{"id":2175,"date":"2008-05-18T23:02:50","date_gmt":"2008-05-18T23:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-2175.html"},"modified":"2008-05-18T23:02:50","modified_gmt":"2008-05-18T23:02:50","slug":"vernor-vinge-rainbows-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/2008\/05\/18\/vernor-vinge-rainbows-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Vernor Vinge &#8211; <i>Rainbows End<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I took two attempts to get through <i>Rainbows End<\/i>, and it took me a while after finishing it to figure out why I didn&#8217;t like it:  it doesn&#8217;t deliver on its promises.  In the prologue, European intelligence services have detected <em>someone<\/em> experimenting with a highly advanced and incredibly subtle form of mass mind-control.  The opening chapter follows this up with a meeting between other intelligence agencies as they decide what action to take, and reveals some of the secrets behind the threat.  <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a great teaser opening&#8230;to a <em>different book<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of <i>Rainbows End<\/i> is a moderately interesting treatise on the future of education, learning, and knowledge management, fronted by an unlikeable protagonist, and ending with a fist-shaking &#8220;I would have got away with it if it hadn&#8217;t been for you pesky kids&#8221; moment.  The unlikeable protagonist mellows, and everyone learns a valuable lesson about love and understanding.<\/p>\n<p>Not Vinge&#8217;s finest hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I took two attempts to get through Rainbows End, and it took me a while after finishing it to figure out why I didn&#8217;t like it: it doesn&#8217;t deliver on its promises. In the prologue, European intelligence services have detected someone experimenting with a highly advanced and incredibly subtle form of mass mind-control. The opening [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[1573,1574,1576,1578,1579],"class_list":["post-2175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books_15_stars","tag-education","tag-library","tag-sandiego","tag-vernorvinge","tag-ygbm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/quickreviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}