A review by ajslater
Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge
3.0
This is two related SciFi novels published together. The first, _The_Peace_War_ is a fairly standard Heinlenesque smart-boy-makes-good nerd fantasy. Nothing revelatory.
The second, _Marooned_In_Realtime_ is a fantastic look at what can happen in a world with one way (forward) time travel. This is why I picked up Vinge again, for creative, giant scale sci fi. People can travel to the stars in stasis, but they burn megayears of realtime doing so. Ecologists can jump ahead half a megayear at a time and watch evolution. But there's no way to get back. You end up hanging out with whoever is out of stasis in your eon. The mystery of an individual murder drives the plot along along with the greater mystery of why human civilization on earth disappeared abruptly. Good sci fi and good exploration of Vinge's theme of the results of exponential technological progress.
I picked this up because I enjoyed his other Novel _A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep_ and his historically important (to the genre) short story _True_Names_.
The second, _Marooned_In_Realtime_ is a fantastic look at what can happen in a world with one way (forward) time travel. This is why I picked up Vinge again, for creative, giant scale sci fi. People can travel to the stars in stasis, but they burn megayears of realtime doing so. Ecologists can jump ahead half a megayear at a time and watch evolution. But there's no way to get back. You end up hanging out with whoever is out of stasis in your eon. The mystery of an individual murder drives the plot along along with the greater mystery of why human civilization on earth disappeared abruptly. Good sci fi and good exploration of Vinge's theme of the results of exponential technological progress.
I picked this up because I enjoyed his other Novel _A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep_ and his historically important (to the genre) short story _True_Names_.