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A Fire Upon The Deep
By Vernor Vinge
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Start ReadingDescription
Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works.
A Hugo Award-winning Novel!
“Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin
Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.
Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle.
Tor books by Vernor Vinge
Zones of Thought Series
A Fire Upon The Deep
A Deepness In The Sky
The Children of The Sky
Realtime/Bobble Series
The Peace War
Marooned in Realtime
Other Novels
The Witling
Tatja Grimm's World
Rainbows End
Collections
Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
True Names
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Book Actions
Start ReadingBook Information
A Fire Upon The Deep
By Vernor Vinge
Description
Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works.
A Hugo Award-winning Novel!
“Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin
Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.
Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle.
Tor books by Vernor Vinge
Zones of Thought Series
A Fire Upon The Deep
A Deepness In The Sky
The Children of The Sky
Realtime/Bobble Series
The Peace War
Marooned in Realtime
Other Novels
The Witling
Tatja Grimm's World
Rainbows End
Collections
Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
True Names
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
About the author
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Reviews
There are ideas in here that I am still thinking about. The gift that keeps on giving.
Rating: 5A Fire Upon the Deep paints a picture of a galaxy full of many different civilizations, each of which are interacting and evolving. The interesting thing here is that these civilizations are stratified based on how far they are from the center of the galaxy, and for some reason technology works better the further you get from the center. The story tells of a "transcendent" power coming in from beyond the edge of the galaxy and enslaving large swaths of it (including many human worlds). While we never see this first-hand, we are involved in the quest, centered around a few humans, to travel to the inner galaxy to find some artifact that would stop this power. At the same time, we learn the story of an medieval alien civilization where a human ship containing this artifact has crashed, leaving only a couple of children. The children are manipulated by the aliens who desire their technology. These two plotlines start out wholly unrelated, but as the questing humans approach and start communicating with the lost children, they become more enmeshed. The best part of this book is definitely the worldbuilding, as Vinge puts forth a universe that's both fascinating and mysterious. And while I was first disappointed to spend so much time around medieval aliens, it turned out that they were strange enough that they quickly became very interesting. The ending was a little weird, as while the protagonists got their way, the end result was like fixing a catastrophe with another catastrophe. On the whole though, I very much enjoyed this one.
Rating: 4Gave up really - tried reading, audio.... no time for "Eh" books.
Why did this get lauds?
Rating: 2Why did this get lauds?
Amazing book ...
Rating: 5This book may be the perfect Space Opera. There's epic space battles, there's romance, there's a very cool doomsday scenario, there are neat and creative aliens. There's everything a SF fan could possibly want, but for some reason I was disappointed at the end of this book. I still can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's that I didn't really like any of the characters, or it could be that I found the plot to be surprisingly predictable. I liked the fact that the main character's a librarian. And I also liked the Tines a lot.
Rating: 4I think that I should read this book again, I could have simply been in a bad mood while I was reading it.
4 stars, not 3 because I think it could be a 5 next time around.
Excellent, just excellent. Amazing breadth, great characterization, novel premise, enjoyable to read. What more can you ask for?
Rating: 5I liked the big idea of the galaxy having spatial zones of different cosmic properties. In essence, it allowed for societies and life-forms of vastly differing levels of advancement to coexist in the same galaxy. I was also amused because Vinge did not try to explain the physics behind the zones but only explored their implications.
The world was interesting and I enjoyed even some details. The plot was good, I was even surprised and felt tension in a few occasions.
Two things which I very much did not like in the book: characters and writing style. The characters appeared shallow and childish. Sometimes (or often) their reactions or thoughts felt forced. Shallowness and low credibility applied to the groups and societies, too, maybe even more. You could suppose that when a whole advanced civilization chooses to speak as a whole to the rest of the galaxy, they most probably would use a good range of intellectual resources when gathering information, trying to make sense of it, and in the end, choosing what to publish and why. Not in this book.
Writing was just terrible: the author used excessive punctuation in place of words to form thoughts. The most annoying device, or easiest to recall, were the lists of single word questions, which elaborated on the meaning of previous sentence or word, for example. In fact, often the language in the book resembled somewhat a slide show presentation. Not my favorite.
