All of Vernor Vinge’s novels have been set in space and in the far future. The ones I’ve read aren’t bad, but none of them grabbed me enough to want to revisit them. But when Vinge came out with a near future novel set on Earth, then I was interested. I tried reading Rainbows End when it came out, but things go in the way and I never managed to get back to it. I decided to try it out again and had mixed feelings about the book. Let’s see what’s up.
Robert Gu was an award winning poet, professor and all around asshole. He alienated everyone around him, especially those closest to him: his sister Clara, his wife Lena and his son Robert. And when he got Alzheimer’s, no one particularly cared. But this is the near future and there are now cures for Alzheimer’s (and can, in some people, reverse the signs of aging). So Robert is brought back and dumped (for the time being) in with his son Robert. Robert and his wife Alice are both military people and they have a hacker, pre-teen daughter Mira. Since it’s the near future, everyone has wearable computers and access to more processing power than was imaginable in the past. But, since Robert doesn’t know the first thing about wearables, his granddaughter tries to help him and eventually Robert goes to the local school, which has a seniors program for people in his situation.
Robert has a secret though. His gift with words is gone. He can’t write a poem that is anywhere close to what he was able to do previously. This secret helps drive the novel. Across the world, there was a YGBM event. A YGBM (You Gotta Believe Me) event is one where technology is able to influence people to do something, in this case there was a spike in nougat sales after a commercial aired during a sporting event. A small cabal is gathered to find out where it came from and to stop it. But, one of the cabal is the person responsible. Alfred knows he needs to work with the others to stop it, but his idea of stopping it is to smuggle his technology out, blame someone else and remove anything that could link to him. To do this magic, the cabal hires The Rabbit. The Rabbit is an elite hacker (or possibly an AI program) that can hack into the necessary systems as well as get feet on the ground as needed to do the dirty work.
Robert Gu meets up with a cabal of his own. The local university has given their library books to an outside vendor who is going to shred them as part of scanning them all it. The cabal of medically enhanced seniors wants to save the books (or at least slow down the outside vendor enough that they wont continue at other libraries). The Rabbit promises Robert a fix for his lost gift to get him into the cabal, which he has pushed into moving some technology into the right area (in the guise of hurting the outside vendor). But Robert’s cabal is going to be up against the military team (led by his son and daughter in law) that is investigating the same area as The Rabbit. The question then becomes, is Robert going to help his family (who still despise him for his actions in the past) or will he sell his soul to regain his gift. And will Alfred be able to successfully hide his activity or will The Rabbit spoil everything for him.
Overall the book is an interesting look at the near future, especially at people who would be on the fringes of next generation computing. The interesting part is how dated the book feels already, even though it only came out in 2007. With all the tech companies mentioned and all the mobile and wearable computers referenced, there is no mention of Apple. And Google is referenced solely for it’s search. A lot of the advances in technology seem to be solely in integrating the computers into the human body more. People are able to access networked information a lot easier than typing on their phone. There are also significant medical advances, but these are only touched upon as background information. Other than the curing of aging diseases, there really isn’t a lot of medical technology referenced in the book.
The main plot is a technological thriller that is decently done. But it’s a sort of superficial look at the technology. The technology is mainly there to set the scene with the majority of the plot being a conventional thriller. And there are some parts that just seem silly. Google started scanning university library books in 2004 without having to do anything destructive to the book. So they whole library subplot seemed less technologically advanced. The characters were only briefly drawn out and the only one we really get a sense of is Robert. Everyone else is just along for the ride (for the most part). Having said that, it was well written and entertaining. I’m not Vinge’s biggest fan, but I would read additional books of his like Rainbows End. Mildly recommended.