The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening anthology, though with its ups and downs
Review: Vernor Vinge is perhaps the premier craftsman of stories which turn on novel changes in the nature of reality. He's a master of plumbing the depths of an idea and crafting a fully-realized world around one or several fantastic notions.

Collected Stories has plenty to reward the Vinge fan: Insightful annotations by the author suggesting his thoughts on writing each story, or expanding on his notion of the Singularity which our technological progress is pushing us towards, and how that idea has shaped his excellent novels. Several stories ("The Ungoverned", "The Blabber", "The Barbarian Princess") which occur in the worlds of his novels. Even a new novella, "Fast Times at Fairmont High", printed here for the first time, conjecturing a near-future junior high school where all the students are wired into the net and teachers must pose new and unusual tests for them to complete.

Despite this, the collection is nonetheless uneven. A couple of stories take a hardly-believeable turn into libertarianism or anarchic capitalism, failing to persuade me that their societies wouldn't destroy themselves in mere days. And a couple are based on disappointingly simple ideas, such as what sort of people might someday be forced to colonize Antarctica, or the impact that certain detritus in space might have. Even "Fast Times" I found disappointing as it seemed reluctant to resolve certain details of its plot, and it seemed also to undercut its own message of the importance of basic skills over specific knowledge.

The best stories in this collection combine Vinge's knack for ideasmanship with his best storytelling. "Original Sin" has humanity confronting an up-and-coming race which has all of our talents and advantages in spades, and plopping its heroes at ground zero among these people; it's a pretty terrifying story. And "The Blabber" explores some elements from his novel A Fire Upon the Deep in a somewhat different setting, with some implications that make you wish he'd return to continue the story someday.

Reading this collection suggests that Vinge perhaps works best in a long format, as nothing here equals his best novels, Fire and Marooned in Realtime. But there's entertaining stuff here, and if you've enjoyed his novels then you'll probably find this worth a shot.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening anthology, though with its ups and downs
Review: Vernor Vinge is perhaps the premier craftsman of stories which turn on novel changes in the nature of reality. He's a master of plumbing the depths of an idea and crafting a fully-realized world around one or several fantastic notions.

Collected Stories has plenty to reward the Vinge fan: Insightful annotations by the author suggesting his thoughts on writing each story, or expanding on his notion of the Singularity which our technological progress is pushing us towards, and how that idea has shaped his excellent novels. Several stories ("The Ungoverned", "The Blabber", "The Barbarian Princess") which occur in the worlds of his novels. Even a new novella, "Fast Times at Fairmont High", printed here for the first time, conjecturing a near-future junior high school where all the students are wired into the net and teachers must pose new and unusual tests for them to complete.

Despite this, the collection is nonetheless uneven. A couple of stories take a hardly-believeable turn into libertarianism or anarchic capitalism, failing to persuade me that their societies wouldn't destroy themselves in mere days. And a couple are based on disappointingly simple ideas, such as what sort of people might someday be forced to colonize Antarctica, or the impact that certain detritus in space might have. Even "Fast Times" I found disappointing as it seemed reluctant to resolve certain details of its plot, and it seemed also to undercut its own message of the importance of basic skills over specific knowledge.

The best stories in this collection combine Vinge's knack for ideasmanship with his best storytelling. "Original Sin" has humanity confronting an up-and-coming race which has all of our talents and advantages in spades, and plopping its heroes at ground zero among these people; it's a pretty terrifying story. And "The Blabber" explores some elements from his novel A Fire Upon the Deep in a somewhat different setting, with some implications that make you wish he'd return to continue the story someday.

Reading this collection suggests that Vinge perhaps works best in a long format, as nothing here equals his best novels, Fire and Marooned in Realtime. But there's entertaining stuff here, and if you've enjoyed his novels then you'll probably find this worth a shot.