SOURCE: "Science Fiction Women: Victims, Rebels, Heroes," in Patterns of the Fantastic, edited by Donald M. Hassler, Starmont House, 1983, pp. 11-20.

In the following excerpt, Law determines all Vinge's short fiction to be, in individual ways, love stories.

Joan D. Vinge is another science fiction writer attuned to Existentialism, but her isolated or beleaguered characters. survive what William Barrett calls the modern "encounter with Nothingness" [Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy]. A representative character is Emmylou Stewart in the homiletic story, "View from a Height" Lacking natural immunities essential for life on Earth, Emmylou volunteered for permanent duty as an explorer isolated in an observatory in space. Being "trapped in the arc of blackness . . . meaningless, so insignificant," she falls into depression but recovers and expresses valiant acquiescence: "We're all on a one-way trip into infinity. If we're lucky we're given some life's work we care about, or...