A Deepness in the Sky

“So high, so low, so many things to know.”In a “A Deepness in the Sky” by Vernor Vinge “A Fire Upon The Deep” and “A Deepness in the Sky” are very similar: a beautiful comparative analysis study could be written about them. It would be worth reading “A Deepness in the Sky” if you insert at least one other book between the two novels, then perhaps the repetition is not so boring. What bothered me the most is that the evil character, Tomas Nau, looks a lot like Lord Steel from “A Fire Upon The Deep”. Sanos was only one of the brilliantly created evil character types in Talon, and it made it to both novels which was unfortunate.SF nowadays reveals an extensive problem in the genre and the people defining the genre. Many of these people suffer from the Dragon Ball Z problem of continuous one-upsmanship. The impulse is to continue pushing the slider further and further into the extreme to define new territory and they rarely seem to ask whether there isn't an intriguing new way of looking at it which doesn't require pushing the utter furthest extent in order to out-do the previous effort. Of course they're lobbing around gods; there's no place else to go in that direction and none of them have really seen a fresh way to tackle it yet. I think there are some other answers that still need exploring. Some of Vinge, Brin and Reynolds' best works are confined to remarkably low tech or fairly confined, non-cosmic locales. Vinge's “Zones of Thought” story was all in the low-tech extent, despite that burp in the middle where the zones shift —a phenomenon that failed to impact the story, infuriatingly— and "Deepness in the Sky" was also all slow zone and confined to one world. Maybe a part of the problem is the preconception about what it should be, and trying to measure against that. I suppose people like Asimov and Clarke had the benefit that they were early in the field and not competing with a world that already remembers their work, forcing them to try to out-do it.Vinge’s language is not simple due to the many peculiar expressions and abstract ideas, and the deciphering is not always there, but it seems that Vinge intended things to be thought-provoking. The plot is twisty and fascinating enough but several times I felt that I had lost the thread (or the desire, momentum), but then in these parts I finally found something that kept the interest going, and even later, things became more significant in the light of the overall picture.

Perhaps Vinge's best novel.

I find it was better than the first Zone novel.

I really want to rate this 5 stars. As it is my rating should be 4.5.

What made this book special for me was that I had no idea where the story was going. I read a lot and I often find that after reading 20-25% of a book I have a basic idea about the general outline of the story. This often makes reading a bit boring. But with this book I had no idea, mainly because there were so many options. There were some brilliant twists and a tiny remark at the end which cleared up what was a rather big question for me.

So why isn't this a 5 star rating? I think the ending was a bit too pat, and a couple of what should have been major issues were not addressed. But overall this is a rather minor problem. Definitely one of the best sf books I have read.

DNF at page 122.A prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep set some 30,000 years prior, this is a work of hard scifi with a strong military feel as two human civilizations come into conflict over a planet which home to a sentient alien species. Unlike the first book, which greatly intrigued me with the culture of the pack-minded Tines, this one presents aliens that are essentially quite human but with a lot more arms. Furthermore, the pace dragged to the point of tedium and presenting all times in seconds was disruptive to the reading experience.

For eight-thousand years humanity has been spreading out into space. Thanks to cold-sleep and interstellar ramjets, humans have colonized planets and founded new civilizations. Unfortunately, like their predecessors on Old Earth in the Dawn Age, these civilizations fall into decay, often ending in the near annihilation of life on their planets. Then slowly, the cycle repeats itself. Pham Nuwen, one of the founders of the Qeng Ho traders, has a dream. Can the Qeng Ho become more that interstellar merchants? Can they save humanity from itself by intervening before a nuclear apocalypse ravages a planet or a solar system? One-hundred-sixty years after their fleet departs, the Queng Ho arrive in the system of the mysterious OnOff star and its sole planet Arachna. They discover an emerging technological civilization of spider-like creatures. The spiders are only the third intelligent alien species that humans have encountered. But the Queng Ho aren’t the only humans there. Another fleet, the Emergents, have also arrived. Unlike the Queng Ho, the Emergents aren’t interested in trade. They’re interested in conquest and pillage. For the most part, their technology is less sophisticated than that of the Queng Ho, except in one critical area. The Emergents have a way to condition the minds of their slaves, making them useful tools. Vinge has created an exciting space opera filled with memorable characters, both human and arachnid, with realistic heroes and villains in each species. Decades of espionage, subterfuge and tense action are played out against a backdrop of deep space as the author explores the social conflicts that arise from commerce, conquest, individual liberty, authoritarianism, and the desire to dominate and control the actions of others individually and collectively using computer technology.

