"The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity." -- Vernor Vinge
Vernor Steffen Vinge () (born October 2, 1944 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, U.S.) is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), Rainbows End (2006), Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1984 novel The Peace War and his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.
"And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.""Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection.""Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.""But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.""But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.""Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.""How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?""I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.""I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.""I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.""IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.""In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.""It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.""Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.""The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.""The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.""The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being.""We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.""When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.""When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.""Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence."
Vinge published his first short story, "Bookworm, Run!", in the March 1966 issue of Analog Science Fiction, then edited by John W. Campbell. The story explores the theme of artificially augmented intelligence by connecting the brain directly to computerised data sources. He became a moderately prolific contributor to SF magazines in the 1960s and early 1970s, adapting one of his stories into a short novel, Grimm's World (1969), and publishing a second novel, The Witling (1975).
Vinge came to prominence in 1981 with his novella True Names, perhaps the first story to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk stories by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson and others.
His next two novels, The Peace War (1984) and Marooned in Realtime (1986), explore the spread of a future libertarian society, and deal with the impact of a technology which can create impenetrable force field called 'bobble'. These books built Vinge's reputation as an author who would explore ideas to their logical conclusions in particularly inventive ways. Both books were nominated for the Hugo Award, but lost to novels by William Gibson and Orson Scott Card.
These two novels and True Names also emphasized Vinge's interest in the technological singularity. True Names takes place in a world on the cusp of the Singularity. The Peace War shows a world in which the Singularity has been postponed by the Bobbles and a global plague, while Marooned in Realtime follows a small group of people who have managed to miss the Singularity which otherwise encompassed Earth.
Vinge won the Hugo Award (tying for Best Novel with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis) with his 1992 novel, A Fire Upon the Deep.In it, he envisions a galaxy that is divided up into 'zones of thought', in which the further one moves from the center of the galaxy, the higher the level of technology one can achieve. Nearest the center is 'The Unthinking Depths', where even human-level intelligence is impossible. Earth is in 'The Slow Zone', in which faster-than-light (FTL) travel cannot be achieved. Most of the book, however, takes place in a zone called 'The Beyond', where the computations necessary for FTL travel are possible, but transcendence beyond the Singularity to superhuman intelligence is not. In the last zone, 'The Transcend', there are apparently no limitations at all. The Beyond, therefore, permits a classic space opera, using technology that would push past the Singularity. Fire includes a large number of additional ideas making for an unusually complex and rich universe and story.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999) was a prequel to Fire, following competing groups of humans in The Slow Zone as they struggle over who has the rights to exploit a technologically emerging alien culture. In addition, Deepness explores the themes of technological freedom vs. technology as a tool of enslavement and control, among other deep political issues. Deepness won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2000.
Vinge's novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High and The Cookie Monster also won Hugo Awards in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
Vinge's 2006 novel, Rainbows End, set in a similar universe to Fast Times at Fairmont High, won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel.His next novel, The Children of the Sky, is a sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, set approximately 10 years later. It is scheduled for release in February 2011.
Vinge retired in 2000 from teaching at San Diego State University, in order to write full-time. Most years, since its inception in 1999, Vinge has been on the Free Software Foundation's selection committee for their Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Vernor Vinge was Writer Guest of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention in 2002.
Vinge was formerly married to Joan D. Vinge, also an accomplished science fiction author.
The concepts of artificial intelligence and technological singularity inform much of Vinge's writing, whether his stories embrace them (Bookworm, Run!; True Names; Rainbows End) or construct worlds to specifically explain the non-existence of these phenomena (A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky).
A pro-market/anarchocapitalist theme can be seen in other works, either explicitly (The Ungoverned, Marooned in Realtime) or more quietly (the confrontation between the Emergents and the Qeng Ho in A Deepness in the Sky).
In Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus (published in 1972, before Vinge had written his best-known work), the narrator finds a collection of Vernor Vinge stories on a top shelf of a far-future library on a distant world, though the cover has been so worn down that he thinks a librarian must have mistaken the "V. Vinge" on the spine as "Winge".
In David Brin's Kiln People, there is a reference to the main character experiencing something like "Vingeian focus," a quick reference to A Deepness in the Sky. Vinge's review of the book is featured on the back cover.
In the sleeve notes for Harmonic 313's album "When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence", Mark Pritchard refers to his "good friend Vernon Vinge", crediting him for naming the "technological singularity".
Grimm's World (1969), revised as Tatja Grimm's World (1987)
The Witling (1976)
The Peace War (1984) ... Hugo Award nominee, 1985
Marooned in Realtime (1986) ... Prometheus Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, 1987
(The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime were collected as Across Realtime in 2000.)
Rainbows End ISBN 0-312-85684-9 (2006) ... Hugo and Locus SF Awards winner, 2007; Campbell Award nominee, 2007
Zones of Thought series
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) ... Nebula Award nominee, 1992; Hugo Award winner, 1993; Campbell and Locus SF Awards nominee, 1993
A Deepness in the Sky (1999) ... Nebula Award nominee, 1999; Hugo, Campbell, and Prometheus Awards winner, 2000; Clarke and Locus SF Awards nominee, 2000
Collections
True Names ... and Other Dangers ISBN 0-671-65363-6
"Bookworm, Run!"
"True Names" (1981, winner 2007 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award)
"The Peddler's Apprentice" (with Joan D. Vinge)
"The Ungoverned" (occurs in the same milieu as The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime)
"Long Shot"
Threats... and Other Promises ISBN 0-671-69790-0 (These two volumes collect Vinge's short fiction through the early 1990s.)
"Apartness"
"Conquest by Default" (occurs in the same milieu as "Apartness")
"The Whirligig of Time"
"Gemstone"
"Just Peace" (with William Rupp)
"Original Sin"
"The Blabber" (occurs in the same milieu as A Fire Upon the Deep)
Across Realtime ISBN 0-671-72098-8
The Peace War
The Ungoverned
Marooned in Realtime
True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier ISBN 0-312-86207-5 (contains "True Names" plus essays by others)
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge ISBN 0-312-87373-5 (hardcover) or ISBN 0-312-87584-3 (paperback) (This volume collects Vinge's short fiction through 2001, including Vinge's comments from the earlier two volumes.)
"Bookworm, Run!"
"The Accomplice"
"The Peddler's Apprentice" (with Joan D. Vinge)
"The Ungoverned"
"Long Shot"
"Apartness"
"Conquest by Default"
"The Whirligig of Time"
"Bomb Scare"
"The Science Fair"
"Gemstone"
"Just Peace" (with William Rupp)
"Original Sin"
"The Blabber"
"Win A Nobel Prize!" (originally published in Nature, Vol 407 No 6805 "Futures")
"The Barbarian Princess" (this is also the first section of "Tatja Grimm's World")
"Fast Times at Fairmont High" (occurs in the same milieu as Rainbows End) (winner 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novella)
Uncollected short fiction
"Grimm's Story" (Orbit 4, 1968)
"A Dry Martini" (The 60th World Science Fiction Convention ConJosé Restaurant Guide, page 60)
"The Cookie Monster" (Analog Science Fiction, October 2003) (winner 2004 Hugo Award for Best Novella)
"Synthetic Serendipity", IEEE Spectrum Online, 30 June 2004
About Vinge
Vernor Vinge, at Worlds Without End
A website owned by Vinge (small and outdated)
Essays and speeches
The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era, 1993
