But planet Earth is not yet a utopia, although the global economy is booming and a relative peace obtains between nations. Anyone having a bad hair day can take out his frustration with deadly illicit weapons. The several most powerful governments of the world maintain constant vigilance against such threats. We meet Bob Gu, one of the military men in charge of America's security, and his wife Alice, a consultant instantly trainable in any speciality thanks to JITT technology. Some of their foreign counterparts are Günberk Braun of the European Union, Keiko Mitsuri of Japan and Alfred Vaz of India. Among them, they battle terrorists daily. But there's one problem: Vaz, eager to put an end to terrorism once and for all, is conducting his own secret program to perfect an unstoppable bio-weapon to be under his sole control. He needs to deflect the attention of his peers from his schemes, and he enlists a mysterious hacker named Rabbit to help. The problem is that Rabbit is too smart to be a mere pawn.

The Gu family of San Diego are our main viewpoint characters in this great game—specifically, Robert Gu, senior, Bob's father. An elderly man in the last throes of Alzheimer's, Robert is given a second chance at life thanks to new medical technology. Rejuvenated and restored, he's sent back to school with other repurposed seniors to adapt to this brave new world. In class at Fairmont High with underachieving teenagers such as Juan Orozco—Robert's grandaughter Miri is too bright to be at Fairmont—Robert suffers indignities he finds unbefitting the man who was once America's best poet. He chafes at his new limits, greedy for achievements just out of reach.

And then he's approached virtually by someone using the handle "Mysterious Stranger." It's Rabbit in disguise, and he's about to enlist Robert in some very dangerous enterprises.

The generation gap becomes a chasm

I've frequently mentioned one of John Campbell's most pivotal insights into what SF can be and do. Campbell asked his writers to provide fiction that read like a mimetic novel of the future it was composed in. In other words, fully inhabit the mind of a citizen of 2025, then write the book naturalistically, without infodumps or sensationalistic finger-pointing. It's a challenging assignment, but it produces killer work when mastered.

Vernor Vinge does exactly that here. His novel reads like a best-seller sent back by time machine from the year 2025. There's no hand-holding, which means the reader must pay close attention. But there's no deliberate obfuscation, either. Vinge plays fair. For instance, he can justifiably explain Bob Junior's job in detail—the man controls firepower greater than a 20th-century nation's as part of Homeland Security—simply because the average person of 2025 would not necessarily be privy to Bob's secret duties. And Robert Senior being a Rip Van Winkle character allows for certain unforced briefings that the reader can share.

Vinge's world is saturated with the logical extensions of current R&D. He has thought long and hard about how pervasive and ubiquitous information technology will transform our lives. Often Vinge delights in counterintuitive revelations. For instance, it's actually better when following animated directions graphics not to pay attention to your physical surroundings, since mutable architecture frequently changes from day to day and you might go astray looking for old physical cues.

And then there's the matter of fantasy versus (or in alliance with) high tech. Ever since the publication of "True Names" in 1981, Vinge has presciently maintained that computers will paradoxically allow their users to indulge in fantasy worlds. Silicon supports magic, in other words. He elaborates gleefully on that theme here with his riff on "belief circles." If you and your pals could stroll through everyday life pretending to live in Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, why wouldn't you? Just look at phenomena like Warcraft today.

All this techno bedazzlement is not free-floating, however. There's the realpolitik angle, the MacGuffin of Vaz's schemes, to propel the plot along nicely. Vinge sounds at least as convincing in his sociopolitical economics as contemporary experts like Thomas Freidman. But greater than this is the human story. Robert Senior, genuine bastard, strides through this tale like a hopeful monster, hurting his family and others until the final moment, when danger forces him to confront himself and what he really holds dear. That's the vibrant emotional armature on which all the wonders are hung.