Author and Computer Science Professor Vernor Vinge has died. While his list of publications is not fat, it is high protein, and includes the influential *True Names*(1981) and "A Fire Upon the Deep".

I can't say we were really acquainted, but we had overlapping friend groups in San Diego fandom, and had had dinner at the same table a couple of times. He has a wonderful and occasionally vicious sense of humour. There was a time on a con panel where his friend David Brin was lengthily pontificating on some matter he thought important, and behind him (also on the panel) Vernor was elaborately miming tying a noose and hanging himself.

Vernor, I loved hangin' with you man. And Fuck Parkinson's.

(David Brin's Tribute: https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2024/03/vernor-vinge-man-with-lamps-on-his-brows.html )

-VR
And once more, Fuck Parkinson's.
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

I only met him once, at the yearly print-SF con in San Diego whose name escapes me (not ComicCon), circa 2007. He came up to me after a panel and asked me to tell him the North Korea joke that, while asking a question of the panel, I'd mentioned was hiding near the end of The Execution Channel. I don't think I would have dared to start a conversation with him if he hadn't done that. But he did, and then me and my pals took him to lunch and we talked about books for a solid hour. Depressingly, I can't remember any details.

He will be missed.

Oh, damn.

So many (and yet so few) hour spent in his stories.

L.

A Curiosity from the archives:

Waaaay back in 1993, before the publishers had any understanding of ebooks, Brad Templeton had the bright idea to get as many of the Hugo and Nebula stories he could and put them all on a CD he sold to fans. Somewhere I have a copy of it...somewhere. Fortunately the Internet Archive now has a copy at https://archive.org/details/hugo_nebula_1993

On this CD was a special version of "A Fire Upon the Deep" with all the annotations Vernor used while writing it. Brad translated it into some RTF variant, and stuck a reader on it. But the bits rot, an it is harder to read now. Fortunately, Daniel Drucker has made html versions available, at https://3e.org/vvannot/ .

Worth reading if you like to see how the sausage is made.

-VR
I'm beginning to think the publishing houses are the real "Unthinking Depths."
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."