For fans of hard science fiction, Vernor Vinge’s Fire Upon the Deep stands out as easily one of the best science fiction books ever written. Really. While his other books are much less well known, many of them - especially the Peace War series and the short story “True Names” - are exceptionally good. A Deepness in the Sky was not up to the same level, but still told a good yarn and managed to win a Hugo. So, when Rainbows End came out, I had my fingers crossed. I guess finger crossing doesn’t help.

2007 Hugo Award Winner

“Within the intelligence services of the Indo-European Alliance, there were a handful of bureaucratic superstars, people such as Gunberk Braun of the EUIB. “

Rainbows End is set in the near future and tells two stories: the first is of the attempt by operatives from four governments to deal with the threat of “You Gotta Believe Me” (YGBM) technology, technology that compels people to do something; the second is the story of Robert Gu, a once famous poet and incredibly unpleasant person, and his recovery from Alzheimer’s. The near future setting is fantastic and well done. The technology is very believable and, because Robert Gu spends lots of time learning to use it, the reader gets a good introduction and lots of tidbits that bridge the differences of our time and that of Rainbows End. The other really satisfying part of the setting is how fleshed out the twenty years of history between now and then are. You can definitely see how our world became theirs. The setting alone is actually almost enough to make the book worth reading.

Unfortunately, the setting is the book’s best point. The first plotline involving the YGBM threat is interesting but underrepresented in the book before it finally meshes in at the end. The characters in that plotline were also pretty generic, the combination of which made it easy to forget that a big crisis is on the horizon. The second plotline deals with Robert Gu trying to deal with the loss of his poetic talent and with the changes that have occurred while he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. The problem here is that Robert Gu is an incredibly unpleasant, self-centered jerk who has spent his life building himself up by crapping on others. It is possible to have this kind of person as a main character and create a compelling story but very difficult. Vinge might have done better to have toned this character down, as he was so unpleasant that it made the story hard to read. Gu spends much of his time going to community education classes and being a jerk. As you can probably guess, this part drags.

Eventually, the story does pick up when the plotlines meet and has a few pages of the suspense that made Vinge’s earlier works great, but it stalls soon after. Yes, the characters evolve. Yes, there is a civilization-threatening conspiracy. Yes, all kinds of cool technology are woven into the story. By the end of the book, though, all these elements of a good story weren’t enough to make one. Still, it won a Hugo. Maybe everyone just really liked the setting.