MAROONED IN REALTIME PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Vernor Vinge | 288 pages | 30 Oct 2004 | Tor Books | 9780765308849 | English | New York, NY, United States Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge - WebScription Ebook Of course, nothing marred its surface. A typical bobble, in an untypical place. In a few months, the molten lake would freeze over, and an unprotected man could walk right to the side of the Peacer bobble. For a few years there would be brilliant sunsets and unusually cool weather. In a century or two, nature would have forgotten this affront, and the Peacer bobble would reflect forest green. Yet it would be unknown thousands of years before the bobble burst, and the men and women within could join the colony. As usual, the Korolevs had a plan. Home 1 Books 2. Read an excerpt of this book! Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Members save with free shipping everyday! See details. Overview Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge takes readers on a fifty-million- year trip to a future where humanity's fate will be decided in a dangerous game of high-tech survival. In this taut thriller, a Hugo finalist for Best Novel, nobody knows why there are only three hundred humans left alive on the Earth fifty million years from now. Opinion is fiercely divided on whether to settle in and plant the seed of mankind anew, or to continue using high-energy stasis fields, or "bobbles," in venturing into the future. When somebody is murdered, it's obvious someone has a secret he or she is willing to kill to preserve. The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to 21st century detective Wil Brierson, the only cop left in the world, to find the culprit, a diabolical fiend whose lust for power could cause the utter extinction of man. Filled with excitement and adventure, Vinge's tense SF puzzler will satisfy readers with its sense of wonder and engaging characters, one of whom is a murderer with a unique modus operandi. About the Author. Known for his rigorous hard-science approach to his science fiction, he became an iconic figure among cybernetic scientists with the publication in of his novella "True Names," which is considered a seminal, visionary work of Internet fiction. Read an Excerpt Headline: Everyone agreed that the show had been impressive. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Marooned in Realtime Across Realtime, 2. Jul 10, Michael rated it really liked it Shelves: artificial-intelligence , mystery , apocalyptic , post-apocalyptic , fiction , time-travel. This one hit the sweet spot for me. An imaginative tale of desperate missions of individual lives colliding with the compelling need to work collaboratively to save the human race, all placed in the frame on an unusual murder mystery. The plot there involved a government, the Peace Federation, taking over by bobbling up armies, nukes, government head This one hit the sweet spot for me. The plot there involved a government, the Peace Federation, taking over by bobbling up armies, nukes, government headquarters of their enemies for an extended stay, and a plucky band that leads an heroic revolt against this tyranny. This book continues to harness the bobble tech in a myriad more brilliant ways. As a police detective he made some enemies and ended up getting bobbled into a distant future in a subversion of official government uses of the technology. The problem with these exports of problem people is that their emergence from the bobbles beyond a few centuries finds an earth devoid of people, with only theories as to what happened to the human race. Wil ends up at a million year future staging point for people bobbling forward over the span of three centuries before the Singularity. The leader of a high tech faction, Yelen Korolev, is starting a colony to rebuild the race and needs to recruit at least more people to reach the required for sufficient genetic diversity to assure success in rebooting humanity. A bobble from the former Peace Federation is discovered, timed to open a 1, years hence. The saboteur responsible is no less than a murderer. Solving it is expected to have the larger benefit of netting people whose aim is to make sure the colony effort fails. If that seems quite an astounding set up for a murder mystery, the nailing down of motive, means, and opportunity among a bizarre range of suspects reaches even more into remarkable territory. One high-tech faction wants to bobble along into the future like tourists and keep going to witness the end of the universe. One artist nature lover may want all humans exterminated. One man, with possible accolytes, believes humanity disappeared with the Rapture of the Second Coming and expects another chance. Another faction believes an alien attack accounts for both the Singularity and threats to the band of survivors. For the investigation Wil is assigned the help of Della, a 9, year old soldier woman who has spent many years exploring galactic space for possible alien enemies. Meanwhile, the militaristic Peace Federation shows signs of wanting to take over the running of the motley band. The characters may be a bit simplistic for many and the dialog a bit wooden, but I was well satisfied with the rich play of ideas for harnessing tech advances to save the future. It seemed sad but true that even with species survival at stake, the human proclivity for intrigue and scheming for power would remain such a challenge as portrayed here. Still we get a hopeful feeling out of the tale and not the grim dog-eat-dog crumble of civilization in many an apocalyptic or dystopian story written in recent years. View 2 comments. Jun 15, Peter Tillman rated it really liked it. This novel holds up really well, almost 35 years on. Back already? OK, what she said. The Singularity stuff: the idea that it might actually happen in RL is less popular now, but as an sfnal plot device, it's brilliant. And Vinge sets his fictional singularity in the early 23rd century, far enough off that, who knows? The bobbles, spherical stasis-fields that stop time inside them for a preset length if reread. The bobbles, spherical stasis-fields that stop time inside them for a preset length if that feature works right , are another wonderful Vinge invention, that he uses to great effect here. He was working for a small family firm, manufacturing antimatter on the surface of the sun, by the kiloton What could possibly go wrong? The writing and characterizations are pretty good, and that's what cost the book its fifth star on this third I think reread. It remains an excellent comfort-read for this reader. If you missed this one, or if it's been awhile, and you've like Vinge's other books, don't miss this one. Strong 4 stars. But you don't need to have read tPW first, and this one is a whole lot better, I think. View all 4 comments. Sep 16, Sam rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: scifi fans. Shelves: fiction. This was a fantastic little book. Curious - i was taken in by a little glitch in the system because in our library catalog, the book has a pub date of , which i completely believed, all through the book. Actually, it was written in , prior to many of the most significant developments of the internet age. Yet Vinge's predictions as to the development of technology over the course of time seemed right on track. Part of the history of the story involves a war that took place in - a fac This was a fantastic little book. Part of the history of the story involves a war that took place in - a fact that i thought odd, but took in stride. There's no rule that a novel has to take place in the future of this particular timeline, after all. The story is that of Wil Brierson, a cop from the 21st century who is shanghaied into the future, past a mysterious event that wipes out almost the entire human race. When he comes out of stasis, he finds out that there are perhaps human beings left. It gets more complex, and hard to describe - essentially, humans can put themselves in stasis for any amount of time. When the stasis is removed, it's as though nothing had happened to them, but the world around them has continued onwards. The stasis fields they use are called "bobbles" and are impenetrable by any means, even being plunged into a star. So, the survivors of humanity move forward through time, looking for a good time to settle down and try to rebuild. They decide on 50 million years in the future - a place in time where one bobble known to contain almost people is known to be scheduled to open. Amidst this, one of the leaders and great minds behind the rebuilding process is murdered in a very interesting way - when the rest of the people go into their stasis for a century, she is left outside. With no one on Earth to talk to, and no way to break the bobbles or communicate with those inside, she lives by herself for forty years before dying. Wil Brierson, the only policeman on Earth, is hired to find her killer. Lately I've really come to enjoy a good mystery. But I haven't forgotten the sweet joy of great scifi, and it's a tremendous thing to find the two rolled together into one book.