Its been awhile since I read straight science fiction- and this book is a sequel to "A Fire Upon the Deep", which I enjoyed. It's more of a prequel, than a sequel, set hundreds or thousands years in the past (its been awhile since I read the first book). And the story is good, really really good. The comparison between the trade society Queng Ho, and the Emergents, a totalitarian society bent on domination. The premise of the odd world On/Off, and the strange spider-like creatures who live there is very well done. I appreciate an author who knows where his boundary is. I suspect the character of Pham Trinli is based on the author. This character is old, and grew up in a very patriarchal society. Pham knows that his values are long passed, but also out of date and has trouble reconciliating them. As for the Spider Society, by setting the society on a star that goes "dead" for 30 years bringing the entire world to go into hibernation is a bit of brilliance for the book - this means that the individual spiders have similar lifespans of the humans - that humans are on shift for a bit of time, than go into cold sleep while off shift. The author writes about the Spiders as people. Description are very minor, until the very end, when humans and Spiders meet for the first time. This allowed readers to see the Spiders as people, rather than insects. Its a neat writing tool, and worked effectively for this book.As for the writing, the book manages to hit the sweet spot of technologically interesting, with interesting flawed characters. The end of the book came from left field, but, was hinted at throughout the story, if a reader could read between the lines.

A Deepness in the Sky paints a picture of a humanity that has evolved into an interstellar trading culture. Because of lengths of time it takes to travel between systems at sublight speeds, these Qeng Ho traders rely on building up the technology level of client worlds so that they can refuel and trade. This book relates the story of one such encounter, but this time with the first ever alien culture encountered by humans. This is complicated when the Qeng Ho arrive at the same time as another human culture, the authoritarian Emergents, who ambush and subjugate the Qeng Ho despite the traders' attempts to cooperate. The story weaves back and forth between the various human groups, particularly Qeng Ho traders who cooperate with or try to undermine their Emergent masters, and the alien Spiders whose 1950's-like culture is undergoing their own scientific revolution amidst a tense political atmosphere. The humans know that failure to work with the Spiders means they will never escape the system, but cooperating with the Emergents may have even worse consequences. This book was fantastic--it had many layers of politics and intrigue along with compelling and believable characters, all set within an fascinating thought experiment of a setting.

was pretty good

Great story-line, wonderful characterization, enormous scope, satisfaction for the techno-philes, nearly brilliant. Just a tad too long. It's hard to argue that some of the background was extraneous, and it didn't feel like padding, but it did slow the pace (and my page-turning rate!). However for a space opera, hard to fault!

A great book. To begin with, it has a fantastic plot in which two different human cultures, the largely sympathic traders Qeng Ho and the at least governmentwise unsympathetic authoritarian Emergents, are on their way to a planet with newly discovered alien life. The inhabitants of the planet have the forms of spiders, but are in other aspects very much like humans on Earth in the 20th century, when atomic energy, space flight, video imaging and other technologies were on the verge of being invented. This provides the ground for topics like governance, research and the benefits of public knowledge, drugs, slavery, free markets, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, all amidst a curious mix of new technology like localizers, focus, and mindscrub and the more known ones emerging among the spiders. Recommended.

