Rainbows End
Jan. 4th, 2008 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThis was another sequel I was looking forward to in the order I made in December. I'd heard mixed opinions on it. At least now I've read it I no longer get the title mixed up with "Gravity's Rainbow" :)
It's an extension of ideas in the short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High". I thought the world was wonderfully conceived. It's a middle ground between living in a cyber-reality and not. The cyber reality is overlaid on the real one: people wear glasses/contacts that overlay both straight information and enhancements to location on your vision.
For instance, people might present themselves as avatars instead of what they really look like, and everyone who's seeing the default view of the street will see that. Or project their avatar somewhere else, to visit other people without physically moving. And there are thousands of others, eg. fantasy world interpretations of places.
The world is fascinating, it's really good.
The story I didn't like so much. I quite enjoyed the characters, but the plot didn't seem as well balanced in the world as Vinge managed in the even-more sweeping worlds of Fire Upon and Deepness.
In fact, I think I prefer the short story as book, although the longer book expands a lot of things. The short story is better with the expanded (and only occasionally changed) view of the characters gained from reading the novel.
I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks, if they've read it.
I feel like I'd like to read another book in that world, but experience teaches me that sequels that take the most interesting aspects and then do them right are quite rare. (Although sometimes spawn whole series and genres when they get them right.)
It's an extension of ideas in the short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High". I thought the world was wonderfully conceived. It's a middle ground between living in a cyber-reality and not. The cyber reality is overlaid on the real one: people wear glasses/contacts that overlay both straight information and enhancements to location on your vision.
For instance, people might present themselves as avatars instead of what they really look like, and everyone who's seeing the default view of the street will see that. Or project their avatar somewhere else, to visit other people without physically moving. And there are thousands of others, eg. fantasy world interpretations of places.
The world is fascinating, it's really good.
The story I didn't like so much. I quite enjoyed the characters, but the plot didn't seem as well balanced in the world as Vinge managed in the even-more sweeping worlds of Fire Upon and Deepness.
In fact, I think I prefer the short story as book, although the longer book expands a lot of things. The short story is better with the expanded (and only occasionally changed) view of the characters gained from reading the novel.
I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks, if they've read it.
I feel like I'd like to read another book in that world, but experience teaches me that sequels that take the most interesting aspects and then do them right are quite rare. (Although sometimes spawn whole series and genres when they get them right.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-17 12:32 am (UTC)GPS: I know what you mean, I don't know the answer.
SHE: Ah, I think I totally missed that, I must have been skimming, I didn't get the details of SHE at all, I had assumed the revocation was about trust of programs, not a problem if it's self-contained, but shuts almost everything down if it can't talk to anyone else (like shutting down a nameserver, doesn't stop someone running programs per se, but stops them doing anything useful with anyone else).
Techno-illiterate: I wasn't sure what was implied, I thought they were shifting, but many people were left behind by just how fast everything shifted, which sounds normal.
But it's the sort of book where he throws so many ideas into the world some of them won't fit. As you say, it just seemed to stop: I guess he hadn't thought any further. And he could fit a sequel in (I'd be very curious!) but he'd have to go off and invent it.
I said something like this, I didn't really believe in the story he was telling, I didn't really care, I wanted to know more about the characters and the world, but if he wrote another novel with the same characters and world, but a different plot, I'd almost be equally interested in that as a canonical sequel, though that only occurs to me because I did have the opportunity of reading the short story as well as the novel.
Typo: Thank you, fixed. I was concentrating too hard on the apostrophe, I got an extra "d".