In Middlebury, Vermont last weekend, I picked up The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. I’d read Marooned in Realtime already, so his stellar reputation was corroborated by personal experience. I like short fiction when it’s more story than mood. These are. I’ll also have to follow up sometime about the Singularity. Vinge referred to it several times in short intro notes written for this collection, and I have to admit I didn’t know what he meant. From the first bit of this 1993 essay, I have the basic idea: we will soon have non-human intelligence(s) greater than human. Pretty old concept in science fiction. I’ll have to read the essay sometime in its entirety. The neat part about Vinge is that he is a computer scientist, recently retired from teaching at San Diego State.
About my previous book… I enjoyed Personal History, which I finished in the airport last weekend. The only thing lacking, really, was more detail on why Katharine Graham’s efforts with the Washington Post were successful. Her book was certaintly insightful, and I’d recommend it to others… I just finished the Personal History wanting a bit more of the Corporate History, too. Halberstam’s The Powers That Be covered some of this ground, but not enough of the 1960s onwards from a business angle.