The book as a whole was interesting enough that I wanted to continue reading it, but far from being good literature.
Rating: 2The world was interesting and I enjoyed even some details. The plot was good, I was even surprised and felt tension in a few occasions.
Two things which I very much did not like in the book: characters and writing style. The characters appeared shallow and childish. Sometimes (or often) their reactions or thoughts felt forced. Shallowness and low credibility applied to the groups and societies, too, maybe even more. You could suppose that when a whole advanced civilization chooses to speak as a whole to the rest of the galaxy, they most probably would use a good range of intellectual resources when gathering information, trying to make sense of it, and in the end, choosing what to publish and why. Not in this book.
Writing was just terrible: the author used excessive punctuation in place of words to form thoughts. The most annoying device, or easiest to recall, were the lists of single word questions, which elaborated on the meaning of previous sentence or word, for example. In fact, often the language in the book resembled somewhat a slide show presentation. Not my favorite.
The book as a whole was interesting enough that I wanted to continue reading it, but far from being good literature.
"Play? By themselves? Yes... I see how natural that would seem to you. To us, it would be a kind of perversion..."Excellent high-concept space opera. Vinge has created some of the most alien of aliens you could hope to imagine. The Tines, with their intermingling pack minds, are fascinating. As are the Skroderiders, who evolved without mobility or short-term memory. But it's the Tines who are the heart of the book, as we follow them through their fraught first contact with advanced civilizations.If there's a problem with the book, it's in the vast scale of the galactic community Vinge depicts. When an ancient destructive power is woken, and begins rampaging through the galaxy, some characters shrug it aside -- "Another civilization destroyed? Oh, well, these things happen." Some of this apathy rubs off on the reader. What should be catastrophic is at once too big to comprehend and too small to matter.There are a number of nice touches too. The changing nature of spacetime is a clever conceit. The interstellar newsgroups filled with spam and nonsense in the face of destruction are all too believable.It's the Tines that, in the end, make this book stand out. Through the course of the novel their characters become more rounded, and understood, but they continually take you aback with their sheer otherness. An impressive creation.
Rating: 5Starts very strong, with different regions of space, and "powers" of incredible intelligence. Then it somehow turns into a different book, with kids and aliens on a medieval world. I recommend you just read the first part, as I couldn't get through the rest.
Rating: 3Greatest science fiction novel ever?
It took me almost 3 months to read this epic. It is so full of deep and challenging ideas that every 20 pages felt like a full meal, which I needed time to digest.
And frankly, I wished for about 30 more IQ points, which I felt would have helped me appreciate the book even better. Because Vinge is way smarter than me, and he's doing something very, very hard here: writing about intelligences far beyond current human level, in a setting that spans vast stretches of time and space. Audacious, to say the least.
Greatest science fiction novel ever? Well, I ain't read 'em all, but I've read quite a few. If we agree that SF is to be judged by the power of its imagination, the scope and originality of its ideas, then I'm hard-pressed to name another novel that's even in the same class.
Rating: 5It took me almost 3 months to read this epic. It is so full of deep and challenging ideas that every 20 pages felt like a full meal, which I needed time to digest.
And frankly, I wished for about 30 more IQ points, which I felt would have helped me appreciate the book even better. Because Vinge is way smarter than me, and he's doing something very, very hard here: writing about intelligences far beyond current human level, in a setting that spans vast stretches of time and space. Audacious, to say the least.
Greatest science fiction novel ever? Well, I ain't read 'em all, but I've read quite a few. If we agree that SF is to be judged by the power of its imagination, the scope and originality of its ideas, then I'm hard-pressed to name another novel that's even in the same class.
