430 pages
English language
Published Nov. 11, 2011 by Tor.
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.
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.
Very imaginative.
An amazing read. Such a deep story spread across a huge galaxy.
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.
A personal top ten all time favourite.
If possible, skip reading the reviews, it's better learning what's going on in the order the authour intended.
First rate backdrop, plot, characters....
Just read it.
Engrossing self-deceit and self-defeat, in a story worthy of both its galaxy-spanning and personal components.
The central conceit of this novel, the "zones of thought", is brilliant.
The laws of physics change as a factor of distance from the galactic center, allowing increasingly advanced civilizations toward the edge of the galaxy. Earth's civilization, trapped in the "slow zone" - the interior region where nothing travels faster than light - is limited to the solar system by that impassable barrier.
This idea allows sci-fantasy staples like FTL travel and interstellar civilizations to exist within a rigorous sci-fi universe. It also creates a rich analogy between galactic geography and the hierarchy of oceanic life forms. Entities closer to the galactic center are tend to be lower life forms, those closer to the edge are more advanced.
If only the story was as compelling as the setting. Half of the book is a grand space opera about the struggle to contain a godlike extragalactic threat while the other …
The central conceit of this novel, the "zones of thought", is brilliant.
The laws of physics change as a factor of distance from the galactic center, allowing increasingly advanced civilizations toward the edge of the galaxy. Earth's civilization, trapped in the "slow zone" - the interior region where nothing travels faster than light - is limited to the solar system by that impassable barrier.
This idea allows sci-fantasy staples like FTL travel and interstellar civilizations to exist within a rigorous sci-fi universe. It also creates a rich analogy between galactic geography and the hierarchy of oceanic life forms. Entities closer to the galactic center are tend to be lower life forms, those closer to the edge are more advanced.
If only the story was as compelling as the setting. Half of the book is a grand space opera about the struggle to contain a godlike extragalactic threat while the other half involves a political squabble among factions of a pre-industrial race in the slow zone. These things are not equivalent in importance, and the planetbound sections of the book are comically tedious.
The sequel seems to narrow the focus - but in the wrong direction: it's set entirely on Planet Pointless. Vernor Vinge has terrific ideas, but he needs to find a better way to use them.
Wow. The first three chapters alone blew me away with all the cool ideas. I was so fired up to talk about this with my friends, but when I did I had a difficult time trying not to sound like a raving lunatic. No wonder [a:Jo Walton|107170|Jo Walton|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1353809579p2/107170.jpg] wrote:
"Any one of the ideas in A Fire Upon the Deep would have kept an ordinary writer going for years."
Highly recommended for anyone who is looking for space-faring scifi that is actually challenging.
Wow. The first three chapters alone blew me away with all the cool ideas. I was so fired up to talk about this with my friends, but when I did I had a difficult time trying not to sound like a raving lunatic. No wonder [a:Jo Walton|107170|Jo Walton|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1353809579p2/107170.jpg] wrote:
"Any one of the ideas in A Fire Upon the Deep would have kept an ordinary writer going for years."
Will likely return to this one day.
Pretty solid, I like what he did with both this one and deepness in the sky, stranding the main characters so that it turned from a space opera to a swords and sorcery thing.
i typically like my scifi to be more concept-heavy and less evil-monster-action-adventury, but i must admit that the mix of both here was page-turning and fun.
Every dozen pages or so my mind had to expand another notch, just to keep up. When the Galaxy is your playground, and history extends a billion years, give or take, there's a lot going on.
I had read Vinge's earlier books, but missed this one until 1997 when I
learned of it through a forwarded message from SWIL. (www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/swil/lists/sfdt.html) I remember that the title put me off, I was not expecting anything like this.
As an evocation of a certain period of Usenet, this surely helped inspire me to build olduse.net. Which involved digging up an archive and reanimating it, and I hope will end well..
All of which says nothing about AFOtD as a peice of fiction, but anything I could say has been said before anyway.
