Marooned in Realtime
From the back cover: "In The Peace War Vernor Vinge introduced the technology of bobbles, creating spheres where time stands still while minutes, years, or eons pass by outside. Originally used to counter the nucler threat, then to enforce an oppressive government, they don't really come into their own until the century after the Peace War. What better means for one-way time travel? With the bobble plus longevity treatments, human achievements would seem to have no limits... You can hardly turn the pages fast enough... (Marooned in Realtime) is a winner." -- Locus
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What Hacker News says
- Vernor Vinge's Peace War and especially Marooned in Realtime both touch on this point of view.
- Not quite what you’re requesting but “Across Realtime” by Vernor Vinge explores ideas around the singularity. In particular it contains the short novel “Marooned in Realtime” that is completely mind blowing imo.
- For anyone interested, Vernor Vinge does something like this but minus the massive scale, in Marooned in Realtime. Set 50 million years in the future. My all time favorite sci-fi fwiw.
- There's a sequence of stories by different authors that allude to one another that I find to be an interesting read in that order.
First, there's the BLIT stories by David Langford. Several of these are online.
https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm
https://www.nature.com/articles/44964 (did you know that Nature did science fiction short stories? https://www.nature.com/nature/articles?type=futures )
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-o...
Then, you go to Accelerando
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...
> Luckily, infowar turns out to be more survivable than nuclear war – especially once it is discovered that a simple anti-aliasing filter stops nine out of ten neural-wetware-crashing Langford fractals from causing anything worse than a mild headache.
This is followed by its sequel-ish Glasshouse https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17866.Glasshouse
It's not technically a sequel, but one can see the universe of Glasshouse following from the ending of Accelerando.
A quick diversion to Vernor Vinge with Peace War and Marooned in Realtime https://www.goodreads.com/series/57273-across-realtime (there's a short story in there titled The Ungoverned)
Implied spaces Walter Jon Williams https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2059573.Implied_Spaces which takes another approach to the unexplored events leading into Glasshouse and a possible path of escalation. The reference passage in this book is:
> “I and my confederates,” Aristide said, “did our best to prevent that degree of autonomy among artificial intelligences. We made the decision to turn away from the Vingean Singularity before most people even knew what it was. But—” He made a gesture with his hands as if dropping a ball. “—I claim no more than the average share of wisdom. We could have made mistakes.”
This then ends with... {spoilers}.
- Vernor Vinge - Marooned in Realtime
- The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worthing_Saga https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40304.The_Worthing_Saga )
> It was a miracle of science that permitted human beings to live, if not forever, then for a long, long time. Some people, anyway. The rich, the powerful--they lived their lives at the rate of one year every ten. Some created two societies: that of people who lived out their normal span and died, and those who slept away the decades, skipping over the intervening years and events. It allowed great plans to be put in motion. It allowed interstellar Empires to be built.
> It came near to destroying humanity.
> After a long, long time of decadence and stagnation, a few seed ships were sent out to save our species. They carried human embryos and supplies, and teaching robots, and one man. The Worthing Saga is the story of one of these men, Jason Worthing, and the world he found for the seed he carried.
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Freeze Frame Revolution ( https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36510759 )
> How do you stage a mutiny when you’re only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what’s best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code—and unavoidable casualties.
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Also going to recommend the various Vernor Vinge books:
and the short story "The Peddler's Apprentice" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Verno... )The Peace War Marooned in Realtime A Deepness in the Sky
