A Fire Upon The Deep

Vernor Vinge

Apr 2010 · Zones of Thought Book 1 · Sold by Tor Science Fiction

About this eBook

Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works.

A Hugo Award-winning Novel!

“Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin

Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in 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 this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle.

Tor books by Vernor Vinge

Zones of Thought Series
A Fire Upon The Deep
A Deepness In The Sky
The Children of The Sky

Realtime/Bobble Series
The Peace War
Marooned in Realtime

Other Novels
The Witling
Tatja Grimm's World
Rainbows End

Collections
Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
True Names

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

Vinge imagines an incredibly unique and interesting universe in A Fire Upon the Deep, with novel physics, races, and technology. Further, his writing style gives nothing away to early or blatantly, but instead gives the reader information slowly, giving you time to figure things out on your own. However, while the setting, action, and pacing certainly kept my attention, after finishing the book I realized that it really contained no substance- which is to say that the book really doesn't present any philosophical conjectures. The protagonists *minor spoiler alert* save the day (big surprise), and that's that. There are no far-reaching moral ramifications or grandiose ethical decisions that need to be made, they simply defeat the bad guys and that's that. And while the characters are reasonably developed, you'll notice that they often fall into stereotypical gender roles. Overall, I would say if you're a fan of scifi and want to waste some time, this is an entertaining book, but if you actually want to be intellectually stimulated, you'd be better off with Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

Vernor Vinge is a master of transhumanist/post-singularity sci-fi and the galaxy he constructs in this series is a smart device to get around the problem of novelizations involving post-singularity superintelligent entities and civilizations: namely, we can't know how such beings would behave or even speculate on their motivations.

Some aspects of the book are a little high concept for my tastes and never (or poorly) explained, but otherwise good. The ending is a little unsatisfying, but again good. A worthwhile read if you like your sci-fi with a dash of fantasy.

About the author

Vernor Vinge has won five Hugo Awards, two of them in the Zones of Thought series: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Known for his rigorous hard-science approach to his science fiction, he became an iconic figure among cybernetic scientists with the publication in 1981 of his novella "True Names," which is considered a seminal, visionary work of Internet fiction. His many books also include Marooned in Realtime, Rainbows End and The Peace War.