| SF Reviews by Aaron M. Renn | By Author - By Title - By Date Reviewed |
Conclusion: Highly recommended, but contains flaws
Vinge mentions the old legend of the curse of the mummy's tomb on page one, and that's exactly what this book is. Humans tamper with an ancient power they don't understand and unleash a horror upon the galaxy. Now it is up to a handful of humans (and aliens) to put the genie back in the bottle.
There are a number of elements of pure genius in the book. None greater than the Zones of Thought setting, one of the most stimulating and thought provoking universes ever created. The Milky Way (and presumably other galaxies) is divided into four concentric zones radiating from the center of galaxy. As distance from the galactic core increases, things go faster. I say "things" because it's not clear exactly what is included, but some of them include computers, starship speeds, and mental processes. The four zones are:
- The Unthinking Depths. Most of the stars of the galaxy including the galactic core lie in this innermost circle. Virtually all technology ceases functioning. No known civilizations exist.
- The Slow Zone. The next band surrounding the Depths. So named because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Civilization is possible but difficult. Most species reach the maximum technological height of the Slowness, then regress. Earth is in the Slow Zone (though some humans did make it to the Beyond).
- The Beyond. This is where the high civilizations of the galaxy exist. Thousands if not millions of different species live in this band near the edge of the galactic disk, filling virtually every habitable planet. Faster than light travel and communications as well as advanced computer and AI systems can exist here. Worlds are linked via the Known Net, an Internet like communications medium. The record of advanced civilization in the Beyond goes back to the Ur-Partition - five billion years worth. Few species survived that entire time, of course, but the records of them remain in archives scattered throughout the Beyond.
- The Transcend. This Zone includes the very edge of the galaxy and presumably inter-galactic space. It is so-named because beings and computer systems here normally "transcend" beyond the civilizations in the Beyond, becoming super-sophonts that cannot be comprehended by lesser beings.
The evil being humans unleashed - termed "the Blight" by those in the Beyond - is a creature of the Transcend. As such, it is a creature of a nature we cannot understand, so we learn little about it. In fact, there's quite a bit in this book that we end up not knowing much about. This could be viewed as a flaw, but it has certainly had the positive effect of stimulating speculation and discussion.
The humans created the Blight at High Lab in the Transcend. Realizing at the last what they had done, they plotted to escape. Their plan was to flee to the Low Beyond, where the encroaching slowness would thrawt any attacks from the Transcend. Their planned rendezvous point was a small, insignificant planet just inside the Beyond.
The rendezvous planet is populated by a sophont race dubbed the Tines. They are the second wonder of the book. The Tines are a dog like race existing at a medieval level of technology. They have the unique feature of only being sentient in packs of four to six or so. Any less and the Tines are little more than animals. Any more and the management of the group mind becomes too difficult. Vinge does an excellent job developing unique features of the Tines, though as I will soon explain they are also one of his great failures. Whatever one may think about them though, it is undeniable that they are one of the most interesting and unique aliens in with world of SF.
Vinge also does an excellent job with the other aliens in this book, particularly the Skroderiders. I won't go into great detail on them, but they were extremely well conceived and developed. I personally found them more believable than the Tines, though not quite as interesting.
A Fire Upon the Deep has that sense of granduer that makes for a great SF novel. The story stretches across billions of years, thousands of light years, innumerable species, high tech and low tech, humans and multiple aliens, grand concepts, and more. It certainly deserved the Hugo Award that it won in 1993.
However, there is a dark side to AFUtD. Note that my description of them contains SPOILERS. You have been warned.
. . . . . . . . .
Early in the book the Zones of Though universe is explained to us in a conversation at a bar on Relay. This scene was totally contrived. Pham was controlled by the Old One. There was no reason for him to ask about the nature of the galaxy. Everyone else already knew it in the story and Pham could easily have pretended to have read about it in the library. No one would have suspected. I was very down on the book at that point, then got hit with ....
By far the most outrageous plot weakness is the failure of Ravna and company to suspect that Jefri was being manipulated by the Tines. Until Pham starts to get some suspicions about half way through the book, everything Jefri says is taken at face value. By the time anyone starts to suspect something is up, it is too late. The Flensers have already been given advanced weapon designs and radios. I thought this was ridiculous and it grated on me the whole time I was reading. An eight year old kid is highly manipulable. Ravna knows that there is a war on the Tines planet and that one side had much to gain from advanced technology. The fact that Jefri explicitly begged for guns should have sealed it. Everybody in this universe is paranoid and spends hours analyzing possibilities of everything in the newsgroups, yet nobody suspects Jefri might be being used. Also, while I didn't expect these people to have a Prime Directive, one would think that they would have put at least a little thought into the practical and ethical problems introducing high technology into a backwards culture.
Another problem is Vinge's failure to fully develop the Tines. He spends a large amount of time explaining their unique pack mind nature and various implications of that (for example, their inability to get close to one another), but then far too often makes them behave exactly like humans. Lord Steel in particular is a flawed character in this regard. He is nothing more than a generic Evil Overlord type, albeit one who has read the FAQ.
Having a group of high tech people stranded on a low tech world - and children no less - is a plot device I've always hated in SF, and I didn't care much for it in this book either. I would rather the parents survived and the Tines had a more advanced technology from the get go.
With these shortcomings all coming out early in the book, it is easy to see why a number of people don't like it. The first third of the book is by far the worst and it sets a negative tone that persists through the rest of it. Lucky for Vinge that he has so much great stuff to counterbalance this.
Finally, in general the characters are rather poorly done and unlikeable. Ravna in particular is annoying. She has sex with a man put together from spare body parts by a Power, but has only about two seconds of confusion and angst about it. She refuses to let the galaxy know the truth about the Skroderiders, thus perhaps dooming billions to death. Even at the end, no one knows they are the tools of the Blight. What happens if someone stumbles across another Blight archive in the Transcend? Bad news.
As I said, despite the flaws, Vinge has put together an intriguing novel and an absolutely wonderful universe. A Fire Upon the Deep is a must read for any serious SF fan. I'm eagerly looking forward to reading his current book, A Deepness in the Sky, which is set in the same universe.
%A Vinge, Vernor %T A Fire Upon the Deep %I Tor %D 1993-02 (original publication 1992-04) %G ISBN 0-812-51528-5 %P 613 pp. %0 mass market paperback, US$5.99
Reviewed on 1999-07-01
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