[HN Gopher] A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)
___________________________________________________________________
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)
Author : cybernautique
Score : 236 points
Date : 2021-10-03 10:41 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| twodayrice wrote:
| Vernon Vinge True Names. It's prophetic.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Cloud computing, splitting identities across platforms, general
| fracturing of perceptions between two humans looking at the
| same set of information (you can only "see" the part of
| cyberspace if you imagine it correctly step by step), etc.
| Amazing read considering when it was written.
| scott-smith_us wrote:
| I was reading through a list of Hugo and Nebula award winning
| books (fairly late in life) when I discovered Vernor Vinge.
|
| "A Fire Upon the Deep" and also "A Deepness in the Sky" were both
| astonishingly great books.
|
| After that, I started going through his catalog. Can't recommend
| enough for lovers of hard sci-fi and expertly-crafted
| storytelling.
| Causality1 wrote:
| A fantastic book. It will really make you ache for more
| information, though. Why do ascended beings only hang around for
| a few years and where do they go? What fraction of living beings
| survived the Blight and the Countermeasure? What is the present-
| day status of Earth?
| marstall wrote:
| This might have been in _A Deepness Upon The Sky_ , but VV runs
| out the "Smart Dust" endgame pretty thoroughly, with the
| conclusion that as miniature sensors reach their peak form of
| total surveillance (floating invisibly, pervasive, low-power
| microwave-burst-powered, mesh networked, video/audio/etc), they
| inevitably destroy civilization.
|
| Always tantalized by that idea, but always wondered why that
| would necessarily be the case ...
| TMWNN wrote:
| >This might have been in A Deepness Upon The Sky, but VV runs
| out the "Smart Dust" endgame pretty thoroughly, with the
| conclusion that as miniature sensors reach their peak form of
| total surveillance (floating invisibly, pervasive, low-power
| microwave-burst-powered, mesh networked, video/audio/etc),
| they inevitably destroy civilization.
|
| This is indeed in _A Deepness in the Sky_. You 're the first
| person in this discussion who's brought this up. This, to me,
| is the most important insight of Vinge in the _Fire_ /
| _Deepness_ series.
|
| >Always tantalized by that idea, but always wondered why that
| would necessarily be the case ...
|
| It's pretty obvious; those with the power to deploy such
| surveillance are always tempted to use and abuse such power.
| (EDIT: Let me reword this. Those with the power to deploy
| such surveillance methods _inevitably_ deploy them. Smart
| dust is far, far, far more all-encompassing and inescapable
| than having security cameras on every street corner. The
| combination of these two things inevitably destroys
| civilization.)
|
| Because the traders in _A Deepness in the Sky_ use coldsleep
| and visit planets every few decades or centuries, they notice
| big changes that occurred incrementally.
| ansible wrote:
| > _Why do ascended beings only hang around for a few years and
| where do they go?_
|
| ... a few years in realtime ...
|
| In the Transcend, they can "clock up" to a very high level.
| Living a million seconds to each one that passes in realtime.
|
| What would it take to create / adapt an intelligence that would
| last that long without falling into a very deep rut, as far as
| thinking goes? Maybe they've died of boredom, maybe they've
| discovered everything they originally sought to learn, maybe
| they've Sublimed (yes, I know, that's a Culture series thing)
| or otherwise gone to a higher plane of existence.
|
| It would have been interesting to explore this further, but
| perhaps Vinge didn't think he could pull that off.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I think looking at things like Stargate SG-1 seasons 9/10 show
| why it's better to be left with such questions than answers.
| And I think that no author would be able to satisfyingly
| describe concepts like that anyway, just the way that their
| "mortal" characters perceive such concepts.
| goatlover wrote:
| Liu Cixin managed to provide some very interesting answers
| regarding the nature of the cosmic dark forest and higher
| dimensional space in Death's End, the third book in the Three
| Body Problem trilogy. The Expanse book nine, Leviathan Falls,
| will probably explain the advanced alien conflict and unknown
| aggressors that proceeded human discovery in the distant
| past. Given how the authors have handled mysterious alien
| stuff so far in the first eight books, looks like they can
| pull it off.
| stormking wrote:
| Oh come on, it's a nice book and I enjoyed reading it but
| his physics are pure bullshit and his game theory is based
| on pop psychology.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I'll have to check it out! I've been delinquent on reading
| those.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I quite enjoyed SG-1 seasons 9 and 10. Perhaps I would also
| enjoy having those answers.
| marstall wrote:
| One of my favorite images from the book is a fleeting mention
| of a star system that has been completely taken over by the
| sinister ancient AI (that is capable of leaping into the
| material world). Just a glimpse of enormous struts connecting
| the planets ...
