A Fire Upon the Deep: 1 (Zones of Thought)

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A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. [1] Space Is Magic: The laws of physics as we know them only hold in the local Zone; farther out, the laws of physics change and things become commonplace that would be impossible marvels on Earth. Ancient Evil: The Big Bad of A Fire Upon the Deep is the Blight, an Eldritch Abomination implied to be a kind of sentient computer virus that is capable of running on both mechanical and organic platforms—i.e., any sentient creature. Humans inadvertently boot up an ancient database that has hosted the dormant Blight for at least a few billion years, and it immediately begins to spread out over the galaxy-wide computer network, infecting both computers and sentient creatures.

Alternate Number System: The Tines have two different number systems: one where they count "by legs" (in base 4) and one where they count "by fore-claws" (in base 10). Confusion between these two systems leads to the accidental meeting of two of the major characters in A Fire Upon the Deep. Amdiranifani is housed in room 33, Jefri is supposed to be imprisoned in room 15 (33 in base 4), and the guard who's taking him there uses the wrong numbering system. A race of butterfly-like insectoids, authoritarian and warlike, who constitute one of the "majority races" of the Vrinimi organization. Giant Spider: A Deepness in the Sky features a whole race of them, and they think humans are absolutely adorable. Our big, googly eyes remind them of their own children.The Blight expands, taking over races and "rewriting" their people to become its agents, murdering several other Powers, and seizing other archives in the Beyond, looking for what was taken. It finally realizes where the danger truly lies and sends a hastily assembled fleet in pursuit of the Out of Band II. It's not shown in A Fire Upon the Deep, but in The Children of the Sky, Tines are shown to have such sharp hearing, and such precise control over the sounds that they can emit from their tympana, that they can use surprisingly fine echolocation as long as the surroundings are sufficiently quiet. This makes up for their poor low-light vision. Batman Gambit: A Deepness in the Sky has a rare example of competing protagonist Batman Gambits. Sherkaner Underhill invaded the Focus system and manipulated it to defend against Nau's genocidal plans, while Pham Nuwen used the localizers to invade the system and manipulate it against Nau. They both almost squash each other by accident, buying Nau valuable time when executing his Evil Plan and leading to the probable death of both Sherkaner and his wife.

A Fire Upon the Deep. While most of the good guys survive, and so does the planet on which most of the novel unfolded, an enormous area of High Beyond is converted to Slow Zone. This destroys the Blight, which is dependent on High Beyond technology for its survival. It is also the deathblow for trillions of beings and countless civilizations across a huge swath of the galaxy, whose existences depended on FTL and the same advanced tech as sustained the Blight. Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon The Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999) and Rainbows End (2006), his Hugo Award-winning novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences. Noodle Incident: Pham Nuwen is a living, unusually bleak example of this trope, after his failed voyage to the Unthinking Depths. In addition, there are many references to his single-handedly ending a civilization-ending pogrom in a matriachal civilization (Strentmannian) with a single warship. Exactly how he accomplishes this is never explained, other then dark innuendo about atrocities committed.Karmic Death: Tomas Nau raped and murdered Qiwi's mother, then brainwashed her into being his lover for something like 50 years. In the climax, Qiwi shoots him in the genitals with a wire-gun, a weapon designed specifically to cause as much damage to organic tissue as possible. Oh, and then he dies. I Choose to Stay: At the end of A Deepness in the Sky, when all of the Focused are being deFocused in stages, Trixia Bonsol is partially deFocused — enough to be self-sufficient and regain her personality — and insists that the process be halted. Being continually Focused on Spider culture for something like 50 years has given her a sense of identity as a Spider, and she feels that complete deFocusing would rob her of that identity. Occasionally the [human characters] say things that reveal what their societies are like. … The example I really wanted to mention of that is when they’re at this place called Harmonious Repose, and they’re negotiating with aliens to fix their ship, and the Skroderiders are haggling with the aliens, and Ravna has never seen haggling before because she’s only ever been in societies where everyone always has perfect information about what everything is worth, and so there’s never any negotiating. “We both know this is worth this, and so this is what the price is going to be.” And I thought that was a really interesting idea.

A tale that burns with the brazen energy of the best space operas of the golden age. Vinge has created a galaxy for the readers of the '90s to believe in...immense, ancient, athrum with data webs, dotted with wonders.” — John Clute, Interzone 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. I mean sure, the zones of consciousness and shared consciousness ideas are fun, and must have been very unique when the book came out. But why is it still getting recommended? There has got be something a little more updated that isn't so cloyingly "novel". I want to like where it's going but not only do I dislike all the characters and their ridiculous sex lives, I can't even get invested in my dislike for them. A Fire Upon the Deep was a favorite of mine after I first read it years ago, and it still holds up pretty well after a second visit, this time in audio. Vinge is a former computer science professor turned writer, and the guy responsible for popularizing the concept of a technological singularity. In the galaxy he imagines here, such singularities have been occurring for eons, technological races or their constructs transcending into godlike artificial minds. However, in this universe, there's a catch: faster-than-light travel and communication only work beyond a certain distance from the galactic core. Thus, the outer darkness is home to unimaginably advanced beings, while the inner "slow zone" protects newly-started civilizations from interference from above. In the jostling middle known as "The Beyond" lives everyone else, including humans, connected by a vast and ancient galactic internet (as envisioned from 1992, when it was still the age of newsgroups and slow image uploads). Danger in the Galactic Core: The laws of physics vary based on distance from the center of the galaxy, and can be divided into Zones of Thought due to the fact that the farther out you go, the more technology is possible. The innermost Zone—the galactic core—is known as the Unthinking Depths, because the laws of physics there are so restrictive that conscious thought isn't even possible—upon entering the Depths, most sentient life forms would simply die immediately due to their brains shutting down.

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Vinge's original title for the novel was "Among the Tines"; its final title was suggested by his editors. [11] Awards and nominations [ edit ] Playing with Syringes: A Deepness in the Sky gleefully teeters on the fence between invoking this and playing it straight. In the Dénouement, while negotiating over what to do with the human POWs, the Spiders insist on keeping Ritser Brughel, unarguably the worst of the surviving war criminals, to themselves. When the humans concede that it would be fair to give him to the Spiders to be punished, the Spiders' response is something along the lines of, "Punish him? Oh, no. We just need a live experimental subject to help our studies of human physiology. Any 'punishment' would be strictly incidental."