Vernor Vinge R.I.P.
 

Hugo Award winning Science Fiction author Vernor Vinge passed away on March 20th in San Diego.

Vernor started his writing career in the mid 60's, with multiple short stories published in various Science Fiction magazines. His first novel, Grimm's World was published in 1969.

His first major work was the novel The Peace War in 1984. After that he wrote several epic novels, including A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep.

He also co-wrote a great short story with William L. Rupp, Just Peace, that was originally published in Analog magazine in 1970.

Vernor had been living with Parkinson's disease for the last 5 years or so, but wanted to keep that private. (I knew he had Parkinson's, but knowing he didn't want that information public I kept it to myself.)

My dad and Vernor were good friends from early 1969 until Vernor died. Vernor was a very quirky guy, but crazy smart and fun to be around in an intellectual way.

Vernor was also a math professor at San Diego State.

He will be missed.

Re: Vernor Vinge R.I.P.
 

Re: Vernor Vinge R.I.P.
 

Very cool that you knew him.

I loved A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Too bad he wasn't more prolific. But I guess it's good to have a small number of masterpieces than a lot of stuff that isn't good.

I never read any of his short story collections though, or his last novel (The Children of the Sky).

Re: Vernor Vinge R.I.P.
 

I read A Fire Upon the Deep back when I was in high school. Don't recall a lot about it, but I remember it being solid space opera. (For me, there's something about 80s/90s space opera that sort of blends together in my mind.) Bought A Deepness in the Sky but never got around to reading it. It came out so long after the initial book that I had forgotten so much about it I wanted to re-read the first book first, but never got around to doing it.