Rainbows End2006
A Novel With One Foot In The Future
by Vernor Vinge
From the back cover:
World famous poet Robert Gu missed twenty years of progress while he nearly died from Alzheimer's. Now, when he awakens in San Diego, in the year 2025, with his mind and health restored, reality's a shock. Books are just about gone. Computers are old news, replaced by "smart" contact lenses that connect him to the Internet via his clothes and wireless nodes just about everywhere. Buildings look low rent -- unless you're wearing. Then, they look like whatever you want. Even he is different. He's seventy-five, but his treatment has made him look almost a teen. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in the new Digital Age.
As Gu tries to catch up with his future, a mysterious stranger draws him and other innocents into a conspiracy that could have disastrous...