In the far future, the universe is divided into Thought Zones, and one's level of intelligence depends on where in those zones you are. When the Straumli unwittingly (sort of) unleash a big-brained Thing, stuff goes really, really wrong. And then there's two or three other story lines on other worlds, but I'm not gonna try to summarize those, because I really didn't like it enough to bother. Big ol' space operas just generally aren't my jam, I guess. The few that I've enjoyed have been so fabulously written that I didn't mind that they're spacey. This one does what annoys me most about the genre: it takes way too much time describing in a level of detail that makes my eyes cross just How Things Work. Generally I don't care How Things Work; I just want to know what the characters are doing within a world that just works without me knowing HOW it works. *sigh*
Rating: 4I wanted to like this. But the book desperately needed an editor. For about 300 pages, en route to the Tines planet, nothing happens. We get the same scenes, with the same conversations, over and over again. The characters go nowhere. The plot is unbelievable. In a few days, the Tines discover gunpowder, build cannons, and then take them off to start a war, with a thirteen-year old along for the fun. The writing itself is so childish and awkward, it is terribly irritating. I did enjoy Vinge's creative ideas on the Tines race of dog packs, and on the consequences of pack identities that can live on through generations. I won't read anything else of his. (less)
Rating: 2
Incredible. Intimate, character driven space adventure. Delivers on many levels.
Rating: 5Lots of times, "book of ideas" means boring and insular. While Vinge's novel is more a book of ideas than a plot-driven book, it engages deeply by exploring various modes of thoughts and societal constructs as they might exist somewhere in the universe. The races depicted here are thoroughly described and decidedly alien while still being empathetic. There's a layer of cosmological/theological thought that serves to propel the plot a bit here but is worth considering as its own deep impact is thought-provoking. Though the plot plods a bit in a sort of old-fashioned way, the characters keep you engaged.
Rating: 5I found this title on a list of the Top 100 Sci Fi novels of all time - I can't possibly imagine why it was on there!
Rating: 3Yes, I'm a quarter of a century behind in my SF reading; should have read this one long ago but oh well!
Rating: 4While the narration was excellent, I wish that I had read this in print. I struggled with the alien names and places not being able to see them written and so I suspect that I missed some of the plot.
Rating: 4I rarely re-read books, but this one was so good I read it twice. The second time, it was still very good, but his interstellar internet is really ridiculously similar to our internet, and seemed slightly dated. Quite unlikely... Still, good story, very original aliens, quite enjoyable.
Rating: 5Hands down, one of the best books I've ever read. Wonderful central concept, great characterisation, superbly realised aliens, vivid, crackling storytelling, and generally a thrilling and ultimately emotional roller-coaster ride. I can see how this won the Hugo Award. I only wish Vinge was more prolific.
Rating: 5The length of this space opera gives the author time to fully develop the otherwise comic-bookish characters - by the end of the book I was seeing the canine packs and sentient plants as real “people” – but oddly enough, the human characters seemed flat and two-dimensional. The concept of “Zones of Thought” in the galaxy was fascinating ; I would like to read more about “Powers” and things Einstein could never foresee because we are stuck in the “Slow Zone”. However, it is painfully obvious this was written in the late 1980s/early 1990s, with its dated predictions about the future galaxy-wide net.
Rating: 4First Impressions:
I finished Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" and let me tell you this monster book, clocking at nearly 600 pages, does have adventure, medieval civilizations, a bit of romance and has its dark side as well. Parts of the book do drag and the author might have been in need of an editor, but overall not a bad space tale.
Basic Premise, Some Comments:
In this universe we have 'zones of thought' that are linked through a subspace network, similar to our Internet which is colloquially called the "Net of a Million Lies." Would make a great advertisement for Wikipedia and the World Wide Web of today! The book was written in the 90s and so the pattern is of the Usenet groups of that time.
The book is broken down into several areas - the release of the "Blight", a malignant force that destroys all who oppose it, a family that discovers the "Countermeasure" but crash on a planet of dog-like aliens that only communicate in groups (a "pack" can think and respond only in a group, not singly), Ravna's planet, her job at "Relay" (as a librarian) and her relationship with a human (put together from parts by "The Old One," a superior being from "The Beyond", and their adventures together.
These parts don't always fit well. Each is expanded on (such as in the dog-like alien world, "Tine's World") and that's where the story tends to drag. We get involved in the intrigue, the castles, the battles and traitors of their race. The man and woman mentioned earlier crash-land and are immediately killed by this race. The brother and sister (Jefri and Joanna) are separated and each thinks the other is dead. The warring factions take advantage of this misunderstanding and slowly leech out technology that these children may know for their own advantages.
