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Vernor Vinge Biography

Writer / Mathematician

Science fiction author Vernor Vinge has won Hugo awards for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1996) and Rainbows End (2006). A published story writer since the 1960s, Vinge is known in the sci-fi world as the author most closely associated with the theme of "technological singularity." It's the idea that an event or sequence of events (the "singularity") will occur when technology surpasses human intelligence and society ceases to be recognizable to today's humans. Vinge began using the terminology in the 1980s, and in the 1990s went so far as to say he expected such an event to occur between 2005 and 2030. A computer scientist and mathematician, he was a teacher at San Diego State University in California (1972-2000) before becoming a full-time writer of the "hard" science fiction novels that made him famous. He has also won Hugo awards for his novellas "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2002) and "The Cookie Monster" (2003).