The Witling

Rating:
Summary: First and still the best!
Review: After a great wave of colonisation human civilisation crashed. Now it is rising again, and one colony manages to send a ship to investigate another planet, where they hope another cut-off colony will be found. The inhabitants are human, or are they? There are strange things about their civilisation which don't fit. When the survey team loses their ship somehow they have to find a way off a planet both deadly and surprising.

I picked up The Witling well before Vernor Vinge's later works hit the shelves, and waited and hoped for more. If you like "Peacewar", "Marooned in Real Time" and "Fire Across the Deep" you should find this one if you can. It's my favourite Vernor Vinge novel still.

Rating:
Summary: Stinkburger!
Review: Good thing he got better. Don't bother with this one. Skip ahead, or reread "A Deepness in the Sky." This one ain't worth it. Shallow shallow shallow, and while the world is kind of neat, it's also kind of "borrowed" from better books, like "The Stars My Destination." Heck, go read that again. Everything else Vinge does is incredibly good. I suppose he had to start somewhere...

Rating:
Summary: First-rate science fiction
Review: Here Vinge works out the details of an alien technology and uses it to construct and bring to life a whole planetary society. He does this very well, and in this sense the book is first-rate science fiction. As a story of human interaction, it's perhaps not quite first-rate, but it's very competent, and above average by science fiction standards. I'm not entirely happy with the ending; on the other hand, I'm not sure what sort of change would constitute an improvement.

To deal with a couple of criticisms from other reviewers:

1. There is no resemblance to Bester's "The Stars My Destination" (aka "Tiger! Tiger!") except that both stories involve some kind of teleportation.

2. I don't think this book should offend feminists. The offended reviewer seems to have misinterpreted one rather ambiguous paragraph at the end, and damned the whole book on that basis.

Rating:
Summary: A Tip O' the Hat to Larry Niven
Review: I believe the teleportation rules in this book are based on an essay by Larry Niven title something like "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation".

Rating:
Summary: A Tip O' the Hat to Larry Niven
Review: I believe the teleportation rules in this book are based on an essay by Larry Niven title something like "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation".

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book - You Should Enjoy!
Review: Some of the other reviewers have already told about the book, so I'll just say that I've enjoyed it very much. I've had the book for quite some time and I've reread it from time to time. I noticed some of the reviewers didn't appreciate the book at all which totally dumbfounds me! Oh well, we can't all have the same taste.
I also have to add that the book tells a wonderful story about how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When one person may see another person as homely or unattractive - someone else may see beauty. The human female character, Legwott, is seen as short, big-boned and homely by human standards. However, she is seen as lithe, fragil and beautiful (quite the fairy princess) by the alien humanoid race in the story.

Rating:
Summary: Vinge was just getting warmed up
Review: Vernor Vinge was just getting warmed up with this short, but amusing 1976 offering. With "The Witling", Vinge violates the fundamental rule of fiction -- show, don't tell. There are long rambling internal monologues where all the super-cool technical ideas are introduced and explained. The characters all act and talk like graduate students in a research lab.

"The Witling" is well worth it for the ideas, but nowhere near as complete an offering in terms of either technology or characterization as his as his captivating Marooned in Realtime series or his already classic "A Deepness in the Sky". Like me, you might also enjoy witnessing the evolution of Vinge's craft. And while I don't want to give too much away, there is a notion of discontinuity of time and place in this work that should be familiar to fans of Vinge's later work.

Rating:
Summary: Vinge was just getting warmed up
Review: Vernor Vinge was just getting warmed up with this short, but amusing 1976 offering. With "The Witling", Vinge violates the fundamental rule of fiction -- show, don't tell. There are long rambling internal monologues where all the super-cool technical ideas are introduced and explained. The characters all act and talk like graduate students in a research lab.

"The Witling" is well worth it for the ideas, but nowhere near as complete an offering in terms of either technology or characterization as his as his captivating Marooned in Realtime series or his already classic "A Deepness in the Sky". Like me, you might also enjoy witnessing the evolution of Vinge's craft. And while I don't want to give too much away, there is a notion of discontinuity of time and place in this work that should be familiar to fans of Vinge's later work.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating world; excellent ideas
Review: Vinge describes a world in which teleportation is an everyday reality --he and clears up all the little details of plausibility which other writers were too lazy or uninformed to bother with. Angular momentum, conservation of energy--these and other science aspects are beautifully worked out, behind a seeming fantasy scenario. A book to delight that small minority which still cares about science in science fiction.

Rating:
Summary: The Misogynist Ending From Hell!
Review: Well, I just finished this book...my fiance claims I should give him another chance and read his later stuff. However, I am dubious. This book should be called "Witling, or How I Learned To Stop Thinking and Become a Happy Bimbo". Sheesh Vern, give us double-X chromosome types a bit more credit, will ya? I hope you're as embarassed now by this dog of a book as my fiance thinks you are. 50 lashes with a wet noodle and 10 years reading "The Feminine Mystique".