My reaction to reading this novel in 2000. Spoilers follow.The only possible aesthetic objection, on a science fictional level, to this novel is that its aliens, the so-called Spiders, are not all that alien apart from hibernating in the centuries when their sun powers down, seeing across a spectrum wider than human eyes do (which complicates and inhibits the development of their version of tv), being seemingly smarter than humans, and, of course, their appearance. While Vinge creates some captivating alien characters in Sherkaner Underhill, Victory Smith, their children and Hrunkner, they are not as strange as the Tines in his A Fire Upon the Deep to which this is a prequel (his “The Blabber” also belongs to the series). In every other respect – speculation and literary craftsmanship – this novel succeeds very well. Vinge introduced the idea of the Singularity in his Marooned in Realtime, and it was taken up by other sf writers as well as futurists. The notion here that seems to be new is, perhaps, not as startling but perhaps more probable: the idea of a Programmer-Archaeologist. Humans, particularly the Qeng Ho, use computer systems, programs, and languages that have accreted for centuries. Some programs date back to before humanity’s venturing into space. Programmer-Archaeologists are just an extreme example of some of the tasks of modern programmers who try to determine exactly what a program can do, not do, and possibilities for modifications. This is quite a political novel, specifically a novel with libertarian/tragic conservatism themes. This is not surprising from Vinge. His “Conquest By Default” examined anarchism, and his The Peace War examined an authoritarian state created by intellectuals (specifically scientists) who think they are fit and capable to rule the world. Here the Qeng Ho represent a civilizing (particularly after Pham Nuwen starts the Qeng Ho interstellar net broadcasts which preserve technical knowledge so planetary societies can rebuild themselves after their inevitable collapses – collapses usually prefigured by authoritarian and totalitarian states) force, civilizing and helping humanity via trade. The Accord society of the Spiders is also rather libertarian – a society which can vote to temporarily grant their constitutional monarch emergency powers. The villains of the story are the Emergents, a group that derives their name not from some notion of future transcendence or evolution but to that old incubator of tyrants, the Emergency. Russian history, as in A Fire Upon the Deep, seems to have provided some inspiration here. (That novel, the sequel to this one, featured a Tine called Steel who in both name and behavior is reminiscent of the Man of Steel, Stalin.) Thomas Nau, in his acceptance of Qeng Ho free market activity and private trade (as opposed to community property) is a bit like Gorbachev – both believe in the validity and workability of the authoritative system they’ve inherited and think a few minor reforms will make the system more efficient without threatening their authority. The Emergents have a powerful tool in Focus, a guided infection by a bacteria that boosts production of specified neurotransmitters in specific regions of the brain. Emergent propaganda (like the Soviet state, the Emergents rule by a combination of terror and propaganda) argues that this is just an institutionalization of the often obsessive individual behavior that advances art and science. Here the obsession is done for the good of the community and to a specified end. Vinge explores how Focus would work in practice – Focused ignore personal hygiene, develop idiosyncratic jargon with Focused working in the same area, and the drifting of attention to odd, obsessive ends. Focus brings human flexibility to largely automated research and administrative systems. Besides libertarian notions, the novel evokes a sense of tragedy important to modern conservatism. Vinge expresses a technological version of the concept of inherent limits in man’s existence: the Era of Failed Dreams (specifically general nanotechnology assembler, artificial intelligence, and immortality) that centuries of human science and technology have not achieved. (Of course, Vinge has it both ways here. Arachnea, the Spider World, has mysterious origins and remnants of alien anti-gravity technology. This sets the stage for A Fire Upon the Deep and “The Blabber” which feature some of these technologies, made possible by Man’s escape from the Slow Zone which renders them impossible. Presumably Pham Nuwen ventures beyond the Slow Zone since he’s a character in A Fire Upon the Deep. More important to the concept