Interest:
I did enjoy the clash between factions in this alien society and the imaginative way they built "packs" where you would take different skills from each "dog" and they would somehow think together. With the invention of radio, thanks to the humans, the Tines discovered that they could radio to each others' brains! This was interesting but never expanded upon to include the whole race, but just one pack.
Other aspects of the story: The warring factions clash near the last 100 pages of the book which I found fascinating, how each faction used the children as pawns and at one point wanting to kill them to gain advantage.
The part where each discovers that the other is alive is heartwarming but also comes with the price of a life. That was the best part of the book.
Romance: There is a bit of this, between Ravna and Pham (at least before she discovers he's not all man - oops!). Also camaraderie and loyalty between starship captains as they attempt to rescue Ravna from "the Blight." Great space battle here.
World Building and The Internet:
The author dwells too long on detail and I felt the reader spends a long, long time on the chatter of the 'Net, which can be annoying as you just want to story to move along, and the extraordinary time we spend on the Tines' World. There's not a lot of explanation of the "Beyond" and how and what that's all about - just hints of superior beings and we as humans or lesser aliens are their pawns, and only in the lower levels are we safe from them.
Finally, it's a tough book to put down and wait awhile and pick up again. You have to reread a few sections to refresh your memory on what's going on. As well, Vernor Vinge tends to make up words without explanation and leaves it up to the reader to figure out, as well as not fully explaining what's going on. For example it took quite awhile into the book before discovering that the alien "packs" communicated as groups not as individuals.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, a decent read. Set aside some time and give Vinge your full cooperation. May not be as good as the amazing space operas of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, but it is a worthy, if dragged-out read. Recommended.
Vernor Vinge's Other Novels:
The Children of the Sky
Marooned in Realtime
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky [Sequel to "Fire."]
Rating: 4I finished Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" and let me tell you this monster book, clocking at nearly 600 pages, does have adventure, medieval civilizations, a bit of romance and has its dark side as well. Parts of the book do drag and the author might have been in need of an editor, but overall not a bad space tale.
Basic Premise, Some Comments:
In this universe we have 'zones of thought' that are linked through a subspace network, similar to our Internet which is colloquially called the "Net of a Million Lies." Would make a great advertisement for Wikipedia and the World Wide Web of today! The book was written in the 90s and so the pattern is of the Usenet groups of that time.
The book is broken down into several areas - the release of the "Blight", a malignant force that destroys all who oppose it, a family that discovers the "Countermeasure" but crash on a planet of dog-like aliens that only communicate in groups (a "pack" can think and respond only in a group, not singly), Ravna's planet, her job at "Relay" (as a librarian) and her relationship with a human (put together from parts by "The Old One," a superior being from "The Beyond", and their adventures together.
These parts don't always fit well. Each is expanded on (such as in the dog-like alien world, "Tine's World") and that's where the story tends to drag. We get involved in the intrigue, the castles, the battles and traitors of their race. The man and woman mentioned earlier crash-land and are immediately killed by this race. The brother and sister (Jefri and Joanna) are separated and each thinks the other is dead. The warring factions take advantage of this misunderstanding and slowly leech out technology that these children may know for their own advantages.
Interest:
I did enjoy the clash between factions in this alien society and the imaginative way they built "packs" where you would take different skills from each "dog" and they would somehow think together. With the invention of radio, thanks to the humans, the Tines discovered that they could radio to each others' brains! This was interesting but never expanded upon to include the whole race, but just one pack.
Other aspects of the story: The warring factions clash near the last 100 pages of the book which I found fascinating, how each faction used the children as pawns and at one point wanting to kill them to gain advantage.
The part where each discovers that the other is alive is heartwarming but also comes with the price of a life. That was the best part of the book.
Romance: There is a bit of this, between Ravna and Pham (at least before she discovers he's not all man - oops!). Also camaraderie and loyalty between starship captains as they attempt to rescue Ravna from "the Blight." Great space battle here.
World Building and The Internet:
The author dwells too long on detail and I felt the reader spends a long, long time on the chatter of the 'Net, which can be annoying as you just want to story to move along, and the extraordinary time we spend on the Tines' World. There's not a lot of explanation of the "Beyond" and how and what that's all about - just hints of superior beings and we as humans or lesser aliens are their pawns, and only in the lower levels are we safe from them.
