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A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
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A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)

by Vernor Vinge

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: Zones of Thought (1)

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3,660631,326 (4.16)3 / 123
aliens (28) ebook (24) fantasy (10) far future (16) fiction (278) hard sf (15) Hugo (25) Hugo Award (26) hugo winner (35) Kindle (10) mmpb (11) Nebula nominee (13) novel (39) own (26) paperback (15) pb (10) read (71) science fiction (804) series (13) sf (213) sff (42) singularity (35) space (16) space opera (92) space travel (13) speculative fiction (22) to-read (38) unread (34) Vinge (13) Zones of Thought (43)
  1. 40
    Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds (voodoochilli)
  2. 20
    Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton (orange_epsilon)
    orange_epsilon: If you like reading about space travel and alien cultures, then this is the book for you.
  3. 10
    A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (timspalding)
    timspalding: Both are fantastic books.
  4. 10
    Blindsight by Peter Watts (electronicmemory)
    electronicmemory: Excellent hard sci-fi which contains concepts which will challenge your mind.
  5. 10
    House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds (junkblocker)
  6. 00
    Lifelode by Jo Walton (sandstone78)
    sandstone78: What if the zones of thought were within walking distance of each other? Gods live in the East, time passes at a rapid rate in the West, and a stranger from each direction comes to the manor of Applekirk in the Marches between them.
  7. 33
    The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven (tcgardner)
  8. 00
    Accelerando by Charles Stross (ahstrick)
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English (58)  Italian (2)  Spanish (1)  Danish (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (63)
Showing 1-5 of 58 (next | show all)
Meh.... ( )
  1967mustangman | Apr 27, 2013 |
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. ( )
  joeyreads | Apr 2, 2013 |
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. ( )
  mossjon | Apr 1, 2013 |
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. ( )
  Texas_Reaver | Mar 31, 2013 |
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. ( )
  jwhenderson | Mar 18, 2013 |
Showing 1-5 of 58 (next | show all)
Mr. Vinge writes what might be called thoughtful space opera. His setting is nothing less than the galaxy we call the Milky Way. I don't mean that he simply lets loose a few spaceships and has them chase one another among the stars to act out another old-fashioned shoot-'em-up plot. The human and nonhuman characters of "A Fire Upon the Deep" live in a complex galactic society that Mr. Vinge has worked out in admirable if economical detail, and the scope of his story is such that it requires just a background.
 

» Add other authors (7 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Vernor Vingeprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Tervaharju, HannuTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vallejo, BorisCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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To my father, Clarence L. Vinge, with love.
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How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Haiku summary
Galaxy's at risk.
And you thought SkyNet was bad.
Kill all the AIs.

(Carnophile)

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0812515285, Mass Market Paperback)

In this Hugo-winning 1991 SF novel, Vernor Vinge gives us a wild new cosmology, a galaxy-spanning "Net of a Million Lies," some finely imagined aliens, and much nail-biting suspense.

Faster-than-light travel remains impossible near Earth, deep in the galaxy's Slow Zone--but physical laws relax in the surrounding Beyond. Outside that again is the Transcend, full of unguessable, godlike "Powers." When human meddling wakes an old Power, the Blight, this spreads like a wildfire mind virus that turns whole civilizations into its unthinking tools. And the half-mythical Countermeasure, if it exists, is lost with two human children on primitive Tines World.

Serious complications follow. One paranoid alien alliance blames humanity for the Blight and launches a genocidal strike. Pham Nuwen, the man who knows about Countermeasure, escapes this ruin in the spacecraft Out of Band--heading for more violence and treachery, with 500 warships soon in hot pursuit. On his destination world, the fascinating Tines are intelligent only in combination: named "individuals" are small packs of the doglike aliens. Primitive doesn't mean stupid, and opposed Tine leaders wheedle the young castaways for information about guns and radios. Low-tech war looms, with elaborately nested betrayals and schemes to seize Out of Band if it ever arrives. The tension becomes extreme... while half the Beyond debates the issues on galactic Usenet.

Vinge's climax is suitably mindboggling. This epic combines the flash and dazzle of old-style space opera with modern, polished thoughtfulness. Pham Nuwen also appears in the nifty prequel set 30,000 years earlier, A Deepness in the Sky. Both recommended. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:30:35 -0500)

(see all 5 descriptions)

Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit 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 the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.… (more)

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