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A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought) Mass Market Paperback – February 15, 1993

by Vernor Vinge (Author)

529 customer reviews

Book 1 of 3 in the Zones of Thought Series

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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale.

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.

A Fire Upon The Deep is the winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

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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

Series: Zones of Thought (Book 1)
Mass Market Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (February 15, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812515285
ISBN-13: 978-0812515282
Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 35 x 174 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 529 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #110,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #764 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Exploration
- #775 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Hard Science Fiction
- #1173 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > First Contact

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it gets you thinking when you put it down

BySamon March 11, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is the first book I have read by Vernor Vinge. It is full of mind boggling ideas and wonderfully complex aliens.

One mind boggling idea that the galaxy has zones. The closer you get to the galaxy center, the dumber you are, and the slower you go, the longer you live. A fast, smart, malevolent force from the outermost region reaches into the lower zones spreading death and destruction.

Vinge depicts different types of non-human intelligence in a really thought provoking way.
example the Tines who are dog like animals who have human or greater than human intelligence when gathered in packs; they are intelligent, pack animals that live on a close-in feudal world. Many individuals make up a personality. They don’t have hands but use their jaws and paws together in a coordinated way to get things done.
The Skroderiders who are plant-like creatures who become intelligent when paired with carts that some being had created for them billions of years ago
and beings of nearly god-like intelligence created by evolving computer networks, and more.
He also comes up with interesting astronomy by splitting the galaxy up into zones in which physics is differentiated, so that it's possible for certain creatures to travel at beyond light speed and become advanced, and for others to be trapped in zones of slowness (like Earth).

The entertainment to cost ratio of this book is enormous. It is long, it is well written, it gets you thinking when you put it down, and it makes you want to re-read it.

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Highly original and intensely exciting

ByBrian Kon January 5, 2016

Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase

Highly original and intensely exciting. The universe, along with the characters, are established quickly. While complex initially, the majority of the book adds little new information to digest. As such, I consider this book to be a more accessible version of Hyperion.

Also interesting is the technological juxtaposition which makes up the central story line. A medieval world set in a universe with limitless (and accessible) technology somehow made each setting seem more alive.

What truly sets this work apart are the "zones" of the galaxy and the variety of alien life forms present within. Breathtakingly original ideas that leave the mind reeling. Rarely does the scale of a novel reach the level that was created here. And maybe that is the key point, as the zones represented a major plot device, understanding and visualizing the scale of events throughout the novel was critical. Add in wolf-like pack animals with combined conscientiousness that are more clever than humans... tree-like creatures as old as history that use computers to store memories and a 4-wheeled cart to move around... yes please!

There is not much wrong with this work, and oddly the one detraction may also be considered a strong point. The focus of the novel is very narrow, at least from a character perspective. Many times, very interesting and critical events were given a few sentences. A billion lives lost... civilizations destroyed... etc. In the end, the narrow focus in an such an interesting setting makes this a great read that is not as daunting as some other sci-fi classics.

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Completely different

ByC. L. Mathewon April 26, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I have never read anything quite like this book. I usually prefer fantasy and this is sci fi. The book does have a humanoid race, but also other completely unique races that are well developed. The way the universe works is also different than anything I have read before.

This book was a complicated read that pulled me into it. Not sure I can properly find words to describe it. I highly recommend it if you don't mind a long read. There are 4 books in the series.

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A Potentially Great Book That Could Use More Heart

ByScott Collinson December 19, 2015

Format: Mass Market PaperbackVerified Purchase

1992 must've been a really good year for sci-fi literature, because the Hugo Award for Best Novel had two winners, Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" and Connie Willis's "Doomsday Book." I haven't read the latter yet, but if the competition is anything to by then it must be a damn fine novel. Still, "A Fire Upon the Deep" is the kind of book that is clearly divided into multiple storylines which ultimately converge, and thus it suffers from the issue of having one plot thread dominate the others. I'm sure everyone who's read this book has their favorite section of the story, with my own being the Johanna storyline as it has some of the most compelling characters and world-building, and make no mistake, Vinge's novel excels at world-building.

The aliens are particularly fascinating to imagine as living things, with the Tines and Riders each having their own history and culture, and it is kind of a shame that these species had to be slightly bogged down by pulp-esque human characters. What I mean by that is that the humans in "A Fire Upon the Deep" are—for the most part—reminiscent of pulp fiction protagonists in the sense that they have a penchant for melodrama, but lack the dimensions to back it up. The kid characters aren't anything special, but they aren't annoying at least, and Johanna is developed enough to have something of an internal conflict going on when compared to Jefri, her younger (brat) brother. Even though two of the heroes of this book are in fact children, "A Fire Upon the Deep" is a deliciously dark and sometimes downright pessimistic space-opera that offers a f*ck-ton of death and destruction, much of which happens off-screen (or would it be off-page?). There is quite a bit of violence, although nothing too graphic so as to invoke queasiness, but there is definitely a level of carnage harking back to the works of Robert E. Howard. Weirdly enough, Vinge's novel has some fantasy elements mixed in with what is really a hard sci-fi tale.

Should you read it, then? I'd say so, but I'd recommend keeping your expectations in check prior to tackling this book as it is a bit of a door-stopper (a solid 600+ pages), and takes some patience to get through the slower parts. When it gets going, though, it becomes quite engrossing, and despite technically being part of a series it functions pretty well as a standalone work. Great read for folks who prefer world-building and a mind-bending premise over three-dimensional characters.

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Most recent customer reviews

A neat space opera

A neat space opera, overflowing with intelligent alien lifeforms at various stages of development -- think Star Trek or Mass Effect for a rough idea of the setting, but with the...Read more

Published 13 days ago by Joe Kessler

Five Stars

good

Published 23 days ago by Micah Pezdirtz

certainly among the best in sf

Highly imaginative, certainly among the best in sf. Docking one star for slightly rushed ending.

Published 1 month ago by Jean-paul Kneip

I keep coming back to this book

This book has a lot to say about many interesting subjects - the nature of intelligence, of the self, of technology and progress and modes of advancing technology.Read more

Published 1 month ago by Scott Price

Love it

Absolutely great sci-fi writer. One of my favorites. Take your time with his books though. There's so much to enjoy in his worlds.

Published 3 months ago by Eric

Much of it good, some of it ok and a scant few ...

Let me preface my review by saying I read a lot of sci fi. Much of it good, some of it ok and a scant few that were pretty horrible.Read more

Published 3 months ago by William Nelson

Among the best sci-fis ever written

I have read hundreds of putative classic sci-fi novels and this, alongside Asimov and Simmons, constitutes the very best of the genre.Read more

Published 4 months ago by Christopher H. Chatham

This is one of my favorite light reads in SF (my other favorite authors are ...

This is one of my favorite light reads in SF (my other favorite authors are Kim Stanley Robinson (novels, not short stories), U.K.Read more

Published 4 months ago by David.G.Wonnacott

Wow

So much going on, and so inventive. This was like reading two different books, about two different worlds, at the same time. Can't wait to re-read!

Published 4 months ago by Oaktowner

Whoah. That's deep.

This is a small story set in a very, very big universe, and it'll spark some crazy good philosophical conversations when you're done reading it.

The aliens are great.Read more

Published 6 months ago by S B

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