of inherent limits is the changes in the political dreams of Pham Nuwen. He dreams of breaking the wheel of planetary civilizations (needed by spacefaring cultures) rising and falling. Even Earth has been repopulated at least twice. Old rescuer/tutor/partner Sura says his dream of sustaining planetary civilizations, protecting them from collapse via trade, intervention, and broadcasts of Qeng Ho library material is unworkable and she sabotages it. Pham Nuwen, a disguised member of the expedition to the on/off star, thinks he can use Focus to build his stellar empire that will preserve civilization. He may well be right, but he ultimately swears off its use and is unwilling to condemn a few to a slavery of mind control in the hopes of saving millions.Vinge writes a gripping story. Everybody is smart so obvious plots and ploys aren’t enough, plans are seldom secure or unanticipated (except for the big revelation that Sherkaner Underhill has suborned the Focused translators), the implications of ideas are seen by all. His characters are all interesting; the aliens are intriguing as are Ezr Vinh, Anne Reynolt (a rare Focused individual who can deal with people and manage fellow Focused, she turns out to have a surprising history as a tough opponent of the Emergents before Focused). It is her plight that causes Pham Nuwen, about to kill her, to swear off the use of Focus. Qiwi Lin Lisolet reminds Pham Nuwen of himself as a youngster. At first, the novel seemed to be about Ezr Vinh and his love for Trixia Bonsol – and his history is important. But the novel really centers on Pham Nuwen, his life, and his changing vision. He is the most interesting character by far – in no small part because he combines two of my favorite character types: the man who pretends to be a fool but is far from it and the double agent. He also represents another variation on some previous Vinge character types. Like Tatja Grimm from Vinge’s “The Barbarian Princess” and Grimm’s World, he comes from a primitive, barbaric environment and, through curiosity and prodigious intellect, he builds a technologically sophisticated empire. His treachery against his Emergent captors also reminded me of the vengeful dwarf of Vinge’s “The Whirligig of Time”. Vinge skillfully unveils the details of Pham Nuwen’s life slowly, changing our views of him. At first, we see an old, bitter man in hiding on a planet and found by a centuries’ old covert search. We do not know he’s Pham Nuwen. When the Emergents betray the expedition, we know he is a clever armsmaster skeptical of the Emergents and who escapes their ambush to almost defeat them before entering their captivity. They do not know he fought them. We don’t know he’s Pham Nuwen. We only know Pham Nuwen as a legendary Qeng Ho, indeed, as their founder. Thomas Nau worships him as an empire builder he hopes to emulate and surpass. Eventually, Pham Trinli, boastful, slightly incompetent armsmaster, is revealed to us and, later, to Ezr Vinh, as the legendary Pham Nuwen, once thought dead but very much alive. We learn of his early lifeas he was sold into slavery at a young age, how a starship captain named Sura took pity on him, how he soaked up the high tech knowledge of the Qeng Ho and became Sura’s lover and how the two invented the trading culture of the Qeng Ho. But, whereas Sura sees only improved trade, Pham Nuwen thinks he can build an empire in space, break the wheel of planetary civilizations’ rise and fall. Sura is unwilling to devote the resources to what she views as an impractical goal and tricks Nuwen. He sees only stark betrayal though she allows him to save face and take an exploratory fleet of ships. Nuwen not only works for years undercover (eventually with Ezr Vinh, possibly a descendent of his – cryonic sleep means lives lived across centuries) to defeat the Emergent. But we learn that Pham Nuwen and Thomas Nau are alike in wanting to build an empire though the former’s goals are more virtuous since he wants to end the slavery and death and misery when planetary civilizations decay). Ezr Vinh is disturbed to learn that Pham Nuwen is willing to use the abhorrent tool of Focus, to which Ezr loses his love Trixia for good, to retrieve his dream. Eventually, though, he bows to Vinh’s stubborn morality. Vinge ends the novel with several open threads for farther stories though I doubt we’ll get them given Vinge’s low level of production and that Pham Nuwen’s story is partly taken up again in A Fire Upon the Deep. Specifically, here we have Reynolt and Nuwen’s upcoming war against the Emergent civilization and the mysteries of Aracha’s existence and fossil technologies.

