 First edition | |
| Author | Vernor Vinge |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Tom Kidd |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Baen Books |
Publication date | July 1987 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 277 |
| ISBN | 0-671-65336-9 |
Tatja Grimm's World is a 1987 science fiction novel by American author Vernor Vinge.
Eighteen years after the publication of Grimm's World , Jim Baen of Baen Books offered to reprint the novel. Vinge revised the original text of Grimm's World and added a new beginning. The plotline now begins with "The Barbarian Princess", a novelette originally published in 1986 in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact . [1]
The book covers three episodes in the life of Tatja Grimm.
Tatja, who grew up with barbarian tribes in the interior of a continent, has made her way to the coasts where there are several technologically advanced island-based civilizations. She finds her way to the Tarulle barge, a ship which publishes a magazine, Fantasie, that is distributed as it circumnavigates the islands. As science develops on the world, Fantasie has evolved from a fantasy magazine to including speculative fiction stories. Tatja bears a resemblance to Hrala, a recurring character in the stories, a fact which she uses to fool a superstitious island society that has imprisoned a group of scientists for attempting to use a telescope, an activity they regard as blasphemous.
Five years later, Tatja has advanced to a management position on the barge, a surprising feat for a supposedly barbarian teenager. She enlists student astronomer Svir Hendrigs and his dorfox Ancho, a creature who emits telepathic signals that can deceive nearby humans, on a scheme to steal the last remaining archive of all issues of Fantasie, before it is destroyed by the mad regent of Crownesse. In fact, the entire scheme is a ploy by Tatja to assume the identity of the lost princess who was murdered by the regent. This eventually succeeds and Tatja becomes an impostor queen of a powerful realm. She remarks that everybody she has met is incredibly stupid in comparison to her, and begins to wonder whether humans actually evolved on her world or have arrived from space.
Another few years later, Tatja finds a rebellion in her distant provinces. After her battle plans do not succeed fully, she is seduced by Jolle, ostensibly a chemist-turned-general in one of the factions loyal to her, who takes over command. Jolle reveals that he is like Tatja, and there is another like them, Profirio, who is commandeering the rebellion. Profirio is apparently a slaver from space whose employer has seeded Tatja's world with backwater humans, and has intended them to build up society until the world reaches a stable reproducing population, which will then be a regular supply of slaves, and it is Jolle's mission to stop him. The two have destroyed each other's ability to communicate with their respective spaceships and must rely on the budding astronomical capabilities of the mountain province in which the rebellion is taking place. Though signs point to Jolle being the slaver and Profirio being the rescuer, Tatja fails to realize this until it is almost too late, resulting in much death and destruction (which Jolle is only too happy to encourage). Eventually Profirio outplays Jolle just as he has commandeered a powerful telescope and has located his ship, and Tatja kills him. Profirio invites Tatja to join him on his ship and she promises Svir that she will return with genetic advancements for him, and that they will secretly guide the humans on the world to develop into a member of the galactic civilization.
A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities.
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Vernor Steffen Vinge is an American science fiction author and retired professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He is the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singularity concept and perhaps the first to present a fictional "cyberspace". He has won the Hugo Award for his novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), Rainbows End (2006), Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002), and The Cookie Monster (2004).
True Names is a 1981 science fiction novella by American writer Vernor Vinge, a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre. It is one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk. The story also contains elements of transhumanism, anarchism, and even hints about The Singularity.
Joan D. Vinge is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award–winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books. She also is the author of The Random House Book of Greek Myths (1999).
A Deepness in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999, the novel is a loose prequel to his earlier novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992). The title is coined by one of the story's main characters in a debate, in a reference to the hibernating habits of his species and to the vastness of space.
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The Peace War is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge, about authoritarianism and technological progress. It was first published as a serial in Analog in 1984, and in book form shortly afterward. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1985. A sequel, Marooned in Realtime, was published in 1986. The two novels and "The Ungoverned", a related novella, are collected in Across Realtime.
New Destinies, Vol. VI/Winter 1988—Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Issue, edited by Jim Baen,.
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Mother of Demons is a science-fiction novel by American author Eric Flint. His debut novel, it was published in paperback form in 1997 by Baen Books. It was one of the first books published freely on the web by its author and publisher, as part of an experiment by Eric Flint and Jim Baen which led to more active electronic publishing by both. The story describes the aftermath of the crash of an interstellar starship on a world full of barely biologically compatible primitive but intelligent alien life.
"Bookworm, Run!" is a science fiction short story by American writer Vernor Vinge. His second published work of fiction, it appeared in Analog Science Fiction Science Fact in 1966, and was reprinted in True Names... and Other Dangers in 1987, and in 2001's The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge.
Grimm's World is a 1969 science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge.
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