Nice bit of deconstruction, there, of the distinction I tried to stipulate. I suspect that your formulation might best be deconstructed in turn by challenging the strong/weak distinction; one might, instead, view these stories as describing fights between different kinds of strength, and different combinations of strengths.
In the technological settings where Vinge operates, knowledge (and cleverness) is power in a more direct sense than it is in "Jack"; Wili, in The Peace War, doesn't have to persuade the satellites to feed the Peacers misleading data. (In fact, he's not very good at persuasion; his attempt to reveal Miguel's treachery is laughed off.) In A Deepness in the Sky, is Pham weak - because he is more-or-less alone against the Emergents - or is he strong - because he built trapdoors into the systems the Emergents have co-opted, and knows how to exploit them? Gerrault hides his true identity in Marooned in Realtime, not because he is weak but because he is utterly confident of his strength. (Indeed, though his identity is concealed, his character is not - he even flaunts it.) He is defeated, at the last, by the three characters - Juan Chanson, Della Lu, and Yelen Korolev - who are arguably more powerful (in the sense of technologically advancement) than he is.
But this gets a bit far afield from Vinge. The strengths he deals in are primarily psychological (cleverness and a smooth tongue) and technical (mastery of electronic or biological information systems). The use of physical strengths - e.g., the nuclear exchange in Marooned in Realtime - is background detail, for the most part.
I'm rambling. Thanks for the thoughts; they cast interesting light on several other passages in Vinge. The scene in Marooned in Realtime in which Brierson and Della Lu are besieged by the dog-things, for instance, takes a new place in the pattern. I'll have to think about this some more.
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Re: Structure
Date: 2005-08-09 06:35 pm (UTC)I suspect that your formulation might best be deconstructed in turn by challenging the strong/weak distinction; one might, instead, view these stories as describing fights between different kinds of strength, and different combinations of strengths.
In the technological settings where Vinge operates, knowledge (and cleverness) is power in a more direct sense than it is in "Jack"; Wili, in The Peace War, doesn't have to persuade the satellites to feed the Peacers misleading data. (In fact, he's not very good at persuasion; his attempt to reveal Miguel's treachery is laughed off.) In A Deepness in the Sky, is Pham weak - because he is more-or-less alone against the Emergents - or is he strong - because he built trapdoors into the systems the Emergents have co-opted, and knows how to exploit them? Gerrault hides his true identity in Marooned in Realtime, not because he is weak but because he is utterly confident of his strength. (Indeed, though his identity is concealed, his character is not - he even flaunts it.) He is defeated, at the last, by the three characters - Juan Chanson, Della Lu, and Yelen Korolev - who are arguably more powerful (in the sense of technologically advancement) than he is.
But this gets a bit far afield from Vinge. The strengths he deals in are primarily psychological (cleverness and a smooth tongue) and technical (mastery of electronic or biological information systems). The use of physical strengths - e.g., the nuclear exchange in Marooned in Realtime - is background detail, for the most part.
I'm rambling. Thanks for the thoughts; they cast interesting light on several other passages in Vinge. The scene in Marooned in Realtime in which Brierson and Della Lu are besieged by the dog-things, for instance, takes a new place in the pattern. I'll have to think about this some more.