Vinge published his first short story, "Apartness", in the June 1965 issue of the British magazineNew Worlds. His second, "Bookworm, Run!", was in the March 1966 issue ofAnalog Science Fiction, then edited byJohn W. Campbell.[4] The story explores the theme of artificially augmented intelligence by connecting the brain directly to computerized data sources. Upon receiving hisB.S. in mathematics fromMichigan State University (where his father was a member of thegeography faculty) in 1966, he became a moderately prolific contributor to SF magazines throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1969, he expanded the story "Grimm's Story" (Orbit 4, 1968) into his first novel,Grimm's World. During this period, Vinge also received hisM.A. (1968) andPh.D. (1971) in mathematics from theUniversity of California, San Diego, the latter under the supervision ofStefan E. Warschawski.[5] His second novel,The Witling, was published in 1976.[6]
Vinge came to prominence in 1981 with his novellaTrue Names, perhaps the first story to present a fully fleshed-out concept ofcyberspace,[3] which would later be central tocyberpunk stories byWilliam Gibson,Neal Stephenson and others. His next two novels,The Peace War (1984) andMarooned in Realtime (1986), explore the spread of a futurelibertarian society, and deal with the impact of a technology which can create impenetrableforce fields called 'bobbles'. These books built Vinge's reputation as an author who would explore ideas to their logical conclusions in particularly inventive ways. Both books were nominated for theHugo Award, but lost to novels byWilliam Gibson andOrson Scott Card.[7][8]
Vinge won the Hugo Award (tying for Best Novel withDoomsday Book byConnie Willis) with his 1992 novel,A Fire Upon the Deep.[9]A Deepness in the Sky (1999) was aprequel toFire, following competing groups of humans in The Slow Zone as they struggle over who has the rights to exploit a technologically emerging alien culture.Deepness won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2000.[10]
Vinge's 2006 novelRainbows End, set in the same universe and featuring some of the same characters asFast Times at Fairmont High, won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel.[12] In 2011, he releasedThe Children of the Sky, a sequel toA Fire Upon the Deep set approximately 10 years following the end ofA Fire Upon the Deep.[13][14]
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)—Hugo,[10] Campbell,[10] and Prometheus Awardswinner, 2000; Nebula Award nominee, 1999;[20] Clarke and Locus SF Awards nominee, 2000[10]
^Vinge, Vernor (1976).The witling. Daw Books = sf. DAW Books Inc, Copyright Paperback Collection (Library of Congress). New York: DAW Books.Archived from the original on October 30, 2023. RetrievedJanuary 15, 2019.
^Vinge, Vernor (1993). "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era".Whole Earth Review (Winter 1993): 11.Bibcode:1993vise.nasa...11V.
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