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Vernor Vinge
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 Vernor Vinge is a mathematician living in California who has been writing hard sf for thirty years
and slowly gaining a reputation as one of the significant talents in the field. Virtually unnoticed in the 1960s
and 70s, his novels and stories have sometime been spaced years apart, so that although he entered the field
at nearly the same time as Larry Niven, his work was known for years only to a comparatively small circle
of specialists. The last ten years have been his most productive period, featuring his
collection True Names (1987), and his three best novels to date,
The Peace War (1984), Marooned in
Realtime (1986); and A Fire Upon the
Deep (1992). He is now widely popular and seems likely to be one of the major hard sf writers
of the 1990s.
Vinge began writing stories during the final years of Campbell's career at Analog, including
"Bookworm, Run!". This is an early combination of animal intelligence experiments with computers,
particularly artificial intelligence programs. It is interesting to compare this story to Daniel Keyes' classic, "Flowers
for Algernon," in its treatment of enhanced intelligence and its problems, and to contrast it to Kate Wilhelm's
portrayal of unsuccessful experiments with chimpanzees in "The Planners." The theme is persistent during
the last thirty years in sf, down to Pat Murphy's recent Nebula Award-winning "Rachel in Love." Even
more interesting, perhaps, is the implication that the super chimp is a metaphor for the adolescent sf fan, bright
but imprisoned by seemingly benign social institutions, looking forward to a life of service to the
military/industrial complex.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
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Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.