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Easily one of my favorite books of all time. It's also always
| thoroughly enjoyable to reread, there's lots of little details
| and foreshadowings you catch each time.
| jordanpg wrote:
| These are the only sci-fi books I'm aware of that include a
| believable, fleshed-out secular explanation for the existence of
| supernatural, god-like beings in the Transcend.
|
| As an atheist who usually can't say out loud what I really think
| about facile, Earth-bound supernatural beliefs, I was _enchanted_
| to find this feature included in this already-mesmerizing world.
| stormking wrote:
| When I read that Ravna had a degree in "Applied Theology", I
| loughed out loud.
| btown wrote:
| Highly, highly recommend Vinge's _A Deepness In The Sky_ [0],
| which won the Hugo in 2000.
|
| It's a hard-sci-fi story about how various societies, human and
| alien, attempt to assert control & hegemony over centuries of
| time (in many ways thinking of this as a distributed systems and
| code documentation problem!), and how critical and impactful the
| role of language translation is in helping people to understand
| foreign ways of thinking.
|
| At the novel's core is a question very akin to that of
| philosophical antipositivism [1]: is it possible (or optimal for
| your society's stability) to appreciate and emphasize with people
| wholly different from yourselves, without interpreting their
| thoughts and cultures in language and description that's familiar
| to yourselves... even if in so doing this becomes more art than
| science? Is creative translation ethical if it establishes power
| dynamics that would not be there otherwise? There's a mind-
| blowing meta-narrative to this as well when you think about how
| the _reader_ should interpret the book with that question in
| mind, though to say anything more would delve into spoilers. And
| lest you think it 's just philosophical deepness, it's also an
| action-packed page-turner with memorable characters despite its
| huge temporal scope.
|
| While technically it's a prequel to A Fire Upon The Deep, it
| works entirely standalone, and I would argue that Deepness is
| best read first without knowing character details from its
| publication-time predecessor Fire. Content warnings for mind
| control and assault (though they're handled thoughtfully IMO).
| With Asimov's Foundation being adapted for TV (also recommend, if
| for the visuals alone), if you want even more sci-fi that speaks
| to societal rise and decline, and the lengths to which people
| will manipulate others in the name of control and survival, this
| is a must-read.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-
| Thought/dp/0812536... [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipositivism
| cdogl wrote:
| +1. A Deepness in the Sky is one of the most underrated works
| of speculative fiction that I've read. It is a masterwork of
| plotting and character work. A Fire Upon the Deep has some
| great ideas and some characters that have stuck with me, but I
| think Deepness is a far superior work. Its brilliance is that
| it has the structure of a great work of fiction but you can
| basically just read it as straight pulp science fiction and
| have a fun time.
| [deleted]
| miohtama wrote:
| I rate it 6/5
| amosj wrote:
| This is an extraordinary book and one of my top 5 among many a
| science fiction novel.
|
| "You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that [we] can
| depend on? there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends
| forever"
|
| it's got VR headsets, distributed computers - hacking plays a
| major role. Only way it could be better is if I could forget
| the plot so I could read it again
| jf wrote:
| I've enjoyed each reread almost as much as the first. What a
| book!
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Not only is Deepness one of the best sci-fi stories I've read,
| it's also immensely better than Fire Upon the Deep. I read it
| first, and it's basically essential sci-fi in my book.
| ak217 wrote:
| A Fire upon the Deep is more flawed and uneven, but
| correspondingly more ambitious and thought-provoking. To me
| both are easily among the top 5 sci-fi novels ever written. I
| wish Vinge would keep writing more about Pham Nuwen's
| adventures. And to the grandparent poster's point, there are
| far more dimensions to A Deepness in the Sky than the one
| about communicating with alien cultures (the Focused is just
| one example). Both books are brilliantly multi-faceted,
| though the Tines World is a slog.
| rsync wrote:
| Agreed that _Deepness in the Sky_ is better than _Fire Upon
| the Deep_.
|
| However, in my opinion, _Fire Upon the Deep_ _should be the
| better book_ and has, in many ways, deeper and more thought-
| provoking concepts at play.
|
| The problem is, none of them get fully explained or resolved.
|
| The book wraps up the character driven story arcs and the
| much deeper, conceptual story arcs involving non-human actors
| just peter out ...
| jl6 wrote:
| Fire has the most breathtaking, hooking first chapter of
| any book I've read.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Huh I just recommended that some do go forward with a deepness
| in the sky, but read a fire upon the deep first because of the
| aforementioned content warnings.
|
| I think if I didn't already have some faith in the author I
| would have just stopped because the theming is so dark
| joe-collins wrote:
| It was definitely dark, and before I was halfway through I
| was desperate for the alien chapters just because all of the
| humans were just so damned miserable.
| btown wrote:
| It's almost like the way in which a society is described to
| you affects how engaged you are in their success... which
| is entirely the meta-textual point!
