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This short story originally appeared in the anthology Gateways (2010), edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Hugo Award winning novella.

In a near future where wireless mind links and wearable computers blur the line between artificial reality and "real" reality, it's final exam time at San Diego's Fairmont Junior High. Juan Orozco and his friends have a killer idea for their off-line project. But can a bunch of 13-year-olds really figure out the secret of what's going on at Torrey Pines Park?

The story originally appeared in the collection The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001). It can also be found in the anthology The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edtied by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, October 1983. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1983), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Threats... and Other Promises (1988) and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001).

As a mud-spattered youngster, Tatja quickly realized she was different from the stone-age primitives with whom she grew up. Her insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge could not be quenched among them; she had to explore and learn more about the strange world she lived on.

She finds the bastion of all culture, arts, entertainment and history for the entire planet, the seven-hundred-year-old science fiction magazine Fantasie, which is produced entirely aboard a gargantuan floating vessel the size of a small city. But despite the printing presses, sail-powered vessels, and mind-expanding technology, Tatja is still dissatisfied. Rising through the ranks, she finds that the people on the enormous barge are just as unintelligent as the primitives she grew up with. But others have come to the planet who not only challenge her intelligence, but offer her a tantalizing opportunity to uncover answers to mysteries that have long plagued her.

But with opportunity comes risk. And if she acts unwisely, she could bring doom to the only world she knows.

AKA: Tatja Grimm's World

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1972. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1973 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Collection (1973), edited by Lester del Rey, and Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections True Names... and Other Dangers (1987) and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001).

Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025.

Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he's starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts . Living with his son's family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access-through nodes designed into smart clothes-and to see the digital context-through smart contact lenses.

With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.

In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in, this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated security analysts, including Robert's son and daughter-in law, two top people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.

As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and satisfying as it is unexpected. This is science fiction at its very best, by a master storyteller at his peak.

This short story originally appeared on the IEEESpectrumonline website, July 31, 2004. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Dangerous Games (2007) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at IEEE.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, September 1986. The story is included in the collection The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001).

Since his first published story, "Apartness," appeared in 1965, Vernor Vinge has forged a unique and awe-inspiring career in science fiction as his work has grown and matured. He is now one of the most celebrated science fiction writers in the field , having won the field's top award, the Hugo, for each of his last two novels.

Now, for the first time, this illustrious author gathers all his short fiction into a single volume. This collection is truly the definitive Vinge, capturing his visionary ideas at their very best. It also contains a never-before-published novella, one that represents precisely what this collection encapsulates--bold, unique, challenging science fictional ideas brought to vivid life with compelling storytelling.

Including such major pieces as "The Ungoverned" and "The Blabber," this sumptuous volume will satisfy any reader who loves the sense of wonder, and the excitement of great SF.

Table of Contents

• Foreword - (2001) - essay by Vernor Vinge
• "Bookworm, Run!" - (1966)
• The Accomplice - (1967)
• The Peddler's Apprentice - (1975) - novelette by Joan D. Vinge and Vernor Vinge
• The Ungoverned - (1985)
• Long Shot - (1972)
• Apartness - (1965)
• Conquest by Default - (1968)
• The Whirligig of Time - (1974)
• Bomb Scare - (1970)
• The Science Fair - (1971)
• Gemstone - (1983)
• Just Peace - (1971) - novelette by Vernor Vinge and William Rupp
• Original Sin - (1972)
• The Blabber - (1988)
• Win a Nobel Prize! - (2000)
• The Barbarian Princess - (1986)
• Fast Times at Fairmont High - (2001)

Hugo and Locus Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 2003. The story can also be found in the anthologies Science Fiction: The Best of 2003, edited by Karen Haber and Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois and Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology (2012), edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly.

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1975. It can also be found in the anthologies Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Fifth Annual Collection (1975), edited by Lester del Rey, and The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collections Phoenix in the Ashes (Joan D. Vinge, 1975), True Names ...and Other Dangers (Vernor Vinge, 1987) and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (Vernor Vinge, 2001).

A planet populated by a race of nearly-human aliens who have the ability to teleport with their minds. This ability varies from person to person: those without the talent at all are called witlings and are the lowest class of person in the planet's primitive societies.

Two human explorers from a nearby colonized world become trapped on the planet, and struggle to find help from various powerful factions that wish to exploit the relatively advanced technology the humans brought with them.

The slower-than-light human colonization that serves as a backdrop for the setting is similar in description to the Slow Zone colonization in Vinge's 1999 novel A Deepness in the Sky.