The novel that garnered Vinge his first "Best Novel" Hugo Finalist nomination, back in print after thirteen years. With a combination of hard-SF concepts, tight plotting, and appealing characters, Vinge tells a now-classic story of the Few triumphing over the Many. The Peace Authority, wielding a new state-of-the-art weapon, takes over the world, and claims to be "maintaining the peace" while really controlling the scattered survivors of the new world. The inventor of their weapon, which was never meant to be a weapon at all, leads a resistance of high-tech "tinkers" who fight to defeat the "Peace. "