Marooned in Realtime
by Vernor Vinge · first published 1986
77% recommend21% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Sci-fi detective story about survivors who skipped past a singularity, using stasis-field bobbles to explore the odd side-effects of one technological premise. Suits Vinge fans; works alone as a standalone.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
From the back cover: "In The Peace War Vernor Vinge introduced the technology of bobbles, creating spheres where time stands still while minutes, years, or eons pass by outside. Originally used to counter the nucler threat, then to enforce an oppressive government, they don't really come into their own until the century after the Peace War. What better means for one-way time travel? With the bobble plus longevity treatments, human achievements would seem to have no limits... You can hardly turn the pages fast enough... (Marooned in Realtime) is a winner." -- Locus
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Some other really thought provoking books by Vinge which often go overlooked is "The Peace Wars" and "Marooned in Realtime" My personal guilty favorite (I say guilty because he really buys into the outdated concept of the technological singularity) is Rainbow's End, which deals with notions of augmented reality, digitalization…
on “A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)” ↗…button which does the actual shooting. Similarly for torpedoes, except I seem to remember seeing them manually loading torpedoes into the tubes like it's a 1940s U-boat or something. Vernor Vinge's "Marooned in Realtime" has some very interesting space battles, based around the single conceit of "bobbles": impenetrable force shields which essentially separate their contents from the universe (and from time) for a pre-selected…
on “Aircraft Carriers in Space” ↗…them, but nearly every one is a gem. Read Understand on the web (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm) to see if you like his style - I do. Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky, The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime. All great novels, but start from A Fire Upon the Deep (I read that in 2008) if you haven't read Vinge before, it's the best introduction. Greg Egan, Diaspora, Quarantine, Distress. Egan is the best…
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?” ↗I basically discovered Vernor Vinge. A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge The Peace War, by Vernor Vinge Marooned in Realtime, by Vernor Vinge Hyperion, by Dan Simmons Mrs. Perkins's Electric Quilt, a fun book about some math and physics problems
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?” ↗Vinge's Marooned in Realtime has some neat ideas for space combat too. I think that Niven and Pournelle's book The Mote in God's Eye had some interesting ideas. As I recall, space combat involved spherical vessels pouring energy…
on “Aircraft Carriers in Space” ↗I think Vernor Vinge has something like that in one of his end-of-civilization post-singularity novels, let's see... Marooned in Realtime, yes. (Great read, too.)
on “NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-satellites” ↗Nit: Marooned in realtime is one of Vinge's pre-singularity novels. Both in the sense that he hadn't come up with the term yet, and in the sense that the technology in the book isn't all that god-like. (Not a bad read at all,…
on “NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-satellites” ↗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.…
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗>>"Kirill is a character in Vadim Panov's Enclaves." Thanks, I will check that. If you like Vinge, there is a little gem that it's, I think, not very known: "Marooned in Realtime" (1). It's the second in a series but it can be read alone without problem. Also the short story by Vinge, "The cookie monster" is very good (recommended going blind for this one, not spoilers) By Reynolds,…
on “The Culture War: Iain M. Banks’s Billionaire Fans” ↗I haven't read all of his books, but I agree that I liked this one the least. His other books: "A Deepness in the Sky," "Marooned in Realtime" and "A Fire Upon the Deep" are AWESOME. Vinge is the smartest sci-fi writer I've read. I wish he'd write some more Pham Nuwen stories.
on “Rainbow's End -- a novel by Vernor Vinge that shows what is possible. Now go build it.” ↗…and A Fire Upon the Deep, which I thought were awesome. These are the smartest science fiction books I have ever read. After reading these, I ordered all the rest of his books. I also really liked Marooned in Realtime and The Peace War.
on “Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End fails to thrill” ↗Other excellent stories in this genre: Blood Music by Greg Bear, Permutation City and Crystal Nights (http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/) by Greg Egan. Marooned in Realtime by Vinge had this a bit too—probably closest thematically to the GP's comment. A bunch of people wake up to a world that's been empty of humans for many thousands of years; the book spends some time talking…
on “Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears” ↗…favorite stories follow that pattern: Take a normal world and add one radical (or even impossible) piece of technology or magic. Then explore the implications. Vernor Vinge's bobble books (The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime) are an excellent example of this. The thing that annoys me is when authors don't see an implication of their invention. Or worse, they make their characters use the invention in implausibly limited…
on “Scientists Help Movie Writers Make Films ‘Plausible-Ish’” ↗Indeed, it's essentially two books in one, and that half of it was always a slog to get 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)” ↗…new machine: the book won the pulitzer, it's about now defunct Data General and implementing a new machine in the early 80's: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_Ma... Fiction: Marooned in Realtime: Vernor Vinge on a group of people who missed the singularity, and try to understand what happened. A damn good detective story too: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167847.Marooned_in_Realti...
on “Ask HN: What are the best books you've read that few others have?” ↗