A Fire Upon The Deep

, #1

Mass Market Paperback, 624 pages

English language

Published Feb. 15, 1993 by Tor Science Fiction.

ISBN:
978-0-8125-1528-2
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
221602076

View on OpenLibrary

(211 reviews)

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.

25 editions

Sci-fi classic I can't believe I didn't read before

I have so many questions. Sound-based thought waves? The galaxy has speed zones? Ultimately though it was such a good story that I don't care much about the answers. I was super impressed by (since he was writing in 1993) and absolutely love Vinge's idea of a galaxy-wide internet that's hundreds of millions of years old and nobody knows who started it. That to me seems extremely plausible, given a universe with multiple sentient space-faring species. This was SO much fun, and anyone who loves science fiction should definitely read it.

Imaginative, epic, with some of the best non-human characters in sci-fi.

I started reading Children of the The Sky, third and final in this trilogy but really a sequel to this book, so I just reread the beginning as a refresher (and coincidentally extolled its virtues to my neighborhood barista). This wasn't my first Vinge book, I'd read Marooned in Realtime before, which I enjoyed, but this is a far grander story, from the overarching framework of its universe down to the protagonists, including, especially, the non-human ones. The plot sort of drove me nuts with the why-can't-they-see-they're-being-fooled (now that I think about it, that's how I feel about the electorate), but the introduction to this edition ably spells out all the Hugo-winning virtues of this book, and let me just add: puppies.

reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought, #1)

Viele interessante Ideen in einer spannenden Geschichte

Eigentlich ist es eine Mischung aus Fantasy und Science Fiction. Damit Vernor Vinge Superintelligenzen in seine Geschichte einbauen kann, muss er zwar physikalische Naturgesetze ändern, aber ich wüsste auch nicht, wie man Superintelligenz in ein menschliches Buch anders integrieren will. Der Autor stellt den Gegensatz zwischen Intelligenz und technischer Zivilisation dar. Letztlich sind es zwei orthogonale Achsen. Und - nach dem Buch kann ich mir tatsächlich vorstellen, dass es eine überindividuelle mentale Struktur, eine geteilte Seele von einzelnen Wesen gibt. Zeitweise hat es Längen und das Ende empfand ich als abrupt und etwas...unfertig nach der langen Einleitung und dem langen Hauptteil. Deswegen nur 4 von 5 Solos im Rudel.

reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought, #1)

Fantastic sci-fi epic

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.

reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought, #1)

Fun alien trip

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.

reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought, #1)

Review of 'A Fire Upon The Deep' on 'Goodreads'

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'.

reviewed A fire upon the deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of thought series)

A Masterpiece of Science Fiction

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. …

reviewed A fire upon the deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of thought series)

Review of 'A fire upon the deep' on 'Goodreads'

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 …

Review of 'A Fire Upon The Deep' on 'Goodreads'

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!

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