Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge (also online), is the last novel for my Worldcon homework and an unexpected pleasure. When it came out, I found myself with an aversion to near-future SF, and the consensus seemed to be that it was weak, so I didn’t get around to reading it until now. It’s certainly lighter than Vinge’s last novel, the brilliant A Deepness in the Sky, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and think it’s successful on its own terms, which I’ll generalize as a relatively intimate thriller backed by detailed science-fictional worldbuilding.
The book opens with a somewhat risky narrative strategy. In the prologue, an intelligence agent discovers that someone has run a very advanced trial of mass mind control technology. However, for political reasons, the resulting investigation has to be run through a deniable agent known as Rabbit, who’s introduced in chapter one. These sections are great: engaging, fast, high-stakes, and twisty.
And then the next chapter opens in the point of view of Robert Gu, who is recovering from Alzheimer’s thanks to a new treatment. [*] The next several chapters are an up-close look at Robert, who is an asshole, with the interesting mind control plot pushed to the background. (My notes at this point read, “La la la, when is something going to happen?”) Fortunately, the pace started picking up just before my frustration level got too high. The resulting plot is complex but not, to me, difficult, and eventually culminates in a fine long action-packed sequence.
[*] The title is the name of his former retirement community: “He’d never been able to decide if that spelling was the work of an everyday illiterate or someone who really understood the place.”
Though arguably there’s as much at stake, the book never is as dark as Deepness. Indeed, in some places it skates close to goofiness. There’s a subplot about libraries digitizing their books by shredding them that strained my disbelief a bit, and I found the big confrontation at the library to be simulataneously corny and cool. Contributing to the lighter tone are a number of cultural references, which didn’t bother me, but your tolerance may vary. (The exception was in the fourth paragraph of chapter 30, to which I said, “Okay, that’s just too cutesy.”) But even when it’s light, the worldbuilding is still thorough, pervasive, but not overwhelming. I was impressed and entertained.
After the slow opening, I thought the book did a good job of balancing characters with worldbuilding and plot. Robert eventually improves (which I imagine you guessed from the fact that I liked the book), and the characters have a nice web of interconnected relationships. I’ll note here that the majority of characters are not of European descent, at least not predominantly, though I don’t recall seeing any characters described as of African descent. However, race and gender are both treated as though they’d quietly become irrelevant, which I suppose stretches my disbelief neither more nor less than this bit of background worldbuilding:
In the twentieth century, only a couple of nations had the power to destroy the world. The human race survived, mostly by good luck. At the turn of the century, a time was in view when dozens of countries could destroy civilization. But by then, the Great Powers had a certain amount of good sense. No nation state could be nuts enough to blow up the world — and the few barbaric exceptions were Dealt With, if necessary with methods that left land aglow in the dark. By the Teens, mass death technology was accessible to regional and racial hate groups. Through a succession of happy miracles . . . the legitimate grievances of disaffected peoples were truly addressed.
Nowadays, Grand Terror technology was so cheap that cults and small criminal gangs could acquire it [which is where the plot comes in].
“Happy miracles,” indeed.
Finally, this is often described as a Singularity novel, which is both accurate and misleading. The Singularity is an element of the book, but not its focus—I suspect it would be entirely possible to read the book without even noticing it’s there. If your default association with “Singularity novel” is “the Rapture for nerds,” don’t let the description put you off, because it’s not applicable here.
I’m actually glad I waited this long to read this book, because if I went into it hoping for another Deepness, I’d have been disappointed. Now, I just hoped it wouldn’t suck, and it more than surpassed that. (I don’t think I’m overvaluing it in relief, either, though I admit that things can change in hindsight.) It’s good to end my Worldcon novel reading on a high note.
I was actually relieved that Rainbows End was not ambitious on the scale of A Fire Upon the Deep or A Deepness in the Sky. I’m not often in the mood for such heavy books these days, and when they miss they miss badly for me.
That said, I enjoyed RE with reservations. Most of those reservations have to do with [rot-13] gur oyvgur nffhzcgvba gung creinfvir vzzrefvir iveghny ernyvgl, vapyhqvat gnpgvyr vyyhfvba, vfa’g gung uneq — juvpu V guvax vf syntenag penc. Pbagnpg yrafrf naq fzneg ‘cebcf’ pna’g cbffvoyl jbex gung jryy, ng gur grpu yriry fubja, naq ynfref rireljurer unir qenjonpxf.
But, that said, I did enjoy the book.
David: I’d seen some comments along the lines of yours before, and frankly I just don’t care. The precise point in time where the story is located, and the plausibility of the predictions about that point of time, interest me very little, because I don’t read fiction for a crystal ball.
Kate: Fair enough; I’m hardly one to complain that someone isn’t taking science seriously enough, and I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you (or anyone else) should like RE less than you did. I love Lee & Miller, for heaven’s sake, so realistic tech can’t be that important to me.
For me, though, there’s a difference between near-future tech that feels possible but unlikely, versus near-future tech that feels impossible. I guess I would say that near-future settings come with a tacit guarantee that the near-future setting follows from the current present with minimal miracles required — or, at least, with only The Big Miracle that introduces that novel’s particular McGuffin. Chronoliths from the future? No problem, in the service of a good enough story. Pbagnpg yrafrf gung bireynl ivfvba-dhnyvgl vzntrf ba gurynaqfpncr nebhaq lbh? Nope, I can’t buy it, unless they’re the whole point of the story. And, as you noted, Vinge had already used up his miracle quota in the social setting.