A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)
by Vernor Vinge
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Book Summary Information
Author: Vernor VingeEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Published: 1993-02-15
ISBN: 0812515285
Number of pages: 624
Publisher: Tor Science Fiction
Book Reviews of A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)
Book Review: A Great Find !!
Summary: 4 Stars
WOW, what a great find!! This is a wonderful "old school" space opera that contains all the necessary elements, i.e. space battles, alien races, great characterization and ancient civilizations with a little medieval action thrown in for good measure.
Usually, reading about alien, animal cultures is something that I try to avoid, but I was amazed by the complexity, depth and integration that Mr. Vinge has achieved with this subject. I had a little difficultly with the first fifth of the book due to the concepts of the "Tines' mind speak" and the "galactic zone", but the understanding is well worth the effort.
This is a stand-alone book, so few out there now, but it was so well written and entertaining I have ordered "A Deepness in the Sky".
Summary of A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)
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
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.
Vinge, Vernor Books
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