Vernor Vinge is a retired professor of mathematics, a computer scientist, and a science fiction author. He is best known for his award-winning books A Fire Upon the Deep, Rainbows End, and The Cookie Monster. He is also noted for his prescient essay, "The Coming Technological Singularity," which argues that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the point at which "the human era will be ended," and there are no current models of reality that can predict the future beyond that point.
