Across Real Time

Vinge, Vernor. Across Real Time. Combining The Peace War (1984) and Marooned in Realtime (1986). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, n.d. "Published by arrangement with Bluejay Books. . . ." New York. [S. F.] Book Club Edition.

The Peace War is an important book for its post-1960s variations on some familiar technophilic and conservative themes: the overthrow of The Peace Authority by the Tinker (and others) underground after fifty years of peace at the price of tyranny and technological stagnation. See H. Ellison's "Asleep . . ." (cited under Fiction). Marooned in Realtime is a detective story sequel set in a far-future with pathetically few human beings, divided up into "high-techs" and "low-techs." In both stories, note people in deep connections with computer systems.