Marooned in Realtime

Across Realtime #2

by Vernor Vinge

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.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Time Travel, Mystery, Post Apocalyptic, Fantasy, Singularity

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon The Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999) and Rainbows End (2006), his Hugo Award-winning novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/vernor...

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one hit the sweet spot for me. An imaginative tale of desperate missions of individual lives colliding with the compelling need to work collaboratively to save the human race, all placed in the frame on an unusual murder mystery.

Vinge had already used the concept of stasis fields, called bobbles, as a one-way time machine to the future to good effect in his “The Peace War”. The plot there involved a government, the Peace Federation, taking over by bobbling up armies, nukes, government headquarters of their enemies for an extended stay, and a plucky band that leads an heroic revolt against this tyranny. This book continues to harness the bobble tech in a myriad more brilliant ways.

In the universe of this book, the hero, Wil, is from the 80’s, the time Vinge was writing this book. As a police detective he made some enemies and ended up getting bobbled into a distant future in a subversion of official government uses of the technology. The problem with these exports of problem people is that their emergence from the bobbles beyond a few centuries finds an earth devoid of people, with only theories as to what happened to the human race. Wil ends up at a 25-million year future staging point for people bobbling forward over the span of three centuries before the Singularity. The leader of a high tech faction, Yelen Korolev, is starting a colony to rebuild the race and needs to recruit at least 100 more people to reach the 300 required for sufficient genetic diversity to assure success in rebooting humanity.

A bobble from the former Peace Federation is discovered, timed to open a 1,000 years hence. . So the incipient colonists bobble forward to that time, only to discover Yelen’s lover was left alone outside the bobble (aka marooned in realtime), where she eked out a primitive existence. The saboteur responsible is no less than a murderer. Wil’s special expertise is tapped Yelen to solve the crime. Solving it is expected to have the larger benefit of netting people whose aim is to make sure the colony effort fails.

If that seems quite an astounding set up for a murder mystery, the nailing down of motive, means, and opportunity among a bizarre range of suspects reaches even more into remarkable territory. One high-tech faction wants to bobble along into the future like tourists and keep going to witness the end of the universe. One artist nature lover may want all humans exterminated. One man, with possible accolytes, believes humanity disappeared with the Rapture of the Second Coming and expects another chance. Another faction believes an alien attack accounts for both the Singularity and threats to the band of survivors. For the investigation Wil is assigned the help of Della, a 9,000 year old soldier woman who has spent many years exploring galactic space for possible alien enemies. She is so weird and wired up with computers, Wil can’t help but keep her on his suspect list. All the while he investigates by interview, analyzing written records left by Yelen’s partner, and looking for cyber footprints of sabotage, he also can’t help trying to find the criminal responsible for his own shanghai and tragic life separation from wife and children. Meanwhile, the militaristic Peace Federation shows signs of wanting to take over the running of the motley band.

The characters may be a bit simplistic for many and the dialog a bit wooden, but I was well satisfied with the rich play of ideas for harnessing tech advances to save the future. Pretty good projections from Vinge’s point before the Internet was invented. It seemed sad but true that even with species survival at stake, the human proclivity for intrigue and scheming for power would remain such a challenge as portrayed here. Still we get a hopeful feeling out of the tale and not the grim dog-eat-dog crumble of civilization in many an apocalyptic or dystopian story written in recent years.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

2019 reread. This 1986 novel holds up really well, almost 35 years on. Jo Walton's is the review to read: https://www.tor.com/2009/08/07/vernor...

Back already? OK, what she said. The Singularity stuff: the idea that it might actually happen in RL is less popular now, but as an sfnal plot device, it's brilliant. And Vinge sets his fictional singularity in the early 23rd century, far enough off that, who knows? The bobbles, spherical stasis-fields that stop time inside them for a preset length (if that feature works right), are another wonderful Vinge invention, that he uses to great effect here. For Sense of Wonder: well, there's Tunc Blumenthal, the last character to leave Realtime, in 2210. He was working for a small family firm, manufacturing antimatter on the surface of the sun, by the kiloton.... What could possibly go wrong?

