Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

It’s probably good for other writers that want to win Hugos that Vernor Vinge doesn’t write more quickly. In the last 15years, he’s written thee major novels. The first two won Hugos. The latest -- Rainbows End – is, so far this year, my choice as the year’s best. Vinge is one of our best writers of hard SF – one of our best writers of SF of any type – as well as one of our best at looking at the real implications of the technological and social changes we see going on around us. And he is a skilled writer, one who has developed his skills over the years and gotten even better.

Vinge’s previous two novels – A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky – were remarkable space operas, combining new and interesting concepts with good writing, adept plotting, and believable and interesting characters. Rainbows End is a different sort of book. It’s set on earth in the 2030s. It’s a world that’s a believable extrapolation of today’s world, full of both near magical technology and incredible risk. Technology has enable everyone to stay connected, has enabled people to accomplish great things. At the same time, it’s put weapons of mass destruction capability in the hands of even large criminal gangs, and terrorism has to be guarded against by a combination of super cyber sleuths and strike teams that are ready to go into action at any moment. The overall plot arch of Rainbows End is set up around this, but most of the book doesn’t actually center on that. Instead, Vinge concentrates on the actions of a number of characters, keeping the espionage threat as a driving force in the background.

The books starts as a European analyst, in sorting through data, finds a slight indication that a lab in San Diego is developing mind-control technology (or, as Vinge calls it, YGBM – You Gotta Believe Me – technology). Three higher ups in Indo European intelligence decide they must secretly look into this, without tipping off the Americans, since the American government could be involved. (Unlikely, since the three great superpowers – America, China, and the Indo-European Union – have been cooperating to keep threats under control.) But, there is a twist here: one of the three – the head of the Indian branch -- is actually the one running the experiment. He plans to use the YGBM technology himself (to save the world from itself, of course). So, while his two colleagues are trying to figure out what’s really going on, he plans to mislead them. But they need someone to help pull things together in America, so they hire a free agent, someone who projects his image (this is a time when people don’t always meet in person; the always-wired populace can easily meet virtually) as a rabbit and who acts a lot like Bugs Bunny.

This is all in the first 20 pages or so. But from there, the book shifts focus to the Gu family. Robert Gu, the world’s greatest poet and world-class son of a bitch years ago, is returning home to his family in San Diego, cured of Alzheimer’s. His son Robert Jr. is a marine who leads one of the strike teams that responds to possible world killer events. His daughter-in-law Alice is one of the world’s great analysts, able to look at masses of data and perform threat analysis. And his granddaughter Miri is a brilliant pre-teen, immersed in the high-tech culture around her but wanting to help her grandfather, despite himself, return to the world.

Much of what follows, though driven from behind by the Indo-European espionage case and by the mysterious Rabbit, focuses on the characters of Robert and Miri and on those around them. Robert returns to high school, to Fairmont High, where adults like Robert returning to the world and kids who can’t cut the usual high-school programs and are thus in the “vo-tech” track are taught. Bit by bit, Robert learns the world around him, becomes more in tune with technology, and at the same time becomes more human and less of a bastard. It’s a brilliant performance by Vinge as he manages to create a handful of intriguing and well drawn characters and put them in a such a fascinating world. He balances several plot threads quite nicely, bringing them all together at the end in a satisfying way.

One of the great accomplishment of the novel is the way Vinge manages to show us technology that’s near singularity level, to make it believable, and to put it in a world where his characters interact with it in believable ways. He shows us this technology and makes it an integral part of all that’s going on but he emphasizes the characters. The technology doesn’t dominate the novel; the characters do. We walk away from this book remembering the characters and what they did and how they interacted with the technology. We remember the technological magic, but in the context of the characters, not the other way around. In the end, this both gives it a more human feel and makes it more believable. If characters we believe in and care about view all this as just part of what is normal, we are more likely to do so.

Throughout, Vinge emphasizes the importance of collaboration and of being able to actually analyze and correlate the massive amounts of data that even now are available to us. Robert starts at Fairmont as his old self – contemptuous of those around him who he feels are less talented than he is. But in large part it’s his collaboration with Juan, a boy who can’t really write, but who helps Robert to understand technology while Robert helps him to compose with words, that makes Robert more human, more of a character who we can like.

The book is also an optimistic look at the future. Yes, there are threats everywhere. Criminal gangs can get nukes. (Saturday night specials aren’t handguns any more.) And bad things have happened. But the major powers have learned to cooperate;, to keep things in check. Moreover, the world is filled with wonderful things, ranging from technology that allows people to create their own views of the world (being able to walk through a park and see, if you want, icons over things to give you more information about them is something I’d love) to medical technology that can cure many diseases. But I think where Vinge is his most optimistic is in is view of the young people in this world. Miri is not only brilliant; she’s a very good kid. And Juan, for somebody who is in the vo-tech track, is also brilliant and a nice, helpful kid. Even the pranksters are a twins who reminded me of the Weasley twins in Harry Potter. (To compliment this, even the vo-tech schools have good teachers.) I hope that things do turn out as well.

This is a great book. Mark Olson, in his review of it, called it Vinge’s best novel yet. I’m not quite sure I’d go that far. I have to confess I’m a sucker for good space opera, and his previous two books were superb space opera, and had wider scope than the current book, so if I had to pick just one book to point to as his best, I’d lean toward one of those. On the other hand, Rainbows End is a virtuoso performance, tightly written, and full of great ideas and great characters. I recommend it highly, and as I said earlier it’s at the front of my list (far in front) of best books of the year so far.