Science Fiction Review
"The scope and grandeur of the plot mark this novel as a high point in hard SF ccreativity. Highly recommended."


Review
"Marooned in Realtime combines the expansive mode of hard SF with the narrow foccus of the detective story, complete with a final orchestrated showdown. The result is exciting; you can hardly turn the pages fast enough."


Book Description
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
Born in Waukesha, Wisconsin and raised in Central Michigan, science fiction writer Vernor Vinge is the son of geographers. Fascinated by science and particularly computers from an early age, he has a Ph.D. in computer science, and taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University for thirty years.

He has won Hugo Awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) and A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and for the novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2001). Known for his rigorous hard-science approach to his SF, he became an iconic figure among cybernetic scientists with the publication in 1981 of his novella "True Names," which is considered a seminal, visionary work of Internet fiction.

He has also gained a great deal of attention both here and abroad for his theory of the coming machine intelligence Singularity. Sought widely as a speaker to both business and scientific groups, he lives in San Diego, California.



Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Headline: Everyone agreed that the show had been impressive.

The rescue blasting had been about a hundred times as energetic as the ninteenth-century Krakatoa blow-off. Billions of tonnes of ash and rock were pumped into the stratosphere.
When it came down dry, it was like gray-brown snow, piling obscene drifts on houses, trees and the bodies of small animals. Even the sea had a layer of scum on it.

At the center of this vast lake sat a perfect sphere, the bobble. Glowing orange-red peeked through netted cracks in the scab. 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.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Marooned in Realtime, Vernor Vinge's Hugo Award￯﾿ﾽnominated sequel to his 1984 classic The Peace War, is equal parts murder mystery and hard science fiction adventure that takes place 50 million years in the future as the last remnants of human civilization battle extinction -- and each other.

Like The Peace War, the major plotlines of Marooned in Realtime revolve around bobbles -- impenetrable force fields that can separate small areas of space from the normal universe. Fifty million years after the events in The Peace War, small groups of humans have survived by bobbling themselves in stasis for hundreds of thousands of years at a time. With less than 300 humans left alive and invaluable high-tech devices inevitably breaking down, a long-term plan must be implemented to ensure humankind's survival. Those who remain alive, however, are bitterly divided. When one of the leading planners, Marta Korolev, is cruelly murdered (she is left alone in realtime while everyone else spends centuries in stasis), a former police officer must somehow figure out who the culprit is before the human race is wiped out forever.

Fans of Vinge's later works -- like the Hugo Award￯﾿ﾽwinning novels A Fire upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky -- who have yet to read Marooned in Realtime may be surprised that numerous publications have called the 1986 sequel to The Peace War his best work. Compelling, thought provoking, and visually breathtaking, this masterwork of imagination is a must-read for all who call themselves fans of science fiction. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this thriller, 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 that someone has a secret and is willing to kill to preserve it. The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to twenty-first-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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly