The Peace War (Vinge, Vernor) 1984

One of the pleasures of reading books 24 years after they were published is coming across references to "Lucas' Lord of the Rings" films and being thoroughly confused for a second before remembering that the book was written post-Return of the Jedi and pre-Howard the Duck (though Willow might be a fairer insertion here). Speaking of which, why the heck hasn't the Peace War been made into a movie? The book is well-paced with cool gadgets and begs for creative visuals and special effects and has a fair amount of action, and wouldn't really suffer in translation.

At any rate, here's my primary gripe: For reference, page 180 of the December 2003 printing says: '

"Everything seems consistent. There are a lot of things that were barred under you old theory, that are still impossible: It's still impossible to burst a bobble before its time. It's impossible to generate a bobble around an existing one..."

and then

Simply carrying a small bobble was a kind of defense against bobble attack--a very risky defense, once noticed: It would force the attacker to project smaller bobbles, or off-center ones, trying to find a volume that wasn't "banned."

All right, bobbles can't be created around other bobbles. So why wouldn't the Peace Authority simply create a small bobble underground next to their own bobble generator? Boom, now their generator is much more secure against enemy bobbles ("trying to find a volume that wasn't banned" would be too time and energy expensive for any Tinkers trying to embobble the PA generator in the middle of combat) and most of their fretting goes away. This was my first thought as soon as I read that first passage. Isn't this the sort of thought Della Lu would have while scanning the land for firing lanes in her interview with Avery?