A Deepness in the Sky: Vernor Vinge (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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I do not think it is possible to anthropomorphize aliens and their society any more than Vinge does here.

The 'Spiders' are undergoing a scientific revolution with all the revolutionary cultural changes that come with it.

When a new alien species is discovered on a planet orbiting an oscillating On-Off star, they immediately see this as an opportunity for potential new scientific discoveries, i. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. And that's ultimately what great books do: not only do they show us worlds we can imagine; they show us worlds we can't. This is a ‘hard’ space opera, with speed of light limit on communication/travel, quite unusual for the genre.

My favorite "sf notion" from this book is Focus, a more elaborate type of mind control with no element of hypnotism.One character in particular (Pham)--while one of the most interesting characters, Vinge probably spent a good 60 or 70 pages over the course of the book fleshing out his backstory. They use these Focused people to run/manage the hardware and also to keep tabs on the Qeng Ho folks. and considering only fans of the series are likely to have carried on to book three - that doesn't bode particularly well. Taken together with this prequel, its title always reminds me of "Smoke on the Water" ("Fire in the sky!

But, with his trip down to Lands Command to have taken him through wondrous and strange places, seeing how the Dark affects their world and thinking about the means they’ll need to change it, when he reaches the end of his journey, and his schemes fall on the ears of the only person who could really hear them, Sherkaner will find himself in the years ahead in a post of great responsibility, holding in his hands the future of all of them. It takes longer than it should for the ties to grow strong enough to tug on your heart-strings, and somewhere in that delay the fifth star is lost from the rating. I came to both books with high expectations and was eager for a big-canvas space opera filled with mind-boggling technologies, exotic aliens, galactic civilizations, and a big cast of characters. I guess I would have loved the book if Vinge would have handled it like his first novel, namely in concentrating on a few characters and a tight narration structure. While the payoff in the end fell just a little short to me, the book is very well written, the premise is brilliant, and Vinge is a master of atmosphere.The author really threw me for loop for the first quarter of the book, I thought may be he is too lazy to think up weird alien names, silly bast that I am.