colony world which lost
its technology. The Singularity seems to be a sort of unexpected
escape from this seemingly inevitable cycle which he stumbled on
later in his career.





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