Rainbows End

By: Vernor Vinge

Narrated by: Eric Conger

Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Vernor Vinge doesn't write novels very quickly, but when he writes one, it's well worth the wait. His last two novels have won the coveted Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the year. Rainbows End is set in the same near future as his novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High", which won the Hugo Award in 2002 for Best Novella. Set a few decades from now, Rainbows End is an epic adventure that encapsulates in a single extended family the challenges of the technological advances of the first quarter of the 21st century. The information revolution of the past 30 years blossoms into a web of conspiracies that could destroy Western civilization. At the center of the action is Robert Gu, a former Alzheimer's victim who has regained his mental and physical health through radical new therapies, and his family. His son and daughter-in-law are both in the military, but not a military we would recognize, while his middle-school-age granddaughter is involved in perhaps the most dangerous game of all, with people and forces more powerful than she or her parents can imagine.

Filled with excitement and Vinge's trademark potpourri of fascinating ideas, Rainbows End is another triumphantly entertaining novel by one of the true masters of the field.

©2006 Vinge Vernor (P)2007 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

• 2007 Hugo Award winner, Best Novel

"This [is] top-drawer hard SF - fast-paced, packed with action, intellectually challenging and, above all, capable of invoking SF's grail: a genuine sense of wonder." (Publishers Weekly)

One of Vinge’s Best

I love this book for many reasons, but perhaps the best is its sense of world-building. The science is scarily possible and characters very interesting. I really hope he does a sequel.

Wonderful

A fantastic listen, full of great characters and ideas. If you like Neal Stephenson, William Gibson or Greg Bear (just to name a few) you will enjoy this book. Considered a post-cyberpunk masterpiece.

Reads like a video game

This is about a world, not too far into the future, where technology is everywhere, viruses and consumer manipulation is on the order of the day and one's life is intimately entwined with virtual realities.

The book's strength is that it builds on today's video and internet games and extends it into the future to create a real/virtual world that you could well imagine could actually come about.

But this is the book's ultimate weakness as well. It ends up reading too much like a video game. Nothing seems real and the story ends up sounding like a juvenile virtual dream.

Good but not great

Rainbow's End was a clever book by Vinge, but does not touch some of his space sci-fi stories. Set in near modern times, it is a pleasant listen, but had none of the mind boggling imagination that I had come to expect with other books by the same author. I do wonder, though, if my expectations had not already been so high if I would have rated it a "5" instead of a "4".

Not bad, but read something else

I expected more from a Hugo award winner. The story was okay, not terrifically imaginative, and maybe a bit too rich in computer hardware fetishism for my taste.

It's not that I hated it, I just feel like I wasted my time listening to this when there are still some Paolo Bacigalupi and China Mieville books that I haven't "read" yet.

creative ideas that limp along

I have enjoyed the author's other works, and I like that he tackled a near future story, but I found a lot of the story a drag and kind of annoying. it never got that interesting or engaging. by the end I just didn't care and only wanted to finish it for the sake of completeness.

Splendid, but not transcendent

Vinges gaze is as piercing as ever, but his creative glee is not in full force. He reaches more accuracy than truth. But make no mistake, this is an excellent book, it only pales in comparison to his best work.

It's no AFUTD, but it's good stuff for sure!

This book starts off VERY slow. I almost stopped reading it. Then it really picked up, and my patience was well-rewarded with an exciting hard scifi read.

Engaging but probably more so as a read.

The back and forth of silent messaging did not work for me with the narration. Perhaps if I were reading it it would have been easier to follow. Although much of science fiction is a vehicle for what can be as far as technological advances, it seemed to me that the backdrop of UCSD and the story were contrivances solely for the exploration of what could be. I really had a hard time becoming emotionally involved with the characters. Interesting to note though, the sixth floor of the Geisel library has been cleared of books. Maybe part of this peek into the future is closer than one might think.

I would have likeg to know who the Rabbit was. I think there is s whole story there.

Immersive story about immersive technology

The author writes knowledgeably about advanced tech, in a nearly prescient fashion. highly recommend.