The Witling
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15
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Average rating2
This second novel by multiple award-winner Vernor Vinge, from 1976, is a fast-paced adventure where galactic policies collide and different cultures clash as two scientists and their faith in technology are pitted against an elusive race of telekinetic beings.
Marooned on a distant world and slowly dying of food poisoning, two anthropologists are caught between warring alien factions engaged in a battle that will affect the future of the world's inhabitants and their deadly telekinetic powers. If the anthropologists can't help resolve the conflict between the feuding alien factions, no one will survive.
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What this book taught me: Vernor Vinge is brilliant when he's writing great SciFi, but boring when he is writing pulp. This book is dated, and if you're hoping for more of what makes Across Realtime or Fire Upon The Deep so great, stay away from The Witling. I gave up in chapter 3, returning this to the friend I borrowed it from.
This book has a nice clear story with an unusual heroine, and a well-conceived and original scenario unlike any other I can think of. It makes use of teleportation and telekinesis; but the teleportation is not quite the same as [a:Alfred Bester 10992 Alfred Bester https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1418852724p2/10992.jpg]'s jaunting, and the difference has interesting effects on the resulting society.It's the story of two relatively normal humans marooned on an abnormal planet, so I'm reminded vaguely of [b:Mission of Gravity 525285 Mission of Gravity Hal Clement https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328628795l/525285.SY75.jpg 894625] and [b:The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4) Ursula K. Le Guin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1488213612l/18423.SY75.jpg 817527].As with Mission of Gravity, the situation is of more interest than the characters, but Vinge's characterization is at least more interesting than Hal Clement's.It seems that some readers are disappointed because they read Vinge's later books first, and came to this one expecting something similar. I think that's an inappropriate comparison: this is a book from 1976, inspired by the sf of the 1950s and 1960s, which Vinge would have grown up reading. If you compare it with the sort of books that were around at that time, it's a well-made and original novel and I value it.The one thing I don't like about it is the ending. The last chapter winds everything up in rather a hurry, and some of the details seem implausible. Furthermore, he claims it as a happy ending, but there's an element of tragedy that I wish he could have avoided somehow. I'm a softie: I like an unambiguously happy ending.
