As author Vernor Vinge subtitles it, this is a “novel with one foot set in the future.” Though he’s won four Hugo Awards already, two for novels and two for stories, nearly all his work to date has been set in distant futures and Rainbow’s End is Vinge’s first novel set so close to the present, only two decades fom now.
In fact, with minors exceptions, nearly all of his fiction until now has been concerned more or less directly with the Singularity, a concept he named and solidified from various strands of thought that were bouncing around between academics and science fiction authors, going back to John von Neumann 40 years earlier, in a seminal 1993 paper. But this book is not about the Singularity, though perhaps positing some precursors, so I’ll move on.
In Vinge’s near future there are several key technical developments which figure prominently in Rainbow’s End:
- Computing power has continued its march to ever greater speeds, and smaller forms, so that it’s embedded in clothing and projects the display onto special contact lenses.
- Connectivity is ubiquitous and fast enough for realistic telepresence–people on opposite sides of the planet can appear to each other to be sitting across a desk.
- Software allows hundreds or thousands of analysts to work concurrently on the same question without overwhelming the individual ‘manager’ who can even guide and reassign groups of analysts in real time.
- Biotech can cure most diseases, including old age.
Each of these elements come together in this tale as it opens with leaders of several multi-national intelligence agencies fear that someone (or some nation) has developed You Gotta Believe Me, the ultimate advertising biotechnology. Once infected, the name is literally true. The three spies, one each from India, Europe and Japan, narrow the possible labs where it’s being developed to UC San Diego, most likely under the control of the American government. A new, unknown, untraceable individual called Mr. Rabbit agrees to manage the infiltration of the lab even though the spies are very wary of him.
Robert Gu, a reknown poet just barely recovered from Alzheimer’s disease, has moved in with his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in their suburban San Diego home. The husband and wife are senior Marine officers and the daughter attends Fairmont High School, where a rejuvenated Robert also studies so he can learn how to handle all the tech and find a way to contribute again to society. Gu was quite the mean bastard before falling ill, driving away his wife and alienating his only son, and Vinge shows us that he was smart enough to understand and take pleasure from being nasty.
Gu and several of his fellow retreads are, unknown to each other, contacted by Mr. Rabbit and agree to work for him in exchange for something of great personal value; in Gu’s case the reward is a medical treatment that will restore his creativity, lost to him in the Alzheimer’s cure.
(Bonus: Excellent interview Vinge gave during the publication publicity tour.)
Vinge crashes all this together magnificently, with cultural and technical complications so profuse I cannot do more than mention the highlights. He doesn’t ignore the political trends seen today in the Middle East but instead shows a rational way in which, for the most part, they’re overcome. Rainbow’s End isn’t a long book, just a few pages longer than Widow’s Walk, but it’s amazingly dense, on par with Iain Banks’ The Algrebraist in nearly every way but much more real.
definitely recommended
BillSaysThis 