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Original Essays | December 12, 2009

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Marooned in Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

Marooned in Realtime Cover

ISBN13: 9780765308849
ISBN10: 0765308843
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge takes readers on a fifty-million-year trip to a future where humanity's fate will be decided in a dangerous game of high-tech survival.

In this taut thriller, a Hugo finalist for Best Novel, nobody knows why there are only three hundred humans left alive on the Earth fifty million years from now. Opinion is fiercely divided on whether to settle in and plant the seed of mankind anew, or to continue using high-energy stasis fields, or "bobbles," in venturing into the future. When somebody is murdered, it's obvious someone has a secret he or she is willing to kill to preserve.The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to 21st century detective Wil Brierson, the only cop left in the world, to find the culprit, a diabolical fiend whose lust for power could cause the utter extinction of man.

Filled with excitement and adventure, Vinge's tense SF puzzler will satisfy readers with its sense of wonder and engaging characters, one of whom is a murderer with a unique modus operandi.

Review:

"The scope and grandeur of the plot mark this novel as a high point in hard SF creativity. Highly recommended."
(Science Fiction Review)

Review:

"Marooned in Realtime combines the expansive mode of hard SF with the narrow focus of the detective story, complete with a final orchestrated showdown. The result is exciting; you can hardly turn the pages fast enough."
(Locus)

Synopsis:

The exciting sequel to "The Peace War" by the author of "A Fire Upon the Deep"

About the Author

Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin and raised in Central Michigan, science fiction writer Vernor Vinge is the son of geographers. Fascinated by science and particularly computers from an early age, he has a Ph.D. in computer science, and taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University for thirty years.

He has won Hugo Awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and for the novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2001). Known for his rigorous hard-science approach to his SF, he became an iconic figure among cybernetic scientists with the publication in 1981 of his novella "True Names," which is considered a seminal, visionary work of Internet fiction.

He has also gained a great deal of attention both here and abroad for his theory of the coming machine intelligence Singularity. Sought widely as a speaker to both business and scientific groups, he lives in San Diego, California.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
crashsolo23, February 10, 2008 (view all comments by crashsolo23)
A tremendous work of hard science fiction, filled with great ideas about one very possible future for mankind. On top of that, it's a good, solid murder mystery. This book is the sequel to The Peace War, but you don't need to read the first book to enjoy this one, it stands on its own. In Marooned in Realtime, 50 million years have passed on Earth. The last humans alive on Earth are refugees from the 21st Century, "bobbling" forward to find a place and time where they can live and start over. Bobbling is a means of freezing time inside of an area, and unfreezing again at a set period in the future - the 300 or so remaining humans have been bobbling forward at intervals ranging from centuries to millions of years, looking for other survivors, habitable land, and evidence about what happened in the 21st Century that destroyed the rest of humanity.
In the story, one woman of the small group of remaining humans is left outside while the rest of the community bobbles ahead. Alone, "marooned in real-time" she faces the elements and fights for survival. A century later, upon coming out of stasis and realizing what happened, the last remaining cop on Earth has to try and track down the person responsible for her death.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780765308849
Author:
Vinge, Vernor
Publisher:
Tor Books
Subject:
Murder
Subject:
Thrillers
Subject:
Science Fiction - General
Subject:
Time travel
Subject:
Science / General
Subject:
Science fiction
Copyright:
Edition Description:
First
Publication Date:
October 2004
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
288
Dimensions:
8.26x5.64x.75 in. .60 lbs.

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