The writing and characterizations are pretty good, and that's what cost the book its fifth star on this third (I think) reread. It remains an excellent comfort-read for this reader. If you missed this one, or if it's been awhile, and you've like Vinge's other books, don't miss this one. Strong 4 stars.

MiR is the sequel to The Peace War (1984), a good SF novel that shares some continuing characters with the later book. But you don't need to have read tPW first, and this one is a whole lot better, I think.

Another good review: http://www.sfreviews.com/docs/Vernor%...

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun sequel to The Peace War which does a better job with character development and has a fun murder mystery to solve 500 million years after the first book. Similar to The Forever War, this book asks a lot of readers to imagine humans traveling thousands or even millions of years into the future. Where Haldeman chose stargates as his time-traveling devices, Vinge uses the great idea of bobbles: stasis spheres that hold anything inside them for predictable amounts of time during which the bobbles are indestructible. This is how humans skip over the Singularity which wipes out human life on Earth in 2900. The cause of that is never quite explained (maybe in Across Realtime?), but the important thing for this book is that sometime after the Singularity, a key woman to the future of humanity remains stranded on a humanless earth for 40 years. It is the mystery of her being "marooned in Realtime" that the plot revolves around. It is a highly readable and fun book, but not as good as his other trilogy, Zones of Thought: A Fire Upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky. I still think it is essential for sci-fi reading regardless.

Fino Reviews of Joan and Vernor Vinge Books:
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic little book. Curious - i was taken in by a little glitch in the system because in our library catalog, the book has a pub date of 2006, which i completely believed, all through the book. Actually, it was written in 1986, prior to many of the most significant developments of the internet age. Yet Vinge's predictions as to the development of technology over the course of time seemed right on track. Part of the history of the story involves a war that took place in 1997 - a fact that i thought odd, but took in stride. There's no rule that a novel has to take place in the future of this particular timeline, after all.

The story is that of Wil Brierson, a cop from the 21st century who is shanghaied into the future, past a mysterious event that wipes out almost the entire human race. When he comes out of stasis, he finds out that there are perhaps 300 human beings left. It gets more complex, and hard to describe - essentially, humans can put themselves in stasis for any amount of time. When the stasis is removed, it's as though nothing had happened to them, but the world around them has continued onwards. The stasis fields they use are called "bobbles" and are impenetrable by any means, even being plunged into a star. So, the survivors of humanity move forward through time, looking for a good time to settle down and try to rebuild. They decide on 50 million years in the future - a place in time where one bobble known to contain almost 150 people is known to be scheduled to open. 150 people could really help with the whole rebuilding of civilization.

Amidst this, one of the leaders and great minds behind the rebuilding process is murdered in a very interesting way - when the rest of the people go into their stasis for a century, she is left outside. With no one on Earth to talk to, and no way to break the bobbles or communicate with those inside, she lives by herself for forty years before dying.

Wil Brierson, the only policeman on Earth, is hired to find her killer.

Lately I've really come to enjoy a good mystery. But I haven't forgotten the sweet joy of great scifi, and it's a tremendous thing to find the two rolled together into one book. Marooned in Realtime is excellent fiction, chock full of great ideas about the near and distant future. Lovely lovely.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sharing a fair similarity in style and content to Asimov's classic Robots of Dawn, a far future human colony requires a famous detective to investigate the murder of one of their founders and is loosely partnered with a nine thousand year old partner. It meanders a bit but has a lot of interesting world descriptions, the characters are not exactly rounded but the protagonist is at least interesting. Vinge merges the golden age mystery with far future science fiction very well but I found myself looking for some kind of substance to all of it, unlike Asimov there was almost no commentary of societal or philosophical issues, preferring to focus on space battles across a hundred thousand years instead.

[prcardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storyline: 3/5
Characters: 2/5
Writing Style: 3/5
World: 3/5

This is a book that starts with surprises. Surprise one was that it didn't do what sequels normally do: follow up on the foreshadowed crises of the last book. What it did instead was rather fun. Vinge gave consideration to the repercussions of the technological introductions he made in the first book. One can generally criticize authors for plotholes and overlooking details when they introduce technology; it is difficult to see the unexpected and unforeseen consequences when presenting novel ideas. Vinge obviously gave his technology a lot of thought, and the resulting world we get is full of novel ramifications and possibilities that weren't even under consideration as of the last book.

Surprise two was that Vinge abandoned the political action-adventure in lieu of a murder mystery. I liked the direction of the first book better, though the background ideas and world in this one were so intriguing that any plot laid atop would have been sufficient. Everything else about the book was just that: sufficient. The characters mostly performed their necessary roles, the action gave us the needed adrenaline rush, the world building gave the barest suggestions of wonder, and the resolution of it satisfactorily answered all the requisite questions. Besides the technological repercussions following from the first book, there was little here that suggested passion, scrutiny, or delight on the part of the author. It was an enjoyable sequel remarkable for only a very few things, not offensive or inane enough to engender any real ill-will.

[Luke Burrage · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review on my podcast, SFBRP episode #364.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I clicked on 3 stars for the rating, but it deserves a bit more than that.

The book has interesting portrayals of how different groups of people might perceive and choose to exist in a far future.

I had a number of reservations about it. First, I read it as part of Across Realtime (an omnibus of The Peace War, The Ungoverned and Marooned In Realtime). Each of the works in omnibus had some threads connecting them to the other, but I didn't think they made a cohesive unit. Rightly or wrongly, I was expecting more than an anthology of works placed in a common conceptual universe, and it didn't really work out as expected.

Marooned in Realtime is an SF mystery, and I like SF mysteries. But for my tastes, this was overly complex. The mystery itself is confused by various factional disputes among humans, various fanatics (a self-declared prophet of the third coming of Jesus, a guy warning of aliens planning to wipe out humans, etc.), questions about how most of the human race disappeared in the 23rd century... There's so much more going on than a number of people with grudges against the victim, and more to the resolution than finding the killer.

And because there's so much more, the book goes a bit beyond the naming of the murderer - and yet leaves so many other things unfinished.

So, SF mystery readers may prefer to read Marooned In Realtime by itself rather than part of Across Realtime. And it may appeal more to those who like greater complexity. And it will help if you don't mind not having everything wrapped up and put away at the end.

[Stephen Branstetter · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like very good Sci Fi and a detective story, this is the one for you.It kept my interest and ended well too.

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024-03-27 I remember reading this book about 25 years ago and really loving it.

Fascinating SF scenarios about possible futures.
Vinge is a really good writer.
I remember the book & author were recommended to me and others in the audience by David Friedman at a talk or two he gave in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s at either Santa Clara University for the Civil Society Inst. or Ming's Restaurant, for the Jefferson Society or both. When I mentioned it to a colleague at work (Verisign) he mentioned the little book by Vinge called Real Names, which is also VERY cool, preceded the internet but predicted some of its power.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vernor Vinge's MAROONED IN REALTIME is a murder mystery set in a strange far-future earth. Not long after our time, scientists had discovered a way to create "bobbles", indestructible stasis fields in which time doesn't pass. (For science-fiction aficionados, these are similar to the Slaver stasis fields in Larry Niven's Known Space books.) Bobbles were used to send a variety of people into the future: investors who wanted to "instantly" get rich by taking advantage of centuries of economic growth, criminals who were punished by the ultimate exile from everything dear to them, and even terrorists who thought they could win in the future even if defeated in the present. All of them leave the bobbles centuries or millennia from now to find Earth completely deserted, with no sign of the human race except other bobble survivors. As they try to rebuild civilization, one of them is murdered in an exotic fashion, and it falls to Wil Brierson, once a detective in the late 21st century, to find the criminal.

