A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)

Meh.... ( )

I had read Vinge's earlier books, but missed this one until 1997 when I
learned of it through a forwarded message from SWIL. (http://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. ( )

I 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. ( )

I tried listening to this today. I got through 1 of 17 cd's. Ugh. I don't get it. And I don't much want to. ( )

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. ( )