Thinking About the Singularity

When I started to shelve Rainbows End (Vinge's new novel), I realized that I had collections on the shelves that had only been partly finished a few years back. So...since the quest is to do at least 600 stories plus take care of some backlog, I'll add those two collections to the 2006 Short Story Project.

The Cookie Monster is a novella by Vinge that may or may not tie in with his new novel (I'll let you know after I finish the book!). It's a nice tale, and one more reason why the story in F&SF that I read wasn't all that good. 2020 Computing: The Creativity Machine and Synthetic Serendipity both tie in with the new novel, so I'll hold off on comments until I get through the book.

(2007 Addendum: The Cookie Monster was most definitely not part of Rainbows End!)

(2008 Addendum: Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a precursor to Rainbows End.)

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (Vernor Vinge, edited by James Frenkel, Tor/Orb, ISBN 0-312-87584-3).

Made up of: Foreword; "Bookworm, Run!"; The Accomplice; The Peddler's Apprentice (with Joan D. Vinge); The Ungoverned; Long Shot; Apartness; Conquest By Default; The Whirligig of Time; Bomb Scare; The Science Fair; Gemstone; Just Peace (with William Rupp); Original Sin; The Blabber; Win a Nobel Prize!; The Barbarian Princess; Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (Vernor Vinge, edited by James Frenkel, Tor, ISBN 0-312-86207-5).

Made up of: Preface (James Frenkel); Introduction (Vernor Vinge); A Time of Transition/The Human Connection (Danny Hillis); True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy (Timothy C. May); Eventual History: Version 1.x (John M. Ford); How is the NII Like a Prison? (Alan Wexelblat); Intelligent Software (Pattie Maes); The Right to Read (Richard M. Stallman); Cryptography and the Politics of One's True Name (Leonard N. Foner); Habitat: Reports from an Online Community (Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer); True Magic (Mark Pesce); True Names (Vernor Vinge); Afterword (Marvin Minsky).

Rainbow's End (Vernor Vinge, Tor Books, ISBN 0-312-85684-9). 2008 review can be found here.

Counts as seven entries in the 2006 Short Story Project.

Part of the 2007 Short Story Project.

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge counts as 17 entries in the 2008 Year in Shorts (an almost complete re-read in 2008).

True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier counts as 3 entries in the 2008 Year in Shorts (a complete re-read in 2008).