A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Vernor Vinge (Author) "The coldsleep itself was dreamless..." (more)
Key Phrases: radio cloaks, coldsleep boxes, voder voice, Pham Nuwen, Sjandra Kei, Old One (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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

From Publishers Weekly
It has been six years since Vinge's last book ( Marooned in Realtime ), but the wait proves worthwhile in this stimulating tale filled with ideas, action and likable, believable characters, both alien and human. Vinge presents a galaxy divided into Zones--regions where different physical constraints allow very different technological and mental possibilities. Earth remains in the "Slowness" zone, where nothing can travel faster than light and minds are fairly limited. The action of the book is in the "Beyond," where translight travel and other marvels exist, and humans are one of many intelligent species. One human colony has been experimenting with ancient technology in order to find a path to the "Transcend," where intelligence and power are so great as to seem godlike. Instead they release the Blight, an evil power, from a billion-year captivity. As the Blight begins to spread, a few humans flee with a secret that might destroy it, but they are stranded in a primitive low-tech world barely in the Beyond. While the Blight destroys whole races and star systems, a team of two humans and two aliens races to rescue the others, pursued by the Blight's agents and other enemies. With uninterrupted pacing, suspense without contrivance, and deftly drawn aliens who can be pleasantly comical without becoming cute, Vinge offers heart-pounding, mind-expanding science fiction at its best.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (February 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812515285
• ISBN-13: 978-0812515282
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (227 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #10,663 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

176 of 190 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some like it, some hate it. Regardless, read it., November 16, 1997

By	Walter Flaschka (Oxford, MS USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Most of us are probably aware of how, as you read more and more science fiction, your stack of 'extremely good' books stays mostly level while the stack of 'acceptable' books outgrows your bookshelf. You start to appreciate the writers who have done their duty to science fiction by studying the Drexlers, the Minskys and Feynmans -- the scientists whose sheer extrapolative powers really push the borders of imagination.

Vinge is one of those hardworking writers. He is the author of the hard-to-find "True names and other dangers..." which means you can credit him for adding several of the future- or tech-based memes most of us take for granted today.

The ratings for this book waver between 6-10, with a '2' thrown in by some poor fellow. Don't worry about Vernor Vinge's grammatical capabilities -- he writes a mean sentence, and some of the best technical descriptions I've ever read. For a genre which pedestalizes Asimov, who could hardly string 6 words together coherently (guess he was moving too fast), some people are MIGHTY picky!

Also, you won't find the "-oid" syndrome which you get with Bujold, for example, where contemporary items are made to sound science-fictiony just by giving them a new name. You won't read sentences like "He grabbed his key-oids and jumped in his car-oid..."

Vinge's science is deep, and the ramifications of everything from the 'slow zone' to the 'unthinking deeps' to the 'agrav fabric docks' to the hi-tech of the beyond, to the cute extrapolation of an Internet of galactic scope, to the effect of radio upon the Tines (a sophont race), to the matter-of-fact acceptance of racial senescence... all of these things are well thought out and brilliantly presented. You will see many of Vinge's concepts become commonplace in science fiction, and you'll be able to say you saw it here first. :)

Vinge is a scientist/mathmetician, after all, and he seems constitutionally unable to write the soft-science glop which is taking over science fiction. His science fiction is as hard as diamond, and the only bad side effect is that the people you read between the 'good ones' will seem much more inept and unimaginative.

Don't worry about Vinge's characterizations... they're strong and capable (especially those of the skroderiders (plants) and the tines (pack intelligences)). You'll be fascinated by his treatment of alien mentalities... and if you aren't, well, luckily science fiction isn't about characterization anyways.

If you want character, read a novel, which is the genre of the character. If you want science fiction, you could do MUCH worse than come here... you'll be adding a nice thick book to your small stack of 'extremely good' books.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Complex hard sci-fi, but still filled with imagination., June 24, 2000

By	D. J. Rizzo "DJ Rizzo" (Centreville, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Vinge introduces you to a new viewpoint of our galaxy, it's future-history and it's stratified physics, through the eyes of those who live in it. Don't expect a lesson, you're learning through exposition. Subsequently, you spend much of the first part (3 part book) discovering how this galaxy "works"; including a usenet-type of communication backbone. [I was amazed that the book was authored in '91, before most of us knew what a newsgroup was... then again the author is a comp sci professor.]

The meat of the book takes place in three locations: 2 of which are on a "medieval" world with an amazing race and the other is in the greater galaxy. There are subtle but distinct parallels between the good/evil battle on this planet and the one waging in the galaxy. Both contain complex and engaging characters and races.

The book becomes harder to put down as the characters in these three locations move together, eventually occupying the same space. Like three volatile chemicals coming together, you know it's going to be big!

A Fire Upon the Deep is a wonderful read for fans of "hard" science fiction. Vinge brings so much into it: the physics, races, and technology of hard sci-fi; the history, conspiracy, and duplicity of a political thriller; the excitement and passion of a great war novel; and even a little romance and weightless space-sex!

I strongly recommend it to fans of Larry Niven and Arthur C. Clarke.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good far-term hard Science Fiction, for advanced readers, July 12, 2002

By	Brad Torgersen "Full-time nerd, part-time sol... (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'd heard about this book for years before finally picking it up. I am a selective fiction reader and generally try to stick with hard SF. Niven ranks as my all-time SF favorite, but Vinge has impressed me with this book (as well as with its prequel).

Set tens of thousands of years into the far future, A Fire Upon The Deep is an engaging yarn of human survival amidst an alien caste system that dates back billions of years. At the center of the tale is the concept of the galactic Zones: regions of the galaxy wherein the laws of physics, technology, and even thought, change depending on your proximity to the core. The farther out you are from the core, the better.

Earth and most of humanity are lost to the past, mired forever in the Slowness closer to the core, where faster than light travel and really advanced technology is impossible. One plucky group of humans, whose origins are murky at best, have managed to make it to the Beyond--a fertile Zone far from the core in which both advanced technology and FTL travel are abundant--and establish themselves there amongst a vast community of other sentient beings. These humans and most other Beyonders are overshadowed still by the Powers from the Transcend, a Zone above even the Beyond where potential and technology are nearly limitless. The Powers are a group of god-like sentient superbeings that may at one time have been dwellers in the Beyond that evolved to their current state.

When an expedition of Beyond humans unearths an impossibly ancient computer archive of Transcend origins, they unwittingly unleash a Superpower that threatens to consume both the Beyond and the Transcend, killing or satanically "possessing" all in its path. Even other Powers.

To find out what else happens, you'll just have to read the book!

Vinge certainly keeps the Hard in this hard SF story. A college professor in his own right, Vinge's grasp of the sciences seems dizzying at times. Therefor I would not recommend this book for younger readers or for readers who prefer media related fiction like Star Wars or Star Trek. But if you think you're ready to graduate to the next level in your SF reading, I would highly recommend this book. Even I found it a satisfying challenge, and I've been reading hard SF since my first year in college. Vinge gloriously blends some gripping storytelling with compelling and believable science. I got so caught up in it that I literally spent an entire day reading from the middle chapters until the end.

It was that good.