Marooned in Realtime is the sequel to Vernor Vinge's 1984 novel The Peace War, a finalist for the 1985 Prometheus Award and a beautifully crafted book. To recapitulate, scientists at Lawrence Livermore invent the “bobbler,” a device that creates a perfectly spherical, mirrored artifact—a bobble. Bobbles can instantly surround a weapon, a munitions factory, a capitol building. They are impervious—even to heat or nuclear explosion. When the first one pops, it is discovered that bobbles are also a sort of one-way time machine. Everything inside, including human beings, is kept in perfect stasis as long as the bobble is intact.

In the name of world security, a group calling itself the Peace Authority bobbles anything that might be used to make a weapon and takes control of most of the world. Out of necessity, an illicit sub-culture creates a technological and pharmaceutical underground that finally overthrows what has become a very regressive regime.

As fascinating as The Peace War was, it contained one monumental disappointment. Having overthrown the Peacers, several leading characters discuss the kind of government they hope to institute and they express wistful fondness for that of the present-day United States. I, for one, certainly expected better of them.

Marooned has no flaws of this kind—perhaps either Vinge or his characters have learned to hope for more. At one point, in fact, Marooned hero Wil Brierson asks himself, “Could there really be a situation so weird that he would advocate government? like a Victorian pushing sodomy.” And at the end of the book's 21st century, New Mexico, the last remaining government, finds that it cannot compete with the very “ungoverned lands” except as a sort of amusement park. Tourists come to pay taxes, vote, and observe a real Congress—as we, in a museum, might look upon the cramped interior of a covered wagon with mixed interest and amazement. (“For the best idea in a science fiction novel the award goes to…”) Being so unnecessary makes the president of New Mexico feel a little too much like Rodney Dangerfield. So he and a bunch of his followers bobble themselves 500 years into the future where they find … no one. But more about that later.

Marooned is fascinating because it can be looked at on three levels. The first is as a rather well-done science-fiction detective story that is summarized neatly on the dust-jacket. Everyone who is still bobbled while the rest of the human race disappears, eventually rendezvous 50 million years into the future to establish a viable colony and save the human species. One of their number kills a charismatic and very valuable leader, and detective Brierson must try to find the killer.

On a second level is a deeper and more complex problem. Can 500 of Earth's most troublesome species put aside their power lusts long enough to build a technologically functional, genetically viable, and coercion-free society?

On a third and most interesting level—and this is what got Vinge to write the book in the first place—What did happen to the rest of humanity in the mid- 23rd century? Vinge (and many scientists) postulate an increasing rate of technological growth and discovery, and this in our lifetimes. What happens to humanity, Vinge asks, after several centuries of exponential growth? (He, and we, must assume we won't blow ourselves up first and that we learn to stabilize our population, control disease, and limit pollution.)

In his afterword, Vinge predicts a singularity, some change or metamorphosis in the human animal that we can't foresee but may live through. Vinge wonders whether the metamorphosis might already have happened to extraterrestrial species, and is that why we hear no signs of intelligent life in the universe. I wonder if we'll live long enough, and well enough, to find out.