Lynn, wonderful!! Minor correction: At least in the anthology I read it in, the story’s title is “The Blabber” (it’s a short-story quasi-sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, for those who haven’t read it.)
Across Realtime is The Peace War, “The Ungoverned” (which I keep wondering if Lib.'s read, and Marooned in Realtime.
What else has the man written??
Anybody know the relationship between Vernor Vinge and Joan Vinge, Author of The Summer Queen and others?
Alluded to above, Qadgop. At one time, they were married, and no longer are. I believe they have an amicable relationship as exes, since in True Names and Other ____ Vernor reprints a story they’d collaborated on, with her permission, and, IIRC, indicates that they were considering collaborating again.
Vernor Vinge and Joan Vinge were married from 1972 to 1979. Since 1980, Joan has been married to the editor Jim Frenkel.
Verner Vinge is of course the Writer Guest of Honor at ConJose, the 60th World Science Convention.
So, if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area Aug29th to Sep 2nd, think about buying a membership. 
Yes, I have heard of Vernor Vinge. I remember reading a book about a black detective trying to unravel a murder amongst a group of stranded humans who time travel forward inside metallic stasis spheres. Cannot recall the title of this book, but it was a well-crafted read and I am 99% sure it was authored by VV.
Does anybody here know the title of this book?
I just finished A Deepness in the Sky last week. I was very impressed. I’m going to read A Fire Upon the Deep as soon as I can find it in one of the local libraries.
That was Marooned in Realtime, sequel to The Peace War. Both are now included in the collection Across Realtime.
I have one major complaint with Marooned… In it, as you say, a detective is trying to solve a murder. At the end of the book he announces who did it and presents his key piece of evidence, which he had just found completely “off-camera” and unknown to the reader.
This bugged the dren out of me! We (the readers) didn’t know our hero had gone to look for the information, or had even thought to go look for the information. Just sort of a by-the-way, out-of-left field, here’s the incriminating evidence from nowhere.
Sorry, but I just don’t think that is fair in what is basically a mystery.
Polycarp, you’re right, I’m sure that it IS “The Blabber” now. I was going strictly by memory. And you’re right about the titles of the second novel and short story in Across Realtime. I know that he’s had a couple of anthologies put out (good luck finding them, though), and a couple of other novels, Tatja Grimm’s World and The Witling. I remember reading them, but I don’t remember the stories.
tanstaafl, I had precisely the same feeling. It was EXTREMELY annoying to me, especially since the book was otherwise so very good.
So I snarfed down A Fire Upon the Deep over Thanksgiving. Actually, over a period of three days. One of the common complaints I have about books I read is that nothing really happens in them and so it gets very tedious to read them. See my review of Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing Of the Dog, for example. But this book just keeps on throwing interesting new ideas at you right up to the last page. Despite being a thick book, it went quite fast.
But, a couple of questions…
How many foreclaws on a Tine member? There’s a part in the book where someone (I won’t say who for fear of spoilers) gets tossed into a jail cell. It’s the wrong jail cell, because the builder of the castle counts by foreclaws and the soldier who threw the person in counted by feet. I think I can safely assume that there are four feet on each Tine member. But I couldn’t figure out how many foreclaws…
Second, right at the last page, a poster to the Net says he can’t reach any net nodes in the galaxy spinward of his position, but can reach the ones anti-spinward just fine. What is this supposed to mean with respect to how the slow zone was expanded?
-Ben