Finally, it's a tough book to put down and wait awhile and pick up again. You have to reread a few sections to refresh your memory on what's going on. As well, Vernor Vinge tends to make up words without explanation and leaves it up to the reader to figure out, as well as not fully explaining what's going on. For example it took quite awhile into the book before discovering that the alien "packs" communicated as groups not as individuals.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, a decent read. Set aside some time and give Vinge your full cooperation. May not be as good as the amazing space operas of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, but it is a worthy, if dragged-out read. Recommended.
Vernor Vinge's Other Novels:
The Children of the Sky
Marooned in Realtime
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky [Sequel to "Fire."]
Highly original. A very entertaining read.
Rating: 5My overall impression of this book surprised me. I found some details a bit off, but before I could really make note of why, the plot dragged me onward into great action and believable characters that you cared about. Perhaps that is a good example. How can a potted plant be a space opera hero? Vinge pulls it off so well that the fates of Blueshell and Greenstalk are actually deeply moving. Of course the human characters are the core of the story, and the other aliens from telepathic wolf packs to reincarnated Frankenstein god-monsters provide more than enough mystery and suspense as you try to distinguish friend from foe. Mention is made of a “Computer Science and Applied Theology course”, breeding a wolf pack for “mathematical excellence”, and “Godshatter”, all of which mathematical and religious ideas I find most interesting in sci-fi, but Vinge does not delve into these aspects of his universe; it probably would have slowed the pace of the story too much. This is a space opera with lots of interesting details and plenty of room for sequels. I’ll definitely return to his “Zones of Thought” series.
Rating: 4I made the mistake of reading the third book in this series first. I enjoyed the third book, but I didn't enjoy the first book much, which I think was mostly because I already knew how things were going to turn out because I had read the third one. That's a shame, because I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it first... but it felt long-winded and slow.
Rating: 4A most excellent book. It has everything a good space novel should have - space ships, odd aliens, a scary menace, and an interesting plot. It kept me reading and kept me guessing.The idea of the different zones, where light moves faster the farther away from the milky way core, allowing for incredibly high technology, is so interesting!The Alien Species, the Tine - are quite amazing with their pack mind - Vernor Vinge knows how to create a good alien. As for some of the more elusive species - well, those are equally alien and considerably less understandable.I highly recommend this book to any science fiction enthusiasts.
Rating: 5I love me a good space opera--and this is one both grand and original. This is known as the first in the Zones of Thought series because of the structure of Vinge's galaxy. In it, there are various zones that allow for different levels of tech and intelligence. In the "Mindless Depths" of the Galactic center no intelligent life is possible. The zone of "Great Slowness" that contains the now dead Earth contains intelligent life, yes, but you must go father out into the "Beyond" for faster than light travel and artificial intelligence to be possible. And beyond that, in the "Transcend" there are God-like Powers at best indifferent to ordinary sapient, and in some cases malignant. Against this backdrop humans have long made it to the Beyond, and in this book we also encounter some of the most memorable, original and endearing aliens I've read in science fiction. There are the dog-like Tines who have packs that form one individual mind, and the Riders--something like potted plants--or potted sea weed. And they're interesting not just as races but as individuals. The humans have their appeal, but definitely its the Tines that made the deepest and lasting impression: Flenser, Steel, Woodcarver, Pilgrim, Amdi. And here is a book almost 500 pages that kept me madly turning pages from beginning to end. Usually if I'm tempted to skip it's because I'm bored and the book is a slog. Here it was because I cared about the characters and at certain times of suspense it was hard not to skip down to find out if they came through safe. Definitely a great read.
Rating: 5I read this for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club here at GoodReads. It was the science fiction theme (space opera) selection for January 2009.
I must admit that only about a third or half of this story kept my interest. I was drawn in to the plight of Jefri and Johanna. And, by proximity, the inhabitants of the Tines world where Jefri and Johanna's parents crash landed them and left them stranded and orphaned.
The rest of the tale, which most likely qualifies as the space opera epic, was confusing, sometimes appeared to be pointless, boring and just plain slow. As I approached the end, I admit I skimmed nearly all the parts that dealt with Ravna, Pham, the Skoderiders, the Blight and the chase to the Tines world.
