The Witling

Humanity is spread out amongst the stars but the lack of a faster than light drive means that systems are, at best, only loosely connected. Empires have risen and fallen and Armageddon has come to many worlds. One world is trying to recover from such a catastrophe. It has reached out and colonized a planet in a nearby system. That planet is just self-sufficient enough to try and explore its system. It sends out a mission to explore a world a bit further out and finds a civilization. The civilization is what we would call feudal but it has its surprises. As the explorers, an archeologist (specializing in recovering technology) and a pilot, await recovery, disaster overtakes their ship. It is destroyed and they are captured by the locals. It is only then that they learn the strange secret of this world. They may be backward in terms of technology but they make up for it with an amazing ability. They are natural teleports. The explorers, of course, are not. This makes them "witlings", those without the ability to teleport. In this culture, that means that they are fit for little more than slavery. They are desperate to get to the far side of the planet to recover a beacon there and send for help. They realize that with teleportation comes the potential to solve humanity's interstellar problems and a lot is riding on their success. In this mission they are aided by a crown prince, who is also a witling. There are problems. Massive intrigue is the norm in the prince's court. All factions and foreign powers believe the strangers are the key to power. Teleportation may make some things easy but it is still subject to all sorts of physical laws which make transport directly to the beacon impossible. Also, the local food is toxic. It's a race against time, well told and well written.

An excellent light SF adventure. Our heroes are captured on a medieval planet where it turns out the locals have telekinetic powers. Lacking such powers, our heroes are regarded as inferior "witlings". Vinge, as usual, writes well and has thought things through in interesting ways. Conservation of momentum causes interesting limits (and also interesting capabilities) for telekinesis. For example, it is cheap to move between points at the same longitude and opposite latitude. So the Summer kingdom has a single Imperial palace split between the hemispheres, and the Winter kingdom has annual migrations from North pole to South pole. Not "A Fire Upon the Deep", but that's a very high bar.

A book read years ago and never forgotten. An imaginative technical premise, interesting charactors, and fast paced adventure - all the ingredients of entertaining space opera. But what really blew me away was the ending, and years later I can still recall that mind blowing, apparently controversial, final paragraph (actually last two or three paragraphs) word for word. Potential readers, please don't be put off by the reviewer that called it mysogynist. If you can capable of seeing the universe, and human charactor, in more than one dimension, you will understand. It's called irony! (but its actually more than that..) Maybe like me, you will have tears in your eyes, and feel like you've been kicked in the stomach after reading the last page of this book, but it will also ring true. Oh, maybe I'm overstating it - just read the book. I want to explain why the ending is NOT anti-feminist, in fact the reverse, but it will involve spoilers, so if you haven't read the book yet, I recommend you just take my word for it and don't read any further. The following is an explanation of how I interpreted the ending for the interest of others who have read this book. (...)

Some of the other reviewers have already told about the book, so I'll just say that I've enjoyed it very much. I've had the book for quite some time and I've reread it from time to time. I noticed some of the reviewers didn't appreciate the book at all which totally dumbfounds me! Oh well, we can't all have the same taste.I also have to add that the book tells a wonderful story about how beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When one person may see another person as homely or unattractive - someone else may see beauty. The human female character, Legwott, is seen as short, big-boned and homely by human standards. However, she is seen as lithe, fragil and beautiful (quite the fairy princess) by the alien humanoid race in the story.

Vinge describes a world in which teleportation is an everyday reality --he and clears up all the little details of plausibility which other writers were too lazy or uninformed to bother with. Angular momentum, conservation of energy--these and other science aspects are beautifully worked out, behind a seeming fantasy scenario. A book to delight that small minority which still cares about science in science fiction.