The survivors disagree on what exactly happened to the human race, apparently in the mid-23rd century. Some believe that Man destroyed himself, his warlike tendencies leading to extinction. Others suspect alien invasion and mass extermination. But it is the possibility of a technological singularity, progress so fast and extreme that we in the present time cannot foresee the outcome, that Vinge especially explores in MAROONED IN REALTIME. Human beings perhaps evolved to some other plane, and no longer needed to maintain a residence on Earth.

In an afterword, Vinge says that his novel sets a possible singularity as far off as the mid-23rd century for the sake of storytelling, but he believes that many of the initial readers of MAROONED IN REALTIME will witness the singularity. That might have been a tad optimistic. Still, his view of the future and human-computer interaction is perhaps more fresh than the cyberpunk genre with its now-dated focus on people hanging out in some 3D virtual reality. Indeed, it was a shock to me, after finishing the novel, to see again the era in which he wrote: 1983-85.

Vinge's prose isn't very good and a great many of the characters aren't believable people, being either cardboard cutouts or taking turns that don't make any sense. MAROONED IN REALTIME therefore isn't one of the great science-fiction literary classics, the sort that merit attention outside of genre fans. However, people who read a great deal of hard science fiction will probably enjoy MAROONED IN REALTIME, as there's enough thought-provoking ideas in spite of the clunky writing.

[Greg Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sequel to the peace war, this is very definately a different book to it.

In the Peace War Vinge introduced us to the bobble and showed how it completely transformed / destroyed society. In Marooned, that entire episode in human history has gone, and we are now travelling with a bunch of survivors from and Earth that was destroyed in some mysterious fashion (none of the survivors know how), towards an unknown future using the same technology as a lifeboat.

In the midst of this, as people bobble in and out for thousands of years at a time, we have a murder to solve and a detective to figure out who did it and why. We come across all sorts of suspects, including one monster dictator in disguise, and an assorted host of weirdness.

This is a good story, though as a detective novel it falls short since the clues given could never allow the reader to guess the killer since you simply don't have that information about things like P and P available to you. And though it uses science fiction as its back drop and the explanation for the truly weird society of refugees fleeing the end of the human race, its not really a science fiction novel either. Its more a simple mystery made possible by weird science, and an exodus novel rolled together.

For all that its a good read.

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only three hundred humans left on earth. A murder mystery across fifty million years. A meditation on deep time and evolution, on civilization and intelligence.

What more could you want?

A very good book.

[Ted Bade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my quest to read older Hugo winners I missed when I was younger.
This book is actually 3 different tales melded into one excellent book. It is only loosely connected to the previous novel called Peace war, in that some characters and technology were used, as it is the future of the universe of that book.

The main tale surrounds the "Bobble" technology. A method of creating a sphere that everything within is held in status until it pops or opens. A number of people, whether by choice or not, have traveled forward through time in these bobbles. While this happened, human civilization disappeared from the world. Now, one small group plans to accumulate all those remaining in an attempt to resurrect humanity.

One story is a short piece that follows the life on one person, Marta, who was left behind, on purpose, but not to her purpose. (This was the "Marooned in real time " aspect of this book.) The aspect is that of a "famous" detective who was Bobbled forward by a criminal he was investigating. Now part of the newly created society he is asked to investigate what happened to Marta and discover who had done this to her. (doing this to her is considered murder). But the investigation takes place 50 million years after she had died. Finally, this is a story of high tech intrigue, power grabbing, and people of various level of technology attempting to live together peacefully.

The ending is quick, fast paced, and has a number of surprises. Even though we discover some of the bad guys, some mysteries are never really answered. It is a wonderful story. It was hard to stop reading at times and impossible to stop reading toward the end!! No wonder it was an award winner.

I highly recommend it. There is no need to read the first book, Pease Wars to understand this book.

