In A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge chucks his readers into the deep end of a universe that is a lot more complicated that we can imagine. For the first few chapters, I flailed around a bit trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I don’t want that to sound like a complaint. I like that about books. It takes skill to ground readers in a science fiction novel without having to just tell us everything.
(On a side note, it was very interesting to read this essay while I was working my way through this book, especially their fourth point. (Yes, I linked to Cracked. Deal with it.))
The first chapter sets off the book like a short fuse. We meet a group of humans in deep space who are messing around with an archive. They wake up something, an intelligence that is bent on universe-wide domination. Within a few pages, the humans cook up a scheme to evacuate. One ship makes it to relative safety. The other brings the malignant intelligence back to their home planet.
At this point, the book splits into many different perspectives. (From here on, it seems like every time you might get bored with a character, the perspective switches.) And the perspectives are so different that it’s almost like reading two completely different books, at least until all the protagonists meet up at the end. Two of these perspectives are children who survived the mad dash to that relative safety I mentioned. These children, Jefri and Johanna, find themselves on a previously undiscovered planet inhabited by an ingeniously inventive race of sentient canids. These canids are small packs (each pack is an individual personality) that live in opposing kingdoms. The children are split between the camps. This part of the whole book is like a classic planetary exploration novel, but much better written. The other perspective, the space opera part of the book, is narrated by librarian Ravna Bergsndot.
The children’s plots, for most of the book, describe a war between the two canid camps. They would have been interesting enough on their own. But for me, it’s the Ravna chapters that really make the book because they raise the stakes, on the one hand, and on the other, they keep the reader rooted in the larger story of that malevolent intelligence taking over entire swathes of the inhabited galaxy. Further, Ravna’s perspective introduces the reader to the concepts of Powers (super intelligences that have transcended from “lower” civilizations) and the Zones. Ranging out from a central point, the Unthinking Depths, the universe in this novel is arranged in zones. The further away from the depths one goes, the more advanced the technology. The Beyond, for example, allows faster than light travel. In the Transcend, anything is possible.
Back to the plots. Jefri has fallen in with a group of Tines (the pack minded canids) who lie to him in order to gain a technological edge on their enemies. (The planet the children landed on is just over the border in the Slow Zone, where faster than light travel and whole host of other technologies just aren’t possible. Also, the Prime Directive doesn’t seem to exist in this universe.) He never discovers that this group are the ones that killed his parents. Johanna falls in with the other group, who are much more benign but who have been infiltrated by Jefri’s group. As the book rolls on, the children unknowingly find themselves on a collision course.
Ravna’s plot is a lot more intricate. First, her perspective allows us to follow the spread of that intelligence, known as the Blight. This part is supplemented by news posts (much like Usenet posts) that share legitimate news, wild theories, calls to action, and more. Second, her plot covers her attempt to rescue the children stranded in the Slow Zone and recover something (they’re not sure what) that will help them defeat the blight.
As I read, I had to admire Vinge’s sense of pacing. He’s got a planetary war brewing on one side and a galactic chase on the other. The whole second half of the book sets up the aforementioned collision course. When it all comes together, this book goes from great to spectacular.
A Fire Upon the Deep was written in the early 1990s. It’s only recently that Vinge published the sequel, The Children of the Sky. Fortunately, I know a library that has a copy.