Most of this story didn't grab me -- it's well written, but this long after reading it I remember almost nothing about the plot and very few of the details.......except the aliens. The spider aliens are brilliant. Vinge knows how to write non-human characters that are different yet comprehensible. I'd have been happy to read a whole book of just the spiders, with maybe the brief view of them from human eyes so we can see how alien they really are.

Wonderful! A real page turner. No blurb would to it full credit, suffice it to say that it features everything you can hope for in a space opera

I loved this and was up all night finishing it. That's rather rare with science fiction, at least hard science fiction. Few science fiction writers--hell, few writers--have Vinge's sense of pacing and ability to create suspense. That's because you care about his characters intensely, human as well as alien. Not something you find enough in Hard Science Fiction--and Vinge brings off some mind-blowing concepts without ever falling into infodump or other awkward constructions. I thought I had read this novel before--I know it had been sitting on my shelves for years, even somehow had a rating, but I couldn't remember anything about it--for good reason--I'm sure I hadn't read this before--I would have remembered.This is a prequel to the first book of the Zones of Thought trilogy, but not only can this stand alone, I think it might be best to read it first. It involves the most memorable and vibrant of the human characters, Pham Nuwen and his time among the trading fleet, the Qeng Ho. It's notable though that in A Fire Upon the Deep, what got mentioned in my review and made the greatest impression were the alien characters, the dog-like Tines. This book also features aliens--a Spider-like race. Like the Tines they are memorable and striking both as a species and in their individuals. I found the Tines a bit more endearing--but not by much. But in this book I found the human characters as strong or stronger than the aliens. Part of that is Pham Nuwen, who is central here. But the dystopia here--and Fire has one too--is a human one. The "Focus" is one of the most chilling forms of slavery I've seen in fiction--one where with your mind enslaved, your body follows. So the story of the "Emergents" versus the Qeng Ho was every bit as interesting as what was happening on Arachna. Vinge shifts between points of view and that in itself ups the tension--I was never impatient to get past a section, but at the same time I'd be left worried about what was "happening" to others while our attention was elsewhere. The next and last of the trilogy was published only about two years ago and is a direct sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep and starts two years after the close of events there. I'm sorry to say goodbye to Pham Nuwen and the other characters of A Deepness in the Sky, but I'm already excited at the thought I'll soon be back with my old friends among the Tines.

I've read it at least three times, with varying experiences.

I think the first time I wanted more of ADOtD and didn't quite get it, but did get lots of other great stuff (particularly programmer-archaeologists who still knew about the unix epoch), and just want along for the thrill ride.

Second time I was focused on the Focused, and got a bit blindsided at the ending.

Third time, I read it quite slow and found a lot of things I'd not found before, including the exquisite way the last quarter was put together.

A true visionary author. He manages to be a great talespinner, too, this volume being perhaps the best example of that within his oeuvre.

