A Fire Upon The Deep

by Vernor Vinge

Mass Market Paperback, 624 pages

English language

Published Feb. 15, 1993 by Tor Science Fiction.

ISBN:: 978-0-8125-1528-2
OCLC Number:: 221602076

Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle.

22 editions

Sally Strange reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge

Sci-fi classic I can't believe I didn't read before

5 stars

I have so many questions. Sound-based thought waves? The galaxy has speed zones? Ultimately though it was such a good story that I don't care much about the answers. I was super impressed by (since he was writing in 1993) and absolutely love Vinge's idea of a galaxy-wide internet that's hundreds of millions of years old and nobody knows who started it. That to me seems extremely plausible, given a universe with multiple sentient space-faring species. This was SO much fun, and anyone who loves science fiction should definitely read it.

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge

Imaginative, epic, with some of the best non-human characters in sci-fi.

5 stars

I started reading Children of the The Sky, third and final in this trilogy but really a sequel to this book, so I just reread the beginning as a refresher (and coincidentally extolled its virtues to my neighborhood barista). This wasn't my first Vinge book, I'd read Marooned in Realtime before, which I enjoyed, but this is a far grander story, from the overarching framework of its universe down to the protagonists, including, especially, the non-human ones. The plot sort of drove me nuts with the why-can't-they-see-they're-being-fooled (now that I think about it, that's how I feel about the electorate), but the introduction to this edition ably spells out all the Hugo-winning virtues of this book, and let me just add: puppies.

PeterB reviewed A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought, #1)

Review of 'A Fire Upon The Deep' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"A Fire Upon the Deep" is about the struggle of men and other species to fight off a god-like presence with some bad intentions for the future of the known galaxy.

This was an overall amazing book. The alien species were very diverse and unlike what you read in other books or see in most movies. The "zones of thought" are a great idea which results in interesting problems and solutions (something that is missing from the second book in the series, "a Deepness in the Sky").

It's a fairly lengthy book, but the last third of the book is extremely thrilling and flies by very rapidly.

This is a must read for every one even remotely interested science fiction or space opera.