The book is actually a compilation of what was originally two separate novels: "The Peace War" & "Marooned in Real Time.

I thoroughly enjoyed "The Peace War." It's pretty straight-forward, but always enjoyable, time travelling science fiction. Always enjoy seeing how a particular author copes with time travel & the issues it causes. I would certainly rate this novel 5*.

Can't say the same, however, for the second, related story: "Marooned in Realtime." There is a loose connection between the two novels. Without giving away too much, the protagonist of the second story is a descendant of the protagonist in the first; some of the characters are the same.

To me, the best science fiction is either so far removed from our reality that you don't spend time wondering if it's possible, whether the described events might actually occur, or it's close enough, but just beyond our reality that you keep thinking, may be, just maybe. My problem with the "Marooned in Realtime" is that it fit neither of these and consequently became actually somewhat hard to follow.

My recommendation - read the first novel; don't waste your time on the second one. ( )

Using a self-defense weapon (a 'bobble') the bad guys conquer the world and cause quality of life to stagnate, causing a counter-cabal to form, develop improvements in the bobble and all but lose it to the bad guys. With a lot of tension and incredibly smart thinking on both sides—it was a pleasure to follow the thoughts of very prescient people, on both sides—it took a child prodigy, cybernetically linked to a super-computer, to save the day.

My thanks to ‘felius’ for summarizing the plot with enough detail so that I don’t have to. Instead, I’d like to mention the effect that the character developments of various personalities had on me. Forgive me for not going into a more detailed explanation (time & energy restrictions), but I was especially impressed by the nuanced handling of both the good-guys—several of whom grew in complexity as they’re involvement in the leading of the revolt progressed; and the bad-guys, who turned out to have larger dreams than we expected; and the bad-guys (woman, actually) who thought on a completely different level than the rest of them—and me—and switched sides until she became completely incomprehensible.

The first story was entertaining as a shoot-‘em-up revolution with high-tech weapons (human-computer interfaces) and the unexplained abilities of the bobble concept. The second story was, on one level, a murder mystery where the murdered woman lived close to one hundred years more before she finally died—leaving clues behind her to whom it was that killed her. She was marooned on an Earth where all other humans have been completely eliminated.

That’s the overriding murder mystery of the book. But the background sudden absence of all humans, except for the few hundreds who were contained (protected) inside of various bobbles, creates a massive question mark that flavors everything else that happens in the final book. The only reason that Vinge gets away with this ‘almost deus ex machina’ disappearance is just that he does include it in the plot line as part of the rationale for much of the character motivation we discover in all the main characters. The challenges are: Why did humans disappear? Can it happen again? And can we bring together all the disparate ideologies of the groups that have survived in order to ‘recreate’ humanity?

And this is something that has never been addressed in all of the Sci-Fi tales of “re-establishing” the human race after a cataclysm: if you don’t have a large enough “seed” population base (variety!) to start with then the humans who are left, no matter how many babies they can make, will ultimately die from in-breeding. The big question is “why” this ‘murder’ was carried out, considering the almost destined ultimate death of everyone anyway?

In these stories, Vinge delved into the thoughts and emotions of the different protagonists—and some of the antagonists—and gave me enough information that I could see/feel their inner tensions while I followed their reasoning. This is why I really liked the two books…and why I’m saddened that the only other story in the series, “The Ungoverned”, is a novelette (contained in a short story collection), costs over $17 for the Mass Market Paperback, was read by only 9 other members here and was given 3-stars by the one person who rated it. Someday, I may get interested enough to buy it…but. But then, I really did enjoy Vinge’s “Zones of Thought” stories! ( )

This short SF novella is probably the best description (sort of a caricature, but still accurate) of a Hoppean libertarian social order/ancapistan. ( )

I remembered loving this, but I didn't remember the book well enough to review it without a reread. A lot did come back once into the stories though, and I fell right back in love with it. This has so much that made me love the genre. Especially Big Ideas, playing with very large scales of space and time and loads of imagination--but without the drawbacks I often find in Golden Age Science Fiction. I love the big three of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke, goodness knows I do, but so often their women didn't read as real to me, and though this is going to sound nauseatingly politically correct, too often they imagined a future that was just too white for my tastes--when they weren't presenting racial stereotypes that were cringe-worthy (Clarke less so than the others, and the others got better over the decades--their hey day after all was the forties and fifties.) The point is, I don't have to make allowances for these 1980s books in either respect.

That doesn't mean the politically correct crowd would necessarily love this book. The book is a cult classic among libertarians for good reason, but it's not libertarian porn like say L. Neil Smith's novels. If any of the three connected stories read that way, it's the shortish novella bridge story, "The Ungoverned." It was a self-styled "anarcho-capitalist" who first pointed me to that story and to Vinge. But if you can look beyond that, what you find is a overall story that transcends that, with yes, some of the individualism and faith in freedom of Robert Heinlein, with some of the visionary apotheosis of Arthur C. Clarke. And I liked and cared about the characters. Della Lu and Wil Brierson may not be as complex or vivid as classic characters, but they work for me. And while the style won't be mistaken for literary, it does it's job. I liked the first short novel, The Peace War more than Marooned in Realtime, which I found a bit depressing, at least at first. But satisfying reads? Yup. ( )

This is very early Vinge, much less complicated, and shorter than his later books, but still excellent. This is actually 2 novels in one book. Something about these novels has always stayed in my mind, some combination of the technology and personalities is memorable. ( )