Vernor Vinge, author of many influential hard science fiction works, died March 20 at the age of 79. Vinge sold his first science-fiction story in 1964, "Apartness", which appeared in the June 1965 issue of New Worlds. In 1971, he received a PhD (Math) from UCSD, and the next year began teaching at ...
He passed on March 20. One of the greatest "hard" science fiction writers, author of True Names, A Fire Upon The Deep, and other cyberspace classics. Link is to his death notice in the old school fanzine File 770. Moment of silence please. RIP.
The Peace War was my first introduction to his works, and I have read all of his works. The science fiction community has lost another luminary to the vestiges of time.
Vernor, you were the best. I remember your writings and musings fondly.
Out of all of his work, I only read A Fire Upon the Deep. I don't remember it very well at this point because I read it decades ago, but I do remember it being very good. And as it says, he was very influential. 79 isn't super long, but it isn't a short life either. And it was clearly a good one.
If you enjoyed A Fire Upon the Deep, you should definitely check out the other 2 books. The Children of the Sky is a straightforward sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, more fun with the pack intelligences of the Tines. I really liked the idea of a pack intelligence surviving longer than an individual member in those books. A Deepness in the Sky has a hibernating technological spider civilization and human savants exploited and enslaved as basically hyper focused biological automatons. Also there are inflatable space ships. Working my memory to type this, I realize that I kinda want to read them again.