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the first book, rating brought down by several elements that didn't belong. Those are gone here, but this murder mystery isn't as good. Both books were released together (adding a short story between) in one volume later on. Unlike the other two, this novel would not stand on its own.

The tale kicks off with little introduction, nearly in media res. I fumbled to figure out whether Will was Wili (no) and Della was Della (yes), and where they fit in this timeline. Turns out they are now a LONG ways past the time of the first novel, and that past is eventually explored. Will is a cop, a police detective, and was a pretty good one. After he disappeared, his son wrote stories about him, making him out to be Sherlock Holmes. This element would have been great to introduce earlier.

If you haven't figured out from the previous paragraph, time plays a major role in this novel, and time travel is only one way - downstream. This is an interesting aspect, and the author uses this to discuss the end of humanity - were we taken out by an enemy or did we "move on" due to the singularity? The author's views seem clear by the end of the book. He also published an essay a few years later titled "The Coming Technological Singularity".

This book, the first book, the series - all good, but not great. The author is more well known for his trilogy starting with "A Fire Upon the Deep" and his short stories. I rated his collection "True Names and other Dangers" five stars, and would recommend anyone start there.

[Lior · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marooned in Realtime takes the premise, ideas and some of the characters established in The Peace War and expands on them to create a fascinating novel which is much better than its predecessor in terms of pacing and character development. And of course, what makes Marooned so effective is the fact it revolves around a murder mystery which is the linchpin that ties it all together. Wil Brierson is a "low-tech" (basically an ordinary citizen like you and me) who served as a cop in a previous life, 50 million years ago (!), and is tasked with solving the murder of a "high-tech", (a member of society with above-average technological capabilities and resources) who was left stranded in realtime through sabotage, eventually to die. Realtime, as opposed to Bobbletime, the stasis fields used by the last remnants of humanity in order to gallop through the ages, unaffected by time. At stake is nothing short than the survival of the human race. Vinge's biggest stroke of genius here is to bring back Della Lu from the previous novel, where she was an ancillary, mostly antagonistic character, and turn her into... well, you'll have to read to find out.

[Doug Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice to go back and revisit a favorite book from when I was younger. Great central SF concept, somewhat interesting mystery, fairly uninteresting characters. Probably 3.5 stars for me.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wil Brierson is a detective, maybe the last one. Sometime in the twenty-second century, every human on Earth disappeared. The only ones left are those who were, at the time, encased in "bobbles", spheres of absolute stasis that many used to jump ahead through the years... and there are only a few hundred people left, trying to build what society they can by jumping further and further ahead to collect more stragglers. Nobody knows what happened to the rest. But that's not Wil's case. Nor is it his case to find the person who bobbled him for over a hundred years without his consent and separated him from his family forever... although he'd really like to do that, too. No, his case is to solve a murder of one of the few survivors left, who was murdered by being left outside of the bobbles, marooned in realtime, when everyone else jumped a century into the future. Murder by old age. But since the victim is one of the key people trying to keep the human race viable, it's a crime that everyone's got a stake in.

This is technically a sequel the The Peace War, but I feel like it stands alone. So much so that for this reread, I didn't bother to read the first book, which does introduce the bobbling technology, certain elements of the backstory, and one main character (who is changed almost to unrecognizeability by a long time gap), but is a completely different type of book, and, in my opinion, a far less interesting and lower quality one. Vernor Vinge is one of the greats of SF, and the line between where he was worthy of that title and where he was an okay author with a some really cool ideas is right between the The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. Even to completeists I'd hesitate to recommend the other book, just because they might not think it's worth moving on to the second... and it is, it's a great book that deserves to be read, even standalone. Of course, it should be noted that the book DOES spoil the Peace War, so if you do think you might read both, you probably should do it in order, but if you read only one, read this one. It's not one of Vinge's best, perhaps, but it's still damn good, and it has its own story to tell that doesn't require reading The Peace War, which is good but may appeal more to dedicated SF readers.