If it weren't for the uniqueness of the Tines world and the independent struggles of Jefri and Johanna, I probably would have given this a two star rating. But I love the resilience of Jefri and his ability to assimilate and adapt to Amdi, an eight-member pack of about the same maturity level as Jefri but extraordinarily gifted in mathematics. And Johanna was the rebellious teenager, convinced she was the only survivor of the crash and out to get revenge on the packs who had ambushed her family. Great drama, politics and manipulation, espionage and intrigue - all you could want to keep you riveted to the page.
The ending was a bit tragic and I was left with uncertainty as to the Blight and the Countermeasure's struggle. I was never really given the chance to determine if the Blight or the Countermeasure were "evil" or "good" so I was ambivalent as to the Titanic struggle between the two. The only thing certain is that both the Blight and the Countermeasure destroyed billions upon billions of lives and whole swaths of civilizations in a large portion of the Galaxy. For that alone, neither of them are classified as "good" to me.
Rating: 3I must admit that only about a third or half of this story kept my interest. I was drawn in to the plight of Jefri and Johanna. And, by proximity, the inhabitants of the Tines world where Jefri and Johanna's parents crash landed them and left them stranded and orphaned.
The rest of the tale, which most likely qualifies as the space opera epic, was confusing, sometimes appeared to be pointless, boring and just plain slow. As I approached the end, I admit I skimmed nearly all the parts that dealt with Ravna, Pham, the Skoderiders, the Blight and the chase to the Tines world.
If it weren't for the uniqueness of the Tines world and the independent struggles of Jefri and Johanna, I probably would have given this a two star rating. But I love the resilience of Jefri and his ability to assimilate and adapt to Amdi, an eight-member pack of about the same maturity level as Jefri but extraordinarily gifted in mathematics. And Johanna was the rebellious teenager, convinced she was the only survivor of the crash and out to get revenge on the packs who had ambushed her family. Great drama, politics and manipulation, espionage and intrigue - all you could want to keep you riveted to the page.
The ending was a bit tragic and I was left with uncertainty as to the Blight and the Countermeasure's struggle. I was never really given the chance to determine if the Blight or the Countermeasure were "evil" or "good" so I was ambivalent as to the Titanic struggle between the two. The only thing certain is that both the Blight and the Countermeasure destroyed billions upon billions of lives and whole swaths of civilizations in a large portion of the Galaxy. For that alone, neither of them are classified as "good" to me.
The vast distances in space take vast amounts of time to cover. It seems that this also requires hundreds of pages of fictional detail to circumscribe. In Vinge's novel it is postulated that space around the Milky Way is divided into concentric layers called Zones, each being constrained by different laws of physics and each allowing for different degrees of biological and technological advancement. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. The next layer, the "Slow Zone", is roughly equivalent to the real world in behavior and potential. Further out, the zone named the "Beyond" can support futuristic technologies such as AI and FTL travel. The outermost zone, the "Transcend", contains most of the galactic halo and is populated by incomprehensibly vast and powerful posthuman entities. The story built around these ideas and entities is also complex a multi-layered involving humanoids, canine-like aliens, and vast technologies. I wish I could rate this book higher than three stars, but for all the entertaining ideas, the suspense ( of a sort ), and the alien worlds, I struggled to finish reading the book. I would recommend this only to hard core fans of hard-core SF.
