Rainbows End

Robert Gu made his name as a poet, ranked among the best of his generation, and he was not an easy man to be around. Alzheimer's destroyed his mind; new medicine has restored it. He wakes in San Diego in 2025, and the world has moved on without him.

Nearly everything is networked. Smart contact lenses and clothing lay shared virtual spaces over the physical one, and the skills Robert built his career on are obsolete. He goes to live with his son's household, where two senior US Marine officers are in charge, and is enrolled at Fairmont High to learn how to live in the present.

Robert tries to mend strained family ties and recover his voice as a writer. Meanwhile his granddaughter Miri and a schoolmate are drawn into something much larger than a school assignment.

A disloyal intelligence officer, a mysterious and highly capable intellect that appears to some people as a rabbit, and a new form of mind-control technology all converge on the university library. The people who believe they are running events understand far less than they think.

This near-future novel of ideas takes place in the world of Vernor Vinge's novella Fast Times at Fairmont High, and it took the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2007. Its picture of an augmented-reality society is dense with technical detail, and the plot is twisty enough that some readers find it convoluted.