I have a poor memory. Recently, I was asked the simple question, “What’s your favorite book?” and I said what I’d been saying for years, “Vernor Vinge wrote it. I can’t remember the name—A Darkness in the Deep or A Deepness in the Dark—something like that. It’s awesome; the ending had me jumping around, I was so excited at how clever it was.” When I realized I couldn’t even remember what had me so excited, I decided to reread it. I’m glad I did.Plot and title were not the only things I’d forgotten about the Hugo award-winning ‘A Deepness in the Sky.’ Maybe it was because I was young when I first took this tome on, with time on my hands to spend entire afternoons absorbed in a story, but dang! Deepness is LONG. It took me forever to read it this time, squeezing in a chapter between meetings and appointments here, a few pages between chores and obligations there. This is not to imply that reading Deepness again was in any way a chore or obligation—on the contrary, the book is every bit as good as what I recalled of it.Refreshing my memory only served to reinforce this novel’s place at the top of my favorites list. There’s no way this review can do it justice, so before I try to explain exactly what’s so great about it, please just take my word for it. Even if you’re not a science fiction fan, it’s simply the best.First of all, Vinge’s intellectual brilliance (he’s a retired computer scientist and Professor of Mathematics) shines through in his work. Not just in his exceptional concepts, but in his ability to filter those concepts through effective word usage, sentence structure, plot and characterization. In other words, he’s a scientist who also happens to be a great writer. He’s got a unique vision of what civilization might be like thousands of years in the future, and the technical skills to put that vision on paper in a highly effective manner.(Plot summary/Spoiler Alert!)The Qeng Ho (pronounced Cheng Ho) are the future. Star faring humans, a huge family of traders with ships spread out over known space. In all the thousands of years of exploration, there’s only been one other intelligent race found, until now. Whoever makes first contact will secure great fame and fortune. One Qeng Ho fleet is speeding through space, but hot on their heels are the Emergents, a civilization that has recently ‘emerged’ from a heinous civil war.In the On/Off solar system, the planet Arachna’s sun phases between light and dark. During its dark phase, the planet’s inhabitants burrow deep underground, where they go into a natural frozen hibernation as the atmosphere of the planet dissipates. The dominant species is a spider-like race with technology similar to that of mid-twentieth century earth.The Qeng Ho and Emergents arrive at the solar system at nearly the same time. They form an uneasy alliance that is soon destroyed when the Emergents attack. Tomas Nau, the Emergent ‘Podmaster,’ is surprised at the Qeng Ho’s resilience. Even as the Emergents’ horrible biological weapon, a ‘mindrot’ virus, is unleashed, the Qeng Ho manage to fight back. The result is that both fleets are nearly decimated. The remaining Qeng Ho are enslaved, and those whose immune systems were unable to fight off the mindrot virus are subject to ‘focus,’ a deliberate manipulation by Emergent technicians of the virus in their brains that causes them to focus only on one area of specialization. These unfortunate ‘zipheads’ can now hardly even care for themselves; they are only concerned with whatever they’ve been focused on.Nau must play a dangerous game of keeping the Qeng Ho sublimated through pervasive ziphead-enhanced surveillance as they wait for Arachna’s star to relight. The one attempt at rebellion is quashed quickly and brutally, further subjugating the remaining unfocused Qeng Ho population.All this sounds very science-fiction-y, doesn’t it? And I promised you’d like it even if you don’t like sci-fi.Well, there’s more to the story to than the background (and there’s significantly more to the background than I describe here). That’s what’s so great about this novel. The unique stage Vinge sets allows him to write about human behavior under extreme circumstances. And it’s the multi-dimensional characters that really set this story apart. We care about these people—even the ones who aren’t ‘people.’Vinge uses multiple points of view, including that of the ‘spiders’ themselves before they enter the long ‘deep,’ and again when the sun relights and they emerge. We see through the eyes of one family, whose patriarch is a progressive-minded genius named Hrunkner and whose matriarch is a respected general in the King’s army named Victory. Even though Vinge’s vivid description reminds us often that these creatures are very different physically from us, he rounds them out with familiar emotions. We peek in at their lives as they attempt to change their world through technology and logic aimed at converting the culturally ignorant majority. This world mirrors old earth (us, sixty or so years ago), politically. As nuclear power becomes a reality, the major countries arm themselves with nervous pointed ‘hands’ poised above the red button.This is what Tomas Nau is counting on. His zipheads are in incognito communication with the spiders, feeding them information that both propels them forward technologically and keeps the various countries at legs-length. Meanwhile, the true hero of the story (well, okay, there are several heroes, but this one is the *main* one), an old Qeng Ho man named Pham Trinli, has figured out an ingenious way to infiltrate Nau’s near-impenetrable surveillance system. We learn a lot about Pham in back-story that’s woven in almost seamlessly. Pham is not the swaggering blow-hard everyone thinks he is.Life in space under Nau’s thumb has been hard for the Qeng Ho. Entertainment is at a premium, and every week they gather to hear the ziphead’s interpret a spider radio program for children, produced by Hrunkner and Victory and acted by their children. The Qeng Ho, and even some of the Emergents, grow very fond of the beings on the planet they are spying on. They lurk in space, waiting for the spider’s technology to reach a point where it will be profitable to make first contact.I don’t want to give any more away.Even if you don’t take my word for it that this book is more than read-worthy, maybe those silver rocket ships on Vinge’s mantel (his Hugos) might sway you. He’s got, I think, four or five of them…(Review originally posted to Booksquawk)

I loved this book, but not quite as much as A Fire Upon the Deep. Never-the-less, it was very entertaining and fun to read. The alien spiders were fascinating, as was the storyline with Pham. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. I haven't read a lot of modern sci-fi but i'm starting to get more into it, especially after reading this. Very interesting and exciting new ideas. Very cool.

This book is reallllllllly long. I think I really would have loved it if it was about half as long.The point of view of the spiders is kinda lame at times. While the luddite spiders were kind of an interesting dynamic, I didn't really love reading about them quite that much. I also go over the spider babies really quickly. The author does dive a bit into speculative software design of the future, which you might expect from a Computer Science professor. I thought it was pretty cool, thankfully not at all like [author:Stephenson]'s frequent outbursts, but i expect some people who don't design software for a living might not 'get it' as much.I probably should have read fire in the deep first, I think thats his first book and people have told me that one is better.

This is an epic science fiction novel, both in length and quality. Almost as good as A Fire Upon the Deep, this is really an excellent exploration of an alien culture, mixed in with the familiar universe of the other novel. This is long, but well worth reading.

Great science fiction.