Rating: 3My reaction to reading this book in 1992. Spoilers follow.A great book, excellently paced -- particularly riveting at the end. While I didn’t like it quite as well as his Marooned in Realtime, the latter book didn’t have the wonderful alien Tines though. They are very well-done, well worked out culture of aliens: group minds with sonic communication that functions almost as telepathy, personalities that shift over time with replaced members, very bright aliens to whom crowding and sex are mindless. Replacing members in the group mind offers the scientific minded Flenser, Mr. Steel (both great villains) and Woodcarver the chance to mold their own and others’ personalities. Flenser and Steel find the opportunity for a sort of biological fascism in this, custom building personalities for the mediaeval state. However, I didn’t quite buy the premise that the Tines are held back by their inability to rationally work in close quarters. What about writing, libraries? Scientific progress doesn’t always require work at close quarters though it would to build lab apparatus and engineer things -- so maybe Vinge has a point. Vinge has always had a fantasy element in his sf -- rationalized via superscience. His True Names had god-like powers via computer link, and fantasy worlds created via computer. Marooned in Realtime had transcedence via the unknowable singularity. Here Vinge creates the nifty conceit of the Zones of Thought -- different regions of space which gives high-tech (well nigh god-like civilizations and vaguely described entities like the Blight) worlds of faster than light travel, nanotech, and artificial intelligence and Worlds of the Unthinking Depths and Slow Zone (no AI or ftl). I found the novel most impressive in its thematic treatment of the related themes of intelligence (and its nature as cooperative and individualis), transcendence, cooperation, and possession. Groupmind Tines compared to single mind humans compared to the linked minds of Pham Nuwen/Old One and the Greater Skroderiders. Transcendence of Tines via human contact compared to the transcendence of Pham Nuwen by the Old compared to Skrod transcendence via the Riders. Possession of dictator Steel by a schoolteacher’s soul compared to Pham Nuwen’s possession by the Old One compared to Skroderiders’ possession by the Blight. Cooperation of group mind Tines compared to humans of a vengeful fleet and Ravna. I also liked the known Net messages, full of address, the “Where Are They Now” and “Great Secrets of Creation” Interest groups’ bizarreness, Alliance for the Defense’s genocidal propaganda, and the arrogantly detached, philosophical society for Rational Investigation. The latter first arrogantly chides people for sending messages complaining of the destruction of worlds and murder of billions. Then, in the end, pleads for a reply as the Known Net is fractured and ripped apart in the apocalypse of the Slow Zone’s expansion. In fact, this novel makes much of good from evil, evil from good. The Blight is stopped but several civilizations die when the Slow Zone expands. The evil Blight creates the noble, interesting Riders. Flenser’s evil is blunted and produces peace and his evil gives the Tine world some of its first science.
Rating: 5I liked A Fire Upon the Deep. This is a tale on a truly galactic scale, concerning the fate of dozens - maybe hundreds - of civilizations. Vinge worked in some nice original ideas, which is (for me) what SF is all about. His CS background shines through in his formulation of some of these ideas. The book is set in the Milky Way and postulates different Zones delineated by concentric rings or spheres about the galactic core. The laws of physics change as a function of distance from the centre. At the core are the "Unthinking Depths," where higher intelligence itself is impossible. The next layer is the "Slow Zone," which contains Earth. This is followed by a gradient or layers of "the Beyond" where increasingly greater technology and intelligence are possible, and finally the "Transcend," inhabited only by godlike beings. This is an interesting concept and a useful plot point, but it nags a bit at me. Different physics in different parts of the galaxy is pretty far-fetched. We lowly human beings down here in the Slow Zone have actually devised ways to test for different physical laws elsewhere in the universe and we get a null result every time. Another big, original idea is the group minds of the Tine packs. I thought of this as cluster computing due to Vinge's background. Biological Beowulf clusters? Neat-o! BUT… fast, high-volume connections between nodes are crucial to cluster computing. Vinge posits ultrasonic communication between individuals for the Tines. Sorry, but again I find this hard to swallow. Each individual Tine brain would need to simultaneously send and receive to five other units *and* process that information, in addition to the regular duties of managing its own body. When you see evidence of the processing power of a single Tine node, you can’t help but think the packs would have to be too short on both bandwidth and processing power to function as group minds. I suppose this could be explained away if the Tine packs only functioned in higher zones, but they don't appear to suffer any loss of function at all when they are clearly in the Slow Zone.To include these concepts that are not faithful to real science is one thing, but to have the plot hinge on them entirely makes the "hard sf" appellation questionable (if you care about that sort of thing). Suspending disbelief, I found it an enjoyable story with high stakes and characters I cared about.One last thing: To provide exposition and add depth to his universe, Vinge inserts usenet-like text (and occasionally video) posts from a galactic BB service. Some reviews are critical of this, saying it dates the story. I disagree, partly because I found these sections to be an enjoyable callback to 80s and 90s computing and besides, bandwidth could conceivably be a serious constraint in FTL communication. I buy it.
Rating: 4