There's so much to love in this book... there is of course, the three mysteries being balanced, and they're all handled quite well. There are some twists that are cool, but the story doesn't depend on them, it's built on the characters and, to a degree, the worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is a big factor here, but the world in question is Earth... one of the best things about this book is the view of the types of plants and animals that could exist on Earth millions of years from now. It was vivid, believable, and compelling. And more, the long diary of the victim, telling as she tries to survive and reach help while everyone she knows is bobbled up and completely unaware of her plight, is riveting. Reading about a person reading someone else's story should not be this good.

The book does have flaws, and there were times as they were approaching the climax that I felt it started to lose stream in trying to get across a lot of complicated action and motivations, but what it does well, it does so well that I'm happy to forgive it.

This was my first reread of the book, and I already know I want to reread it again somewhere down the line.

[Raja99 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why I Reread This Book: I enjoyed rereading The Peace War for the SFDG.

Wow. An amazing work indeed.

The Bobble series (for want of a better label) consists of The Peace War, a novella titled "The Ungoverned", and the present book. I reread "The Ungoverned" just before this, and I'm glad I did; it introduces the protagonist, Wil Brierson.

When I first read this book, which I believe I did shortly after it first was first published, I loved it for the ideas but didn't see it as strongly connected to The Peace War. That's not a bad thing, necessarily; I liked the fact that this book, and Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead and Michael P. Kube-McDowell's Enigma , all of which came out about the same time, didn't slavishly follow the shape of their predecessors.

This time, though, I could see the connections with The Peace War more strongly. Indeed, it even carries over a couple of characters, though that isn't clear at first.

The Peace War was something of a conventional near-future post-holocaust story, though it was told with some vigor. Marooned In Realtime isn't the conventional sort of sequel; despite the connections, it takes place millions of years after the first book. It's a murder mystery set in a future when no traces of human civilization remain, among a tiny community of people who missed the vanishing of human civilization. The best thing about the book is the ideas; Vinge spelled out what we now call the Singularity, and presented its implications very convincingly. It also deals with significant ideas about humanity, intelligence, Fermi's paradox, and what immortality would do to human beings.

(Finished rereading 2009-05-24 21:08 EDT)

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is ironic that I read the The Peace War by Vinge so that I could read this book, a sequel, because I heard that this book was great. But I liked the Peace War much more. You could call them the Bobble series. Marooned was interesting, and I think I would read it again if I could go back in time. The use of bobbles was extremely imaginative. But the story was a bit flimsy, and the characters were not really developed. I felt like I hardly knew the villains, and they were interchangeable. Nevertheless it was a good read, and after reaching the mid point, I could not put the book down.

Of course, the Singularity plays a large role in this story, larger than in the others of his works I have read. The Singularity is the point at which machines become smarter than humans after an ever-increasing rate of technological progress, and it is a point beyond which we cannot foresee, an idea that Vinge himself coined the word for.

Vinge's technological insights also explain a feature of all of Vinge's books that is shared by Marooned: his uncanny view of the future never getting outdated. Marooned was written in the 1980's, before the internet, before smart phones, and before so many more technological innovations, but his stories never seem dated. His future back in the 1980s is still our future in 2011.

I came to this book and Peace War after loving A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep. The problem with Vinge's books is that there are too few of them. I understand that he has just published a sequel to a Fire Upon the Deep called The Children of the Skyand set on the Tines planet. That does not sound like what I am looking for. What we really need is more Vinge space operas. While waiting for that, the Bobble series is a good substitute.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first have to say, this book is going straight to the poolroom Best Books I Every Read Ever Ever list, because I love it. The premise is brilliant and the prose is so smooth, it just poured off the page. A book like this is far too rare these days.

It's a sequel to The Peace War only in so far as it's set in the same world, so same tech, same history etc. But it is otherwise completely at right angles to the first book, which is an "Orphan Child is the TechnoJesus" adventure with observant but also prescient commentary on the world we are currently witnessing the end of (haha! How the fuck is that man President?) and of course the obligatory SFnal "Physics As Magic " device.

