Mass Market Paperback, 624 pages
English language
Published Feb. 15, 1993 by Tor Science Fiction.
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.
Fantastically deep and original sci-fi epic. Picked this up on a whim and can't recommend it to others enough. The various species are really well developed and the intertwining plots are both incredibly interesting in of themselves. May have taken me some time to get though as it isn't a short book, but enjoyed every moment I was reading.
Really loved the aliens; sentient potted plants on high tech carts and single-minded packs of dogs ruling medieval castles. Shenanigans ensured. Really liked the characters too, they felt alive and driven by their own motivations, in a realistic, organic way.
Like others mentioned, a trip is begun early in the book and then it's a slug through the middle before it's ever ended and the story can progress in any meaningful way.
The actual story sometimes feels like a device to introduce world building, but can still carry the book very well. Vinge builds an incredible lively and grand world through which the diverse cast must navigate. Yes, it gets a bit sluggish in the middle, but its very much worth it.
3.5/5 stars, I went in with really high expectations maybe.
It's a enjoyable space opera with two interlinked plots happening at the same time, one about a transcendent being taking over civilizations, and one about a 'medieval' one with psychic dogs and a crashed spaceship.
I have a theory about this book; for the first plot above, the author is actually writing about flame wars on internet bulletin boards, and IRC (relays, 'netsplits'), some people having dial-up and some having 'broadband'.
I’m divided because the concepts in this book are so good and parts of the story are really well made, and parts of it are absolutely boring. I almost dropped the book in the middle but I’m glad I finished. 3.5 stars.
This is a masterpiece of a book, deservedly considered a classic. It starts with a group of human scientists re-awakening an AI, but everything goes pear-shaped very quickly. From there two plot lines proceed in parallel, one concerning a family from the group that worked on the AI, the other concerning a group of mixed human and alien beings that are trying to deal with the menace unleashed on the galaxy by this AI. The greatest fascination of this novel is the alien races. They are very disctinctly different, but Vinge makes them believable at the same time. The plot line of the escaped family takes them to a world inhabited by beings with group consciousness. They are like small mammals, but an individual of this species is not even conscious or intelligent. It is only when they they join together in groups of 5-8 that they become intelligent entities. …
This is a masterpiece of a book, deservedly considered a classic. It starts with a group of human scientists re-awakening an AI, but everything goes pear-shaped very quickly. From there two plot lines proceed in parallel, one concerning a family from the group that worked on the AI, the other concerning a group of mixed human and alien beings that are trying to deal with the menace unleashed on the galaxy by this AI. The greatest fascination of this novel is the alien races. They are very disctinctly different, but Vinge makes them believable at the same time. The plot line of the escaped family takes them to a world inhabited by beings with group consciousness. They are like small mammals, but an individual of this species is not even conscious or intelligent. It is only when they they join together in groups of 5-8 that they become intelligent entities. This is a very interesting idea, and Vinge develops it beautifully and in great detail. In the other plot line, one of the alien races is derived from aquatic plants/animals that get around on motorized carts, and might be the dominant race of the galaxy. Then there is the idea that in this universe the closer you get to the core of the galaxy the slower you travel, creating concentric zones where the speed possible varies.
What ties the two plot lines together is the possibility that the ship that took the family away may have the answer to defeating the rogue AI, so the ship with the mixed human/alien crew has to get there ahead of the AI. This novel has an impressive set of ideas that are fascinating. This is a book you have to read if you are a fan of science fiction.
dnf
I just wasn't feeling it. I got a few chapters in and it wasn't holding my attention. That paired with how long it is.. I just didn't care to continue.
It's rare that I'd give a perfect score to a space opera, but this novel is so inventive and well told that I had to give it the nod.
Vinge accomplished something with A Fire Upon The Deep that I feel like I've been searching for ever since I read the Iain M. Banks' first Culture novel (Consider Phlebas) - a galaxy that is lively, filled with truly alien aliens, obscenely high technology, and many disparate factions - but in a lot of ways Vinge succeeds where Banks' later Culture books fail.
In Vinge's universe, humanity is not only a small part of a huge tapestry of civilizations of all descriptions, it's also a fragile and vulnerable race. The loss of a single world, or a single ship actually hurts and the main characters of the novel are usually some of the only humans nearby. This is a …
It's rare that I'd give a perfect score to a space opera, but this novel is so inventive and well told that I had to give it the nod.
Vinge accomplished something with A Fire Upon The Deep that I feel like I've been searching for ever since I read the Iain M. Banks' first Culture novel (Consider Phlebas) - a galaxy that is lively, filled with truly alien aliens, obscenely high technology, and many disparate factions - but in a lot of ways Vinge succeeds where Banks' later Culture books fail.
