I'm torn about this book.

On the one hand, the ideas presented about the cyberfuture and medical utopia are compelling, truly futuristic, solidly grounded in the present and completely developed. Mr. Vinge has extrapolated a networked near future full of technological miracles and complications. Anyone working or playing in the field of computers, gaming and networks, as I do, can easily start to believe in the inevitability of the vision. The reader loses track of the here and now, living entirely in that other world. Several main characters are full of life and motivation, I found myself yearning to learn what they would do next and why. They often surprised me.

On the other hand, getting there was somewhat laborious. The novelty and virtuality of the invented future, the mystery surrounding several characters and their motivations, and the obscure nature of many fantasies within the fantasy made some scenes difficult to wade through. Even at the end of the book, not everything or everyone is explained. On the one hand, I believe this is intentional. Hats off to Mr. Vinge for not spoon feeding the reader and allowing us to fill in the blanks with our own imaginations. On the other hand, I know there are potential readers that will be left completely at sea.

This is thought-provoking, challenging science fiction at its finest. If you want to know where our technology and entertainment choices are taking us, this might be it. ( )

Old science fiction authors like to write about rejuvenation technologies. ( )

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Overall, it had some really great ideas, but was somewhat disappointing compared to his other books.

I really like the way he describes the wearable computer interfaces. Very much like how I imagine them myself. I've fantasized of sending "silent messages" and looking out through other peoples' eyes and ears since the 6th grade. He fleshes out the fantasy very well, and probably isn't too far off the mark.

Some of the other stuff, though, including some of the plot setup, is somewhat implausible or silly.

Rabbit, the New Sunrise Cult and YGBM are pretty interesting ideas. wikiBay, wikiBell, and snoot-a-whatevers not so much. How the hell would a wiki be applicable to a networking system? The wiki/crowdsourcing model would certainly be applicable to things like his summoning vague clouds of "analysts", but in his descriptions there's always a single person at the top directing. A model based on actual wikis would be leader-less.

The idea that people would construct vast artificial coverings for every building, not in the context of a game or entertainment, but just for decoration, seems quite silly to me. (Though I was looking at fake decorative plastic plants while reading it, and decided it might not be too far off.) I really didn't comprehend the giant protest/mock battle at all. The set up for the moving library kind of made some sense, sort of like the one-upsmanship of a snarky message board, I guess, but overall it seems quite a silly vision of the future.

The transport tray/steel ball gun cutting apart the car? I just couldn't really form a mental picture. And name-dropping your own book? Even disparagingly, is just strange and ridiculous.

I don't know. Just unrealistic unnecessary stuff. I liked his other books a lot. This one had some good ideas but not the best execution.

Also, I'm really curious about Vinge's opinion on DRM. On the one hand, it serves as a hindrance to his protagonists in this book, and they find ways of circumventing it. On the other hand, as an author he stands to benefit from it, theoretically speaking, and the only e-books I can find of his books are under DRM. ( )

http://pro-libertate.net/20130315/201-read-rainbows-end ( )