A lot of love here for A Fire Upon the Deep (predicted fake news via "the net of a thousand lies") and A Deepness in the Sky (great depiction of cognitive enhancement, slower-than-light interstellar trade), but less so for Rainbows End, which is perhaps a less successful story but remains, after almost two decades, the best description of what augmented reality games and ARGs might do to the world.
> A Fire Upon the Deep (predicted fake news via "the net of a thousand lies")
Predicted ? A Fire Upon the Deep published in 1993, at which date Usenet was already mature and suffering such patterns - although not at FaceTwitTok scale.
But still, I love Vinge's take on information entropy across time, space and social networks. A Deepness in the Sky features the profession of programmer–archaeologist and I'm here for that !
> Predicted ? A Fire Upon the Deep published in 1993, at which date Usenet was already mature and suffering such patterns
I still remember the moment when I realised that the galactic network in 'Fire...' was in fact based on Usenet (which I used heavily at the time), especially how it was low bandwidth text (given the interstellar distances) and how it had a fair number of nutters posting nonsense across the galaxy ('the key insight is hexapodia'). Great author, who'll be sadly missed.
I recently re-read Rainbows End, and I think "do to the world" is an appropriate phrasing. It's a strikingly unpleasant vision of a world in which every space is 24/7 running dozens of microtransaction AR games... I found the part where Juan walks through the "amusement park" particularly effective, where little robots would prance around trying to entice him into interacting with them (which would incur a fee).
I think it's also one of the best descriptions of living at the onset of massive, disruptive technological changes, and how disorienting (and occasionally terrifying) this would feel. The fundamental problem with that book, for me, is that the main protagonist is (deliberately) an utterly loathsome individual, who somehow ends up as a good guy but doesn't seem to do very much learning or self-reflection.
