Across Realtime
by Vernor Vinge · first published 1986
57% recommend43% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Vinge's Across Realtime collection, with Marooned in Realtime as its highlight, explores stasis bubbles and the Singularity through big speculative ideas; suits sci-fi readers who enjoy mind-bending concepts.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Anthology containing The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime.
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If interested in the concept, V. Vinge's Across Realtime books, mainly Maroneed in Realtime explores this concept. Humanity invents stasis bubbles (time stands still inside or almost still), and you can bubble yourself, ships, towns etc for any amount of years.…
on “When Ramjets Ruled Science Fiction” ↗I concur on the Vinge picks. The Vinge story that really blew my mind was "Marooned in Realtime", which I contend is best read in the context of the other works in "Across Realtime": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167844.Across_Realtime For mind games, I submit "Kiln People" by David Brin. What if you could fork your consciousness into another body and rejoin periodically?…
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗…through. Marooned in Realtime is better for getting the Singularity across, although you really need to read The Peace War first; this collection has both plus a bridging short: http://www.amazon.com/Across-Realtime-Vernor-Vinge/dp/185798...
on “The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)” ↗I like to drop this link when this topic comes up and also recommend reading anything by Vernor Vinge. My favorite is Across Realtime. https://longnow.org/seminars/02007/feb/15/what-if-the-singul...
on “Ask HN: Are paradigm shifting breakthroughs rarer or is it a bias in my eyes?” ↗Mmm, not sure those stories match your idea. The only story I can think of that involves a single change in science is Vernor Vinge's Across Realtime (which is very good). I think an Expanse author once commented that he'd never really thought about how the fusion drive thingies were supposed to work.
on “Starfish bodies are just heads, new research says – CNN” ↗For me, reading sci-fi in the 80s and 90s, my pantheon was (in no particular order): Philip K. Dick (Man in the High Castle) William Gibson (Neuromancer) Neil Stephenson (Diamond Age) Vernor Vinge (Across Realtime) Greg Egan (Permutation City) Robert Reed (Sister Alice) John Varley (Eight Worlds series) I'm sure every generation has its pantheon--I wonder what it is for Millennials and Gen Z.
on “Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025” ↗…- this isn't Chaucer, it's fun geeky ideas. I second basically any Greg Egan and Charles Stross and Arthur C. Clarke stories, and: Vernor Vinge's trilogy: A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon the Deep, Across Realtime. Ideas from "World War II on an alien planet around a variable star where the whole planet freezes every few years" to timewarp bubbles, galactic zones of thought, cyborg enhancements, semi-sentient plants.…
on “Book Review: There Is No Antimemetics Division” ↗Not quite what you’re requesting but “Across Realtime” by Vernor Vinge explores ideas around the singularity. In particular it contains the short novel “Marooned in Realtime” that is completely mind blowing imo.
on “Accelerando (2005)” ↗'true name'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names THE cyberpunk book. Also, his later books are great but the "Across Realtime" trilogy has a special place in my heart. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/167844
on “Vernor Vinge has died” ↗…types. You can find some academic economic treatment in _The Machinery of Freedom_, by Friedman, and Vernor Vinge (science fiction author) seemed taken with the notion, too. He experimented with it in the _Across Realtime_ stories. Edit: Also Neal Stephenson, sort-of in _Snowcrash_, explicitly in _Diamond Age_. I strongly dislike the notion because I believe access to justice is a bedrock function of society. But folks…
on “Privately Enforced and Punished Crime” ↗I still think of that Vernor Vinge novel Across Realtime where people just disappear. Like a murder mystery it has already happened at the beginning of the book and people at various technology levels are one-way time traveling into the future trying to figure…
on “Ask HN: How do you define the singularity?” ↗A lot of Vinge's fiction has mechanisms to prevent his futures from being past the singularity. Across Realtime features those left behind, A Fire Upon the Deep and a Deepness in the Sky have the Slow Zone and the Transcend. His short stories have various one off, not well explained things, wars, etc. Vinge's…
on “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” ↗…but one can see the universe of Glasshouse following from the ending of Accelerando. A quick diversion to Vernor Vinge with Peace War and Marooned in Realtime https://www.goodreads.com/series/57273-across-realtime (there's a short story in there titled The Ungoverned) Implied spaces Walter Jon Williams https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2059573.Implied_Spaces which takes another approach to the unexplored events…
on “We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains” ↗Vernor Vinge’s “bobble” series provides a variation of that scenario: https://www.goodreads.com/series/57273-across-realtime
on “Please Use AI” ↗He's intentionally trying to make the superintelligences stay superintelligent by not describing them. I think it's pretty effective. He did the same thing in Across Realtime. His first book Tatja Grimm's World was also about superintelligent people (or the whole rest of the planet except them was sub-intelligent, or something… it's not clear). That one is, hmm, not nearly…
on “Vernor Vinge has died” ↗