The Peace War - GlaucaWyrm

304 pages

English language

Published Nov. 11, 2003 by Tom Doherty Associates.

ISBN:: 9780765308832

(1 review)

First in a quintessential hard-science fiction adventure, Hugo Award-winning author Vernor Vinge's The Peace War follows a scientist determined to put an end to the militarization of his greatest invention--and of the government behind it.

The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the "bobble," a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Authority becomes virtually omnipotent.

But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to defeat the Authority. With the help of an underground network of determined, independent scientists and a teenager who may be the apprentice genius he's needed for so long, he will shake the world.

1 edition

Wolfgang Wopperer reviewed The Peace War by Vernor Vinge

A love letter to libertarian hackerdom

4 stars

Vinge is a master craftsman. The first few chapters are among the best constructed I've ever read – how he manages to start three separate narrative threads and timelines, slowly weaves them together in just the right tempo and level of explicitness so that the reader has the first revelatory "aha" moment just before the timelines actually converge, switching imperceptibly between mystery and suspense to keep us hooked, how all of this is mirrored in the spatial setup of the plot, and how it makes us feel empowered as readers – this is truly great storytelling.

But Vinge is also a libertarian in love with hacker culture, and this suffuses the rest story of the story to a degree that makes it a little flat and boring. Good (individuals, hackers, small-time heroes) and evil (state authority, bureaucrats, big-time posers) are little to easy to discern, and apart from one or …

Vinge is a master craftsman. The first few chapters are among the best constructed I've ever read – how he manages to start three separate narrative threads and timelines, slowly weaves them together in just the right tempo and level of explicitness so that the reader has the first revelatory "aha" moment just before the timelines actually converge, switching imperceptibly between mystery and suspense to keep us hooked, how all of this is mirrored in the spatial setup of the plot, and how it makes us feel empowered as readers – this is truly great storytelling.

But Vinge is also a libertarian in love with hacker culture, and this suffuses the rest story of the story to a degree that makes it a little flat and boring. Good (individuals, hackers, small-time heroes) and evil (state authority, bureaucrats, big-time posers) are little to easy to discern, and apart from one or two protagonists torn between loyalties there's not a lot of psychological depth on offer.

Nonetheless, a fun read – and a good reminder of how cyber- and counter-culture were deeply connected in the early 1980s through a shared libertarian ethos.

Subjects

Inventors -- Fiction.
Power (Social sciences) -- Fiction.
Technology -- Political aspects -- Fiction.