RIP, Vernor Vinge

[Dazrin]

I know there are a few fans here who would like to know. I've not read anything of his yet but do have him on my TBR list.

https://boingboing.net/2024/03/21/ha...ead-at-79.html

[DNSB]

I've read and enjoyed many of Vernor Vinge's books over the years. The first book of his that I remember reading was Grimm's World though True Names is still my favourite of his books.

He will be missed!

[cromag]

Sorry to hear this. I've read some of his early stuff, but not nearly enough.

[Ashartus]

I'd heard a while back he had retired due to health issues. He didn't write a lot of novels but most of what he did write was great. I would consider A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky two of the all-time great science fiction novels.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by Ashartus

I'd heard a while back he had retired due to health issues. He didn't write a lot of novels but most of what he did write was great. I would consider A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky two of the all-time great science fiction novels.

I have to agree. I read them and loved them. He was a very good writer.
Apache

[jviscosi]

I was sad to hear about this. I read A Fire Upon the Deep years ago and thought it was amazing, but I never got around to A Deepness in the Sky. I ought to rectify that.

[Quoth]

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/...uary/?td=rt-3a

Vinge is credited as the first author to describe an immersive cyberspace, which he outlined in his 1979 novella True Names – five years before William Gibson's Neuromancer brought the idea to the mainstream.

However he probably wasn't first.

[ZodWallop]

I thought it was John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider (1975). But I haven't yet read the book and may be mixed up.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I thought it was John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider (1975). But I haven't yet read the book and may be mixed up.

It's certainly got a version of the internet, computer hacking, fake identities via computer and computer viruses, called tapeworms. Computers did once use punched tape as much as 8" floppies.
Though the IBM-PC didn't exist till 1980/1981, personal computing using 8080 and CP/M dated from 1974-1975. A windows based GUI in Xerox in 1976. Arpanet, which became the Internet long before websites existed, was implemented in 1970 and maybe have used TCP/IP by 1975. Website HTML designed in 1989 (hypertext was already nearly a decade old, and Kay's Dynabook and Project Xanadu described it in the 1960s).

I wrote my first SF short story on AI invented accidentally in 1972 or 1973 (which used a digital and Analogue computer interconnected on a spacecraft). Fortran was 1956 and BASIC was a a cut-down script version of Fortran in 1960s at Dartmouth College, ported by Bill Gates and a friend from the mainframe to 8080, and founded MS success on selling Basic. Beginners all purpose instruction code. Basic and the IBM PC really held back computing.

Fed by unrealistic 1950s & 1960s SF I started learing programming after school in 1969 with goal of adding that to becoming an Electronic Engineer, which I achieved, though my first real job in the mid 1970s was more RF engineering. But by 1981 I was a certified Microprocessor Consultant in the UK and by mid 1980s took a course on AI.

It was evident by 1990 that there would never be real AI, just better slightly more useful versions of 1960s Elisa and better pattern matching. See also ALICE and later Mikume chat bots.

So anyone writing SF in 1960s and 1970s with background of reading EE "Doc" Smith (1928) to Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke etc and decent knowledge of computers etc could have had various stories of AI, Internet, Cyberspace, Cyberpunk and VR. Books related to these themes:
1966: The Ansible is in various stories from this date. Ursula K. Le Guin. A sort of Interstellar Internet.
1974: Holodeck idea in Star Trek Animated Series.
1975 The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner. (Inspired by Toffler's "Future shock", 1970, which is mostly rubbish)
1984 Neuromancer
1992 Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson
1995 The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, Neal's refutation of AI claims.
1996 City of Golden Shadow, Tad Williiams. Good VR needs Tanks.
1998 Anvil by Nicolas Van Pallandt, or good VR needs wiring in, a one way trip.

See also Anne McCaffery's early Psychic series, Robert Sheckley, Clifford Simak, Harry Harrison, Jack L. Chalker and many others.

