Golden Anvil

Rainbows End by Verner Vinge

This is a book about a guy who is healed of alzheimer's and is trying to adjust to a world that's different from what he remembers. Except, it's really more of a book about cool, plausible sci-fi, and what kinds of dangerous things can happen in such a world. The alzheimer recovery bit is really just a vehicle to allow the reader to adjust to the new world at the same time as the character.

This book does start off a little rough. It's very disjointed in spots, and the plot, which is introduced in the first chapter, seems to go on hiatus for a good chunk of the book. I can't quite tell if the disjointed bit is intentional, but it certainly can make spots a bit confusing as you try and figure out exactly what's happening.

Still, despite those flaws, the book has a very interesting plot, set in an interesting future featuring very plausible technology. Interestingly enough, there's a lot about the book that talks about the merging of online and offline life (something talked about on this site a while back). It also features what might be considered an extension of some of the work Optiker did with digitally reassembling shredded documents. Except in this case, they toss a book in an industrial shredder (like a wood chipper kind of shredder), and then thousands of cameras take pictures of the pieces as they fly out the far end. This is supposed to be a quick and dirty way of digitizing books. Kind of a destructive process...

All in all, I enjoyed this book, and I will definitely be on the look out for more books by Vinge.

4 / 5