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Verner Vinge, the San Diego State University professor whose award-winning science fiction novels foretold the rise and influence of the Internet and artificial intelligence and made “cyberspace” a household term, died March 20 in La Jolla. He was 79 years old.
Binge suffered from Parkinson’s disease, said John Carroll, a computer scientist emeritus at SDSU and one of his closest friends.
Many of Vinge’s books talked about a coming “technological singularity” in one way or another. It’s the concept that machines could eventually become smarter than humans, and humans could be even worse at it.
He had apparently dug into the subject in the last years of his life. Mr. Binge was working on a sequel to the hugely popular 2006 novel “Rainbow’s End,” set in 2025 San Diego, where a cure for Alzheimer’s disease exists.
The book’s main character, 75-year-old Robert Gu, is recovering from Alzheimer’s disease and struggling to cope with incredible technological advances, including technology that allows mind control. This is a think piece about good and evil with a subplot in which Vinge eliminates all physical books from the Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego, where he received his 1971 PhD in mathematics.
“There’s a conspiracy that virtual reality is going to become more and more real,” said Robert Crowther, a bookseller at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy science fiction bookstore. “If you strip away all the physical stuff, how do you know what was really real? This story was ahead of its time.”
This book won Vinge a 2007 Hugo Award. This is his one of five Hugo Awards that Vinge has won over her long career. The Hugo Awards are considered the top book awards in the science fiction genre.
Vinge (pronounced Vingee) was born on October 2, 1944 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Both his parents were geographers. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University in 1966 and then went on to the newly established UCSD, where he earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees.
He was fascinated by science, especially artificial intelligence. Vinge loved the idea of connecting the human brain to a computer. Eventually, he published novels in his science fiction magazines and then began writing books.
Vinge made a splash in 1981 with his novella True Names, about a computer hacker immersed in the world of virtual reality. This book was an early take on cyberspace and helped inform William Gibson’s famous 1984 novel, Neuromancer.
Vinge went on to become a best-selling author and is remembered by many readers for three of his novels, Rainbow’s End, Fire in the Abyss (1993), and Empty Abyss (1999).
His prose was so evocative and original that he was often ranked alongside three other top science fiction writers of his generation: Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and David Brin. Collectively, these were known to science fiction fans as his 3 B and 1 V.
In “A Fire Upon the Deep,” dog-like creatures communicate using ultrasound, creating a so-called group mind.
“It’s a kind of telepathic advanced intelligence,” says Bryn, who lives in Olivenhain. “That was like Burner’s imagination.”
Vinge’s writings are based not only on imagination but also on fact, and some call his work science. factAeon, not SF.
Vinge is remembered for many other works besides his own books.
“He has supported (Mysterious Galaxy) since it opened in 1993,” Crowther said. “He was very kind.”
Carroll also remembers Vinge as “a kind gentleman who would help anyone who needed his advice, including his students.” I never once heard him say, “I’m too busy to do that.” ”
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