In this book, we get the same magic device, but in a murder mystery, set billions of years into the future, and now everything's WEIRD!

My past encounters with "What will we become" have been dominated by Robert Reed, who puts out 4 stories and a novel every four days, much of it exploring the super-future, and I find it a bit boring when the characters spend 90% of a story aiming weapons systems that are so powerful you Wouldn't! Even! Understandit!!!! and describing their augmentations and body mods, but are otherwise just normal shitty people with cultural habits reflecting the authors nationality, or America, whichever get's me a publishing deal. (I'm specifically thinking of Reeds Marrow but even The Great Ship stories had a lot of this sort of bleh.

This Vinge book does it nice and fast. This novel length story reads like a novella, it's so quick it flashes by. The circumstances of the story are really clever. You get a real sense of what a human remnant, sampled through time, suddenly dumped together in the far far distant might actually look like, and most importantly, it's recognisable as a DEVELOPMENT of our species, not a transplant with fancy gadgets.

The only other writer I think who used this theme as well is Alastair Reynolds in House of Suns which you should also read. That book is spectacular. This book is better.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if we could place people, buildings, or whole cities in frozen balls of time to open years, centuries, even hundreds of thousands of years in the future as if no time had passed for them at all? In MAROONED IN REALTIME (and the preceding THE PEACE WAR), this technology exists in the form of "bobbles". A private investigator is bobbled in to the future by a panicked criminal. Years later (in what feels like moments later to him) he finds himself in a world where all but a couple hundred of the human race have been destroyed or disappeared. While bobbling ahead to await the opening of a massive bobble that has kept another hundred or so people in stasis since the 21st century (and therefore provide a large enough genetic pool to re-start the human race) one of the two organizers of humanity's last best hope is trapped outside of the her bobble and forced to live the remaining years of her life alone and without technology. The focus of the rest of the book involves this private investigator researching her "murder".

The final third of this book was wonderful. Exciting, interesting,
creative, good hard sci-fi. The problem I had was getting through the
first two thirds. While I say it all paid off in the final acts, I felt like the book took far too long to get off the ground. It's possible that the last third wouldn't have been as rewarding without the long, patient setup before it. But I can't help but think the first sections of the book would have benefited from being tightened up a bit.

But as a whole, the book explores great ideas and themes such as the rapid progress of technology, elective immortality, the singularity, and the ability to jump forward in time... even all the way to the end of the world. Even in his earlier works, Vernor Vinge fails to disappoint.

[Brok3n · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember nothing but the bobbles and Brierson

I read Marooned in Realtime eleven years ago (15-Oct-2011). I barely remember it. This is unusual. Usually when I read the publisher's blurb for a book, it is sufficient to recall some impression -- perhaps not of the plot, but of why I read it, whether I liked the book overall, what made the most vivid impressions... But here I have almost nothing. I remember the idea of bobbles -- spherical pockets of stasis that freeze their contents in time and protect them from any outside influence. This idea has shown up elsewhere in Science Fiction.

The character Will Brierson is a clever variation on an old time-travel trope -- the person out of time. He was a detective in the 21st century (which, when this book was published in 1986, was the not-so-distant future -- now of course it has caught up with us) when he got bobbled. He became famous after his bobbling because his son wrote a series of detective books with him as the hero. The upshot is that, when everyone comes out of their bobbles, Brierson is much more famous than he ever was in life, and people expect him to be a much better detective than he ever really was. He turns out to be a pretty good detective, which is fun.

And that's about all I got. I'm rating this three stars on the assumption that if it was an outstanding book I would probably remember it better. That's pretty thin, so take this rating with a grain of salt.

Blog review.

