Tatja Grimm's World

Interesting expansion of a short story into a full length novel set in the alternate reality of outer space.

Tatja is a barbarian girl from the interior of a massive continent. Her world is poor in metals and civilization is mostly restricted to the island fringes. The mainland is mostly for barbarians. Tatja is also much brighter than everyone else she encounters. Desperate to find people who are not "stupid", she wanders to the coast impressing everyone she meets with both her intelligence and her ruthlessness. Upon arriving at the coast, she is at first delighted to find a civilization roughly analogous to the Renaissance but is soon disappointed that everything seems to be the result of centuries of slow progress. She expected to find geniuses and instead had to settle for normal people. Even so, she has a master plan. She believes that there is life "out there" in space and there she might find people with who she is comfortable. Putting her plan into action though will require some groundwork, like taking over the most powerful kingdom on the world. It turns out that Tatja is right and that is frightening because the outsiders are quite sinister and have their own motives. This story reads well most of the time but there are occasional lapses when it is not always clear what is happening. Even so, it was a fun book to read. It is one of Vinge's earlier works and his later ones are better but, even so, this one is still worthwhile.

fabulous story from begining to end...Vernor is a great writer and this is a "guaranteed" dont put me down read...A true scince fiction story.

Vernor Vinge is one of my favorite authors, but Tatja Grimm's World is not typical Vinge. What I most enjoy in his other novels is the outpouring of novel science ideas played out on realistic tableaus. Vinge manages to populate his sci-fi stories with great characters that we can relate to--even those almost completely alien--and places them into solid societal (often completely alien) foundations. "A Fire Upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky" are his primary recent efforts, extremely futuristic and alien, but with human connections rarely found elsewhere. Tatja Grimm's World lacks the science ideas so unique to those novels: it is fantasy, not science fiction. This book combines two novellas Vinge wrote in the 60s, with a prequel written in the 80s; they fit seamlessly together into a very readable, interesting novel. The book centers on the titled character, a possible alien stranded on a world with almost no metals, and an island-based society. Is Tatja an android, or a future being stranded in the past? Maybe she's simply an evolutionary jump in the existing people, or perhaps she's another life-form altogether. The mystery about her past is combined with an ambiguity about her intentions. Is she evil or good, or is she beyond either in terms the islanders (and possibly we) can understand? The mystery and tension that builds up about Tatja is the key to the novel. Other than her, the stories are fairly pedestrian. Vinge doesn't do much with the lack of metals on the world, but does serve up a couple neat ideas (in the newer prequel) about the island-based societies. Vinge makes the novel work based almost completely on Tatja Grimm's characterization. Even so, the novel feels incomplete. Vinge leaves a teaser that another story was (is? Tatja would be great character for a new Vinge novel!) in the offing. Although I was disappointed with the lack of hard sci-fi typical of Vinge, I did enjoy this book. If you are new to Vernor Vinge, and are looking for great science fiction, try his two novels mentioned above; you won't be disappointed. If you are a Vinge or fantasy fan, I recommend Tatja Grimm's World as a quick and interesting read.

This will never be regarded as one of Vinge's hard core stories, such as "Fire Upon the Deep", it is rather a diversionary exercise from Vernor, that explores in classic SF style a delightfully created ocean world, populated with numerous divergent and isolated cultures, but loosely tied together by nomadic traders. One group stumbles upon and shelters a young woman, an apparently feral child, but who reveals through a series of well-written episodes, a precocious capacity to learn. Soon she far surpasses those who protected her, indeed she come to reverse the roles, and yet her true motives are often hidden, even from those who have come to love, and sometimes fear her most. In a sequence of six well-paced episodes, her influence in this early industrial metal-scarce world grows, until the climatic crisis, set in an extreme altitude mountain-top observatory, finally unravels the entire plot. A likeable, and moving tale, less techo-oriented than his other works, but one that reveals another aspect to Vinge, well worth tracking down if you are a fan.