Proposals for Electronic TV were in 1905, though it took nearly 30 years to solve the camera issues.
First programmable electrical Computer was the Z1 by Konrad Zuse in 1939.
Telegraph was using keyboards by 1928 (typewriters, fax and telegraph are Victorian) and overlaying on the public switched by the 1930s, so the earliest kind of networked data. From late 1940s to mid 1970s computers often used the same terminal keyboard/printer as Telex.

The earliest "Cyber"/Internet story is probably E.M Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1909). It's on Gutenberg in this collection.

I've read most of the books / authors mentioned.

Certainly Vernor Vinge was ahead of the pack.

[rcentros]

I hadn't heard of Vernor Vinge, but he looks like he had a good heart. May he rest in peace.

[leebase]

I hate that I remember his name fondly from my youth, but can't think of a single book of his

[ZodWallop]

Rainbow's End and The Peace War. I've not read either yet, but those are the two on my list.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's certainly got a version of the internet, computer hacking, fake identities via computer and computer viruses, called tapeworms. Computers did once use punched tape as much as 8" floppies.
Though the IBM-PC didn't exist till 1980/1981, personal computing using 8080 and CP/M dated from 1974-1975. A windows based GUI in Xerox in 1976. Arpanet, which became the Internet long before websites existed, was implemented in 1970 and maybe have used TCP/IP by 1975. Website HTML designed in 1989 (hypertext was already nearly a decade old, and Kay's Dynabook and Project Xanadu described it in the 1960s).

I wrote my first SF short story on AI invented accidentally in 1972 or 1973 (which used a digital and Analogue computer interconnected on a spacecraft). Fortran was 1956 and BASIC was a a cut-down script version of Fortran in 1960s at Dartmouth College, ported by Bill Gates and a friend from the mainframe to 8080, and founded MS success on selling Basic. Beginners all purpose instruction code. Basic and the IBM PC really held back computing.

Fed by unrealistic 1950s & 1960s SF I started learing programming after school in 1969 with goal of adding that to becoming an Electronic Engineer, which I achieved, though my first real job in the mid 1970s was more RF engineering. But by 1981 I was a certified Microprocessor Consultant in the UK and by mid 1980s took a course on AI.

It was evident by 1990 that there would never be real AI, just better slightly more useful versions of 1960s Elisa and better pattern matching. See also ALICE and later Mikume chat bots.

So anyone writing SF in 1960s and 1970s with background of reading EE "Doc" Smith (1928) to Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke etc and decent knowledge of computers etc could have had various stories of AI, Internet, Cyberspace, Cyberpunk and VR. Books related to these themes:
1966: The Ansible is in various stories from this date. Ursula K. Le Guin. A sort of Interstellar Internet.
1974: Holodeck idea in Star Trek Animated Series.
1975 The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner. Inspired by Toffler's "Future shock", 1970, which is mostly rubbish)
1984 Neuromancer
1992 Snowcrash, Neal Stephenson
1995 The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, Neal's refutation of AI claims.
1996 City of Golden Shadow, Tad Williiams. Good VR needs Tanks.
1998 Anvil by Nicolas Van Pallandt, or good VR needs wiring in, a one way trip.

See also Anne McCaffery's early Psychic series, Robert Sheckley, Clifford Simak, Harry Harrison, Jack L. Chalker and many others.

Proposals for Electronic TV were in 1905, though it took nearly 30 years to solve the camera issues.
First programmable electrical Computer was the Z1 by Konrad Zuse in 1939.
Telegraph was using keyboards by 1928 (typewriters, fax and telegraph are Victorian) and overlaying on the public switched by the 1930s, so the earliest kind of networked data. From late 1940s to mid 1970s computers often used the same terminal keyboard/printer as Telex.

The earliest "Cyber"/Internet story is probably E.M Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1909). It's on Gutenberg in this collection.

I've read most of the books / authors mentioned.

Certainly Vernor Vinge was ahead of the pack.

You're hired!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

You're hired!

Do to what?

Really I'd like help rather than more work!

[DNSB]

For anyone who is interested, Reactor has A Brief Guide to the Fiction of Vernor Vinge which is a pretty decent article.