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Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
01/09/2007 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: TOR-UK/Pan Macmillan. 381 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-0-330-45194-9. Buy Rainbows End in the USA - or Buy Rainbows End in the UK  check out website: www.panmacmillan.com
'Rainbows End' means different things in this novel. Add an apostrophe and 'Rainbow's End' is also the name of the nursing home that housed world-famous poet Robert Gu until he was cured of Alzheimer's disease in 2025 and a successful body rejuvenation treatment leaving him looking like a tall teen. The world has vastly changed in the twenty years when he was out of it and Gu attends a senior school class to become familiar with how the world has changed. It has moved towards becoming a paperless society with 'smart' contact lenses giving continuous links to the Internet and the images of what you see change to conform to the appearance other people want you to see. As he re-learns, Gu visits the local university and seeing that its library is being digitised before its books are shredded becomes involved in a conspiracy to save them. On top of this is another conspiracy with a 'mysterious stranger' who might or might not be also digitally disguised as 'Mr. Rabbit' involving his grand-daughter Miri.
From all accounts, the original Robert Gu wasn't exactly a pleasant man. The man he later becomes tries to live up to this image for a greater part of the time. As we only see the future version, this image is rather subjective based on the people about him. Ultimately, I was never sure what to make of the character. Having established the reality, author Vernor Vinge treats it matter-of-factly rather than use Gu as the everyman getting adjusted to this odd new world. New technology is one thing but as even today's software will show, the computer programs that run it are also likely to update accordingly. Having Gu accessing a version of Windows ME rather than W2000 or WXP seems a little out of step though. I can't see Microsoft allowing too many of their early Windows software around once they've been superseded purely from a support point of view. If Vinge is out to appeal to the computer savvy, I think they're even more likely to pick up on this than me. Worse, there is little there to comment or correct. There might be a teacher there but most of the info he gets tends to come from a fellow student, a young teen. When you only see one perspective, you only have one subjective view.
This future might have gone digital but its written very much in the SF old school in not really developing it far enough. When you have everyone agreeing to a point of view and only a small minority are dissident one has to ask who or what the rebels exactly are. In that respect, Vinge doesn't really bring both sides to the middle. Indeed, towards the end of the book I was more interested in trying to figure out who the 'mysterious stranger' persona was than anything that was happening to the characters.
I came away from this book wondering if Vernor Vinge himself had a firm grasp on what he was writing or just developing a theme. It certainly doesn't look like his normal run of books., especially as its based on Earth. As a backdrop, Vinge's reality is certainly interesting but for the basis of this story, I'm not so sure. There were so many areas where I feel he should have addressed but hadn't that just made me think he needed something for the front end of his story before moving on.
I'm not entirely convinced that if we went to a paperless world that we would destroy our books. My instincts say we would preserve what we've got than just needless destruction even in the need for space. If that's the point Vinge is making then I think we're sold on the idea.
GF Willmetts
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