Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon the Deep
My first introduction to Vinge
came about ten years ago through a book called The Peace War.
It was a good book about the near future, but not something to
save for the permanent collection. A Fire Upon the Deep is
such a book. The story is set in the far future, in which humans
are among the younger and weaker species in the galaxy. The galaxy
has some unusual physical properties (just seeing Vinge's conception
of the galaxy made reading the book worthwhile) and the aliens
are fascinating, ranging from dog-like creatures who are only
intelligent in packs to small plants which roll about in powered
carts to bizarre "Powers". With this enormous, complex
and wonderous background Vinge tells his story of a couple of
humans and aliens trying to prevent a galactic disaster. The combination
of galactic scale and personal struggle is perfectly executed,
making this a great book.
A Deepness in the SkyI loved Vinge's last book, A Fire Upon the Deep so much
that my pulse quickened when I heard a sequel was out. Fire
is one of my three favorite sci-fi books of the last decade, and
with A Deepness In The Sky Vinge places himself just second
(to Neal Stephenson) on my list of current sci-fi authors. This
sequel lives up to its predecessor and is simply a terrific book.
Bjorn wrote a lot about this book last month, so I will restrict
myself to a short comparison of Deepness and Fire.
Deepness is a more traditional sci-fi novel; two races,
clear narrative structure, a well-defined universe. Fire
was much more creative, with a more complex and imaginative universe.
However, Fire's complexity of environment and narrative
structure meant that the characters were not quite as well-defined
in my mind as those of Deepness. So, for my dollar, Deepness
is an easier, more traditional read of extremely high quality
but Fire was a step above, one of the outstanding sci-fi
novels of the decade.
Wow. Well, I just finished this book (at 600 pages,
practically a novella in comparison with the Hamilton books),
and as you can see, it has left me stunned enough to place it
very close to the top of our list. This book is labelled as a
sequel to Vinge's A Fire Upon
the Deep, but it's only real relation is that it is set in
the same universe, approximately 30,000 years earlier.
I'll avoid going into too much detail about the plot, both because I wouldn't want to give anything away and also because its hard to to justice to the book with a summary. Suffice to say that Vinge once again weaves together several stories with absolute brilliance, so that you can't help but be caught up in it. I found myself getting more and more enraptured by the book the further along I read, until I reached the last couple hundred pages and simply couldn't put it down. Vinge presents several fascinating ideas in this book, including a very interesting look at the human future and (as with Fire Upon the Deep) amazing insight into an alien race, mixing in several fascinating characters to make a truly excellent read for the pure science fiction fan.
Probably what is most amazing to me about Deepness in the Sky is how different it is from Fire Upon the Deep. Most of the things that made Fire Upon the Deep such an incredible book aren't even mentioned in Deepness, replaced by entirely new, but equally fascinating, ideas. And probably the best thing about the book is that it leaves massive amounts of room for further exploration in this universe. I can only hope that Vinge is already working on the next episode.