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Vernor Vinge is probably most well known for an earlier hard science fiction novel A Fire Upon the Deep, a galaxy-spanning tale of super-bright AI gods who interact with "regular" men and women via mortal avatars. A Deepness in the Sky is a pseudo-prequel that details the earlier adventures of one of these avatars, a man named Pham Nuwen, who in AFUD (hehe, great acronym) was used almost like a puppet by a super-bright AI. A Deepness in the Sky takes place thousands of years earlier on the other side of the galaxy and deep within the "Slow Zone" where futuristic technologies like faster-than-light travel and nanomachines are an impossibility.
At the start of the story, Pham Nuwen is an old man who has been trying--across dozens of start systems and several relative millenia--to create an enduring human empire out of the Queng Ho, space-faring traders who visit nearly every corner of human space.
A Queng Ho fleet picks Pham up from an out-of-the-way star system where he'd been marooned and heads for one of the last great mysteries in human space--the On-Off star, a variable sun with a single orbiting planet. For centuries humanity has monitored this enigmatic system and the radio signals that stream from the planet. It is the first evidence of a technologically advanced alien species ever found, and the Queng Ho race towards the distant world with dreams of unimaginable discoveries . . . and equally unimaginable profits stemming from those discoveries.
Too bad they're not the only kids on the block. They arrive at the On-Off system at nearly the same time as a second human fleet shows up--the militaristic Emergents are a relatively new civilization, and at first the two fleets feign friendship and attempt to work together; however, a sneak attack by the Emergents leaves both fleets crippled and only a handful of both communities alive. Their only hope of survival is to wait year after year in the coldness of space while the aliens on the planet below develop an industrial civilization capable of rebuilding the human ships.
Ok, thats enough of spoilers . . . the rest of the book takes off from that point and doesn't let up until the final page.
True to Vinge's style, the aliens, or "Spiders" as the humans call them, are amazingly rendered. We see the Spiders both from their own point of view, and from the human's point of view, which allows the reader to experience the aliens as true extraterrestrials, and as normal beings living normal lives on their normal planet. This juxtaposition is only heightened towards then end of the book when the two species finally make contact.
Like AFUD, A Deepness in the Sky is short on true military action, but nevertheless includes a lot of action sequences that leave you breathless, especially towards the end. In fact, this story probably has more action than AFUD, though a lot of it is the type of fighting that we'd be more familiar with--the Spider nations go through several warring periods, beginning with a global war reminiscent of both WWI and WWII, a decidedly Cold War and then a final war that could have come straight from a Tom Clancy novel . . . something that our world, thankfully, has managed to avoid so far.
There are dozens of characters with their own story arcs--both human and Spider, but Pham Nuwen was definitely my favorite. I don't think I've ever met a character who was so good and yet had such terrible plans for humanity. His actions and machinations really drive the whole story.
Now, I don't wanna give the whole story away, but there are a few things that Vinge nailed that I gotta mention:
- Keeping the science real . . . Vinge has created a compelling story with lots of action and excitement without breaking any of the rules of physics (as we know them, of course)
- Alien aliens . . . the Spiders are weird, and perhaps weirder by the end of the book because at first they don't seem all that weird. Heh, how many times can I use the word weird?
- Timelessness . . . . Vinge creates a world full of amazing technology, but manages to be just vague enough about specific machines and functions that the story isn't dated like so many old classic sci-fi stories.
Anyways, I'll end this little post by giving A Deepness in the Sky ten thumbs way way up (yeah, thats how many thumbs your average Spider would have). In fact, this story is so good I would actually recommend reading it before A Fire Upon the Deep. In my opinion that'd make both stories more enjoyable.
Later . . .