[Jennifer Mcgown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Marooned in Realtime. The premise is that time travel is possible, but only in one direction - forward. The mechanism is called bobbling and it puts a whole area and everything inside it in statis . The statis area is protected by a non-permeable bubble that has a mirror finish. The technology in this world has been around since the early 2050s. It has been used by various people to escape their present fates, make money or to get rid of people. At the present is this book, the world is empty except for about about 300 survivors from before 2300, when humanity seems to have disappeared. There are various theories for this but no one knows for sure. The population is split into two groups - high tech and low tech. The high tech have all sorts of weapons and machines and access to data banks but they can't run them forever. Then added to the science fiction, there is a murder mystery when one of the most important high techs, Marta is marooned in the real time while the rest of the settlement is bobbled forward. The system was set to check every 3 months to make sure that everything was ok. But instead that was changed to never, so Marta had to survive on her own till she was found. This did happen so she died and she left a diary of her life. Marta's partner Yelen asks W.W. Bierson a policeman in his former life to find out who arranged for Marta to be left behind. I loved the mystery and also the class divisions as well as the political wrangling to restart civilization.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely should be read with — and after — the somewhat better The Peace War , which takes place in the same timestream and introduces some elements important to this book. The novella The Ungoverned (online here) connects that earlier book and introduces the central character used here. All three are in the compendium Across Realtime .

This one is a detective story that takes place in the far, far distant future, long after most of humanity has mysteriously disappeared. The surviving remnant isn't quite sure where everyone else has gone, and then a murder throws into serious question what they should collectively do about it.

A pretty clever book. Vinge is old-school SciFi, and his cardboard characters show it.

For those in the San Francisco bay area: Borderlands Bookstore's Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club met on Sunday, 20 November, 2010, at 6 pm to discuss Marooned in Realtime.
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[Zanden Duncan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whelmed.

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is published both as a singleton and in the omnibus edition Across Realtime together with its prequel The Peace War.

The sequel to “The Peace War” jumps 50 million years into the future. The 300 remaining humans travel forward through the eons with Bobbles, the invulnerable stasis fields introduced in “The Peace War”. One of them is left behind. The only remaining cop in the world must solve the mystery of why she had to die marooned in “realtime” while the rest jumped ahead in time. This book is absolutely fantastic. The factional disputes, the feeling of disconnection, the sheer human suffering of losing everything you ever knew, is portrayed masterfully. It delves deeply into the question of what should we, as humans, really do with our lives and our race. Some wish to recreate the human race now that enough people are simultanously “in realtime” (not in stasis). Some with to travel forward through the eons and see what awaits at the end of the universe. Some, it would seem, want to continue the nationalist struggles of a long-lost past. What a ride!

http://www.books.rosboch.net/?p=321

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vinge, Vernor. Marooned in Realtime. Across Realtime No. 2. 1986, Tor, 2004.
I am told that Marooned is the novel that introduced the concept of technological singularity to the science fiction world. Well, OK. But do not expect a huge infodump about it. There are bobbles—the ultimate stasis devices—that have moved a bunch of humans millions of years into the future to a time when human beings have disappeared from the planet. One of their number is abandoned there when a hacker makes everyone else bobble even farther into the future. A cop who was bobbled into this far future by a criminal he was chasing is put on the case. It is a well-made mystery. I wish there was a sequel, because there are many interesting characters who I wish I knew better.

[David Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other reviewers on this site have done a fine job describing the plot of this seminal book. I will instead provide links to a short essay I recently wrote about the intellectual path that took author Vernor Vinge to his discovery of the "Singularity," a concept he first popularized in this novel: http://ramshacklevampire.blogspot.com...

I've also composed a timeline of the events in MAROONED IN REALTIME, THE PEACE WAR, and "The Ungoverned," which appears here: http://ramshacklevampire.blogspot.com...

Comments, here or at the links, are welcome.

[Brent Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Vernor Vinge, but - having said that - I was disappointed when I first read The Peace War. Marooned in Real Time is set in the same universe as The Peace War, but is a far better piece; Vinge returns to his style of big ideas and detailed exploration of technology and its implications for human society. It combines a post-apocalyptic-survivor and a detective-murder-mystery story to very pleasing results.