Subject: Review: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

From: "Aaron M. Renn" <[email-masked]>
Date: 01 Jul 1999 17:49:15 -0400

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
	Review Copyright (c) 1999 Aaron M. Renn

[spoilers near the end, clearly marked as such  --AW]

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 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 thwart 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 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 the next section
contains SPOILERS.  You have been warned.

%A Vinge, Vernor
%T A Fire Upon the Deep
%I Tor
%D 1993-02 (original publication in 1992-04)
%G ISBN 0-812-51528-5
%P 613 pp.
%O mass market paperback, US$5.99 C$7.99

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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.

Aaron M. Renn ([email-masked]) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/