This is a fantastic book - the Spiders are truly weird creatures though initially filtered through the perceptions of the humans watching their civilisation from deep space. Vinge has managed to make the humans almost as weird as the Spiders, though, and in the Emergants, he's created one of the few groups of people that have really scared me.

Vernor Vinge is a master at weaving complex plots and innovative concepts.

Couldn't finish this one. I was a hundred pages from the end and just couldn't do it anymore. Just like Fire Upon the Deep (which I loved), it started out incomprehensible and then slowly came to make sense to me. But I didn't find the story or setting compelling and it felt like nothing was going on most of the time.

I found A Deepness in the Sky to be slow going at first, and I had a hard time finding much sympathy for any of the human characters. But, I stuck with it and by the end had come around to thinking it is one of the great recent science fiction novels. The Emergents are truly creepy and despicable bad guys; Vinge does an effective job of gradually revealing more and more reasons to hate them. I felt ambivalent about the other human faction in the book, the Qeng Ho, who had both good points and bad points; it was only as I understood the depravity of the Emergents that I started really rooting for other side. The alien "Spiders" are the best thing about the book. For me, Sherkaner Underhill and his family were the true protagonists of the story, and very easy to root for. He is a brilliant alien scientist who has yet to discover much of what the secretly-orbiting-and-spying-down-on-them humans already know. His entire family plays a critical role in the political and military maneuverings on-planet and in the ultimate system-wide resolution when the humans finally act. The pace eventually picks up and builds to an exciting climax and satisfying conclusion with plenty of surprises. It's only very loosely associated with A Fire Upon the Deep; I wouldn't really call it part of a series.

Nearly as good as A Fire Upon the Deep, this one deals with interesting aliens and even more interesting disease.

Huge universe and timescale. Enjoyable, but darker than I thought from the first few chapters (i.e. Qiwi Lisolet and the Brughel character). Not as innovative (IMHO) as Fire Upon the Deep. I'll probably read more Vinge, though!

This review may contain what some consider spoilers. A Deepness in the Sky is, at its core, a predictable book with very few fresh ideas. I am quite surprised by the amount of favorable reviews, and I would imagine that this book might be much more favorable by those that have not read a lot of science-fiction. It is my opinion that Vinge recreated 600 pages of Human history with the introduction of advanced technology. The Qeng Ho are very reminiscent of Europe's early colonial traders (in ideals and their wish to expand their empire). My opinion is that the author did not produce a world of beings that would undoubtedly be very different than the world we see in, for example, Star Trek and Star Wars. The descendants of Earth simply aren't alien enough for the time period of the setting.During the author's introduction of the Qeng Ho and the Emergents (Humans), their history and the technology was somewhat interesting as it unfolded, but the author introduced very few fresh ideas about the possible Human condition in the far future and their technological advancements. For example, the method of star travel is what one might expect-- near light travel with very large ships; the ships' inhabitants are "frozen" on shifts due to the vastness between stars; Humans have returned to a form of slavery, albeit through technological, more direct means by altering the brain of their subjects; and the building of artificial environments in space was written in. Each of these, and others, once arrived, brought the question to mind, "How will Vinge handle this as other authors have in other science-fiction books?" The author should have asked this of himself, and steered away from those frequently used expectations.Vinge focused heavily on each character, but his descriptions were somewhat rambling. It is as if he spent most of the time on the relationships between characters, but left the meat of the excitement just outside of the frame. Character building is important, but I felt Vinge used too many words to spell out what the reader should already know about these characters by what had been written before. Less is definitely more when it comes to this story; nothing at all was left to the imagination. Key happenings are foretold, almost in passing, and the foretold events come and go without much narrative. For instance, only a couple of pages actually describe the invasion of the alien world. 400 pages build and build and build to first contact, and when we arrive to that point in the book, it goes off with a fizzle of excitement and still high expectations of revelations of something unexpected or new. Vinge didn't provide that sort of experience. In the end, the aliens were imagined as something alien but familiar: insects with technology and thought far too much like our own to be alien. The idea that the products of such an alien world could be anything remotely like us is, frankly, absurd. The result of this book is surprising considering that Vinge has been vocal about a possible technological singularity. This book could have been so, so much more.