Literary Devices in Rainbows End
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
We are Living in a Material World (sort of) Physically, most of the story takes place in or around San Diego, especially at the University of California, and most especially at the Geisel Library....
Narrator Point of View
The narrator of Rainbows End is omniscient, but sometimes takes a "limited omniscient" view. That is, the narrator can swoop into any character's mind in a scene or even tell part of the story from...
Genre
Science FictionYes, this is science fiction, although we sometimes wish it were science fact: those sm's would come in super-handy. Rainbows End spends a lot of time on the nifty gadgets and toys o...
Tone
Omniscient NeutralWhether the POV takes that bird's-eye omniscient view or gives us the story filtered through some character's eyes, Vinge gives a pretty neutral account of things. For instance, t...
Writing Style
We say "neutralish" rather than "neutral" for two reasons: (1) it's more fun to say; and (2) sometimes when we see something through a character's POV, we get that character's tone. For instance, w...
What's Up With the Title?
Rainbows End is the name of the retirement community where Lena Gu and Xiu Xiang live. As Robert notices, there's a huge typo in that name. The developers probably meant to call the retirement comm...
What's Up With the Ending?
Most of the epilogue of Rainbows End really feels like a sequence at the end of a movie where we get a line or two about what happened to the characters: Bob and Alice are still in the military, Mi...
Tough-o-Meter
On the sentence level, the book is not that hard: "The door opened. Alice was looking at him, a bit wide-eyed" (16.122). Simple, right? There's a noun, then there's a verb. Sometimes, if you're luc...
Trivia
Everyone loves Rainbows End: Rainbows End isn't just for people who like science fiction (although, yeah, it's totally that, too). Intel's futurist listed six books that he reads to think about tec...
Steaminess Rating
Xiu Xiang makes a reference to Tommie Parker's (swoon!) physicality, but they might be the only people having sex in the future. Alice and Bob are too busy, Lena hates Robert way too much, and Juan...
Allusions
Rabbit drinking tea (1.6) and Red Queen's Race (1.83) are references to Alice in Wonderland (Rudyard) Kipling (7.16) and Ezra Pound (7.18) are dead poetsBollingen and Pulitzer Prizes (8.30) America...