Joan Vinge

Jerusha is a police inspector in Tiamat whose primary duty is to protect the Hegemony by ensuring that unauthorized technology is not created. Hegemony is a consortium of planets that connect to their member planets using leftover empire technology. Thanks to small black holes, members of the Hegemony can instantaneously travel to their member planets.

The best place to start is the Snow Queen Cycle series, the earliest of Joan Vinge's multi-book series: it opens with The Snow Queen (1980) and runs to 4 books across 1980–2000, ending with Tangled Up in Blue (2000). Joan Vinge's other series stand alone, so they can be read in any order.

Joan Vinge has 53 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1976 and 2012. 28 of them belong to 4 named series — the largest being the Snow Queen Cycle series with 4 books — and 25 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Joan Vinge's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are Heaven Chronicles (1978–1980, 2 books), Snow Queen Cycle (1980–2000, 4 books) and Cat (1982–1996, 3 books).

This guide splits Joan Vinge's 53 books into 4 named series and 25 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: Snow Queen Cycle (4 books, 1980–2000); Cat (3 books, 1982–1996); Heaven Chronicles (2 books, 1978–1980); Isaac Asimov's Anthology (19 books, 1980–2001).