A high quality example of world building, future speculating science fiction. Vinge is a computer science professor and it shows both in his ideas and his wording. Being a practitioner of computer science myself, I found Vinge to be very enjoyable. In addition to spinning a dramatic tale on a mind-boggling scale, he takes some of today’s budding technologies and puts them on center stage in the galaxy spanning world of the future. Well executed from start to finish.