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Marooned In RealtimeMarooned in Realtime is a murder mystery and time-travel science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge, about a small group of people who are the only "survivors" of a technological singularity. It is the sequel to The Peace War (and is generally said to be a much better novel). In the story, a device exists which can create a "bobble", a stasis field in which time stands still, allowing one-way instantaneous time travel into the future. These persistent, frictionless, perfectly reflective spheres are also used as weapons, as shields against other weapons, for storage, for space travel (combined with nuclear pulse propulsion), and many other purposes. People who bobble themselves to open up after a certain event in the 23rd century suddenly find the Earth completely empty. All living humans have disappeared, and only those who were inside bobbles during the event survive into the future. It is strongly suggested that this event was a technological singularity, and that the human race has transcended our current existence with exponentially increasing technology. Those who were bobbled soon after the original invention of bobbles have roughly modern technology. Those who were bobbled later in time (closer to the singularity) have vastly superior technology, including cybernetic enhancements, faster and thought-controlled bobblers, personal automaton extensions of self, space ships, medical technology to allow immortality, and individual arsenals comparable to entire countries of the modern day. The protagonist is a detective who was bobbled against his will 1000 years into the future to prevent his testimony in a case, effectively murdering him. As a punishment, the government of his time period bobbles such criminals for the same amount of time as their victims, with a message explaining the crime and allowing the victim to enact his/her own revenge. However, in this unpopulated world, every human is valuable, and the high-techs give the criminals new false identities to protect them from their victims and welcome them into their small society. The group of several hundred people seeks to gather up all the humans left in order to gain enough genetic diversity to create a new civilization and their own singularity. (One of the main characters, a former member of the Peace Authority and high-tech named Della Lu, has existed alone in normal time for 9,000 years, while waiting for others to emerge into realtime from bobbles set to open in millions of years. She has traveled to other star systems and seen the remnants of other civilizations that "transcended" as well, including smaller colonies.) They travel millions of years into the future so that they can recruit colonies of people still inside very long-lived bobbles. Before one of their very long transits, the computers of one of the high-techs, Marta, are hacked, and she is bobbled for significantly less time than everyone else. She is stranded alone in normal time, with no way to bobble herself and catch up with the others; left to die of a natural lifespan on a humanless earth. The low-tech detective is then recruited to find her killer, who must be one of the powerful high-techs. External links
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