Marooned in Realtime is an early book by Vernor Vinge. I personally like it better than his Deepness in the Sky books. It's a straightforward, exciting story with some vast concepts about the possible evolution of the earth over the next 50,000,000 years or so. The plot is simply that people who have traveled into the future (and cannot ever go back, time travel is only forward) suddenly find a future where the human race has vanished leaving no clues. What happened to the human race? If someone destroyed it, are these few survivors next? Plus, in order to make it and to restart civilization, the survivors need more people and that means groups that were bitter enemies in the past have to help each other and work together or all will die. Then suddenly, shockingly one of the leaders is found murdered. Now it's a race against time to find the murderer of the leader, find out what happened to the human race, find out if bitter, angry political groups can work together and the price is the survival of the human race. Ironically, I can argue with the author about some details. How do they start farming without seeds or animals?? Yet, this does not take away from my enjoyment of the book. Also, it's sort of a sequel to an earlier book, The Peace War and it is sometimes sold as Across Real Time which is both novels together. I haven't read The Peace War and I enjoyed. It's a stand alone. I should warn readers. Don't start the last half of the book late at night. The last 150 pages are a can't-put-it-down pageturner!