In Vinge's universe, humanity is not only a small part of a huge tapestry of civilizations of all descriptions, it's also a fragile and vulnerable race. The loss of a single world, or a single ship actually hurts and the main characters of the novel are usually some of the only humans nearby. This is a refreshing change of pace from Banks' work where humanity is ensconced in the nearly all powerful and galaxy dominating Culture that is so far beyond the usual needs and wants of us lowly 21st century Earth humans that in Look to Windwarda literal God race had to be tailor made for the story to imbue a particularly depressed suicide bomber with a small chance to kill billions of humans on a Culture Orbital - all as a purely symbolic "fuck you" that would have accomplished nothing by making a point.
Vinge does a better job of conveying what is happening on a galactic level too. He takes a page out of the early internet's decentralization so his civilizations, businesses, and individuals all communicate on a BBS-style low bandwidth galactic Net. The reader follows along with characters receiving the news and the messages paint a good picture of what's happening and how the rest of the galaxy is reacting to events without needing extraneous scenes or characters. Transmission also requires line of sight and long distance requires many hops which, compared to the instantaneous and disembodied chatter of Banks' hyper-intelligent AI Minds, is wonderfully grounded. The mechanic is never overused either (which was one of my big complaints about Banks' Excession where pages were devoted to what amount to first person ship logs).
Even space itself has more character in A Fire Upon The Deep. Space is not one big homogenous grid we're hanging in. It has "zones" that characterize how fast energy and information can be transmitted. Closer to the galactic core, high tech things like AI automation, FTL, and data transmission begin to degrade - not because of a plot convenient accident ("oh no, the AI went haywire!") but naturally and predictably such that characters are aware of it and plan for it. I love this idea and it made me think differently about something most space fiction takes for granted - the void of space itself. The concept is so well applied it informs every aspect of the story (thus the name of the series Zones of Thought). Primitive core worlds are trapped but also protected by the reluctance of the more advanced, high worlds to even enter their space and those advanced worlds are in turn protected from the civilizations that have effectively transcended in a similar way.
Vinge's conception of alien races is also deeply satisfying. Alien cultures, particularly the ones A Fire Upon The Deep focuses on are weird. And not just in a "I have a bumpy forehead and an odd number of legs" or a "My cultural values are different" weird, but a "you can't even comprehend what my life is like" weird. The Tines and the Skroderiders both followed an evolutionary path that is utterly foreign and novel compared to any other fictional race. It's hard, but fun, to puzzle out just what life would be like if one was, say, six different dog creatures or member of a billion year old sentient tree race. Best of all, Vinge does a great job of making these alien cultures feel real and true to what makes them unique instead of just being humanity with a few extra appendages.
Lastly, I have to acknowledge how Vinge wrote this book as a completely self-contained story. The end of the book is conclusive and satisfying in a way that some fiction is lacking these days. There are follow up books, including a direct sequel that came out 20 years later, but at no point does it feel like plot hook are being laid to support the next entry. I appreciate the brevity in comparison to series like The Expanse or Mistborn whose entries were fun but still obviously written to be parts of a larger, overall work.
These points elevate A Fire Upon The Deep well above the average space opera and I wish I'd read it earlier.
Very imaginative.
An amazing read. Such a deep story spread across a huge galaxy.
What a neat read. I felt like it was a cross between the baddie of the 5th element, the creatures from the dark crystal, Firefly, and a galactic zone system from Weiss & Hickman. What a crazy, crazy story.
There were a few dips that had my reading falter but for the most part it was a pretty engaged piece. I'd have liked to know more about the baddie, and the countermeasure. I had deep questions about the universe--but I suppose I have deep questions about most books most of the time.
Neat universe, races--and a race that actually gets solved in one read? Nice. With more? Let's see!
Very fun with pretty great aliens. Aliens were WAY TOO anthropomorphic. I mean, Vinge gave sentient sea ferns essentially human genders with modern western gender dynamics. 2 hours conversation with a botanist and this book could have been 1000x better. Sometimes the technical details on the alien usenet and archives was a little much, though I guess it would have been fascinating when the internet was so new? Also it would have been better if women were more than a comfort and a conscience to the heroic dudes.
I reread this recently, and it didn't hold up very well. Don't get me wrong - I would still recommend it as a rip-roaring good read the first time through - the universe and plot twists and turns earn all the praise they've gotten over the years. But on this later read, the weak character development and pedestrian writing style made it a bit of a slog - since I knew how things would turn out, I didn't have much motive to finish again.
clever, a little slow, but very well designed. good characterization and interesting concepts
Engrossing self-deceit and self-defeat, in a story worthy of both its galaxy-spanning and personal components.