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I am a little confused. Which of the books are you and GP
| talking about that is so dark?
| db48x wrote:
| They are talking about A Deepness in the Sky. The good
| guys lose pretty hard and suffer as a result.
| Terretta wrote:
| Pulling this point to the TL;DR top:
|
| _A Deepness in the Sky_ (1999) is a prequel set 20k years
| earlier than _A Fire Upon the Deep_ (1992).
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| _Deepness_ introduced me to the concept of software
| archaeology. I won 't spoil it, but there's a really fun bit
| when a character, digging deeply into the bowels of software
| systems in this far-future human society, makes an observation
| about the basis for timekeeping in the oldest systems.
|
| The "focused" remind me of the mentats from the Dune universe,
| but less general purpose-- more like replicating feedback-based
| control systems. I have a back-of-the-mind worry that our
| society will end up with a class of citizens working in
| "focused" roles powering "intelligent" systems.
| blincoln wrote:
| I also really appreciated the software archaeology, and the
| projection forward of what were then common ways of
| communicating on the internet (Usenet, etc.) into the distant
| future where they might actually make sense again due to the
| transmission times and bandwidth for interstellar messages.
|
| I definitely recommend both. I didn't realize he'd written a
| third in the series, but I'll be giving that a look.
| bitwize wrote:
| There's a meme phrase that applies quite literally to Focus,
| and has similar implications in the real world to those in
| the novel. That phrase is "weaponized autism".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| If we're going in this direction, you might find enjoyable
| the book _Echopraxia_ (and its predecessor, _Blindsight_ ).
| Without spoiling too much, it features a group of people
| that pushed their cognitive wetware _and hardware_ to the
| point they can 't even communicate with normal humans
| anymore.
| scott-smith_us wrote:
| I've read Blindsight, but wasn't aware of Echopraxia.
| I'll look for it.
|
| One common disappointment I have with sci-fi is how often
| AIs or alien intelligence are so close to human
| intelligence. In the Star Trek universe, every alien
| species is essentially humanoid with some added
| prosthetic and makeup. This is understandable in a weekly
| TV show with a tight schedule and budget. But I've read
| lots of books where the aliens or AIs not only act human,
| they think and reason like humans. What a boring waste!
|
| There was a lot to like about Blindsight, but I
| particularly appreciated the completely alien life forms
| and their interpretation of broadcasts coming from Sol.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| _Echopraxia_ will not disappoint you, then.
|
| And along the lines of good portrayal of non-human
| intelligence, I can also recommend _Children of Time_ ,
| and its sequel, _Children of Ruin_. Both deal with Earth
| animal species getting uplifted and left to create their
| own civilizations.
| bitwize wrote:
| We've observed perhaps the closest thing to alien
| intelligence in the form of intelligent cephalopods --
| like squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish. What surprises me
| about octopuses is how, despite a brain structure that
| diverged from our lineage perhaps billions of years ago
| and is vastly different from ours (they have a small
| central brain and enormously innervated tentacles each
| with its own local processing), they manifest what we
| readily recognize as affection and contempt for their
| human caretakers. They will nuzzle a favored human with
| their tentacles, and squirt water at a disliked human
| through their siphon. They do not need to be trained to
| do this. Either they are capable of experiencing
| emotional bonds broadly similar to ours and our
| terrestrial pets', or they are very, very good at faking
| it.
|
| I didn't use to think this way, but now if we ever met an
| alien species, it wouldn't surprise me if we had enough
| cognitive and emotional common ground to establish
| meaningful relations provided they are carbon-based
| lifeforms or analogous.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| In the end, it all comes down to food and comfort.
|
| I can't imagine a life form that won't look fondly upon
| another life form that helps them get their preferred
| food, and helps limit or avoid discomfort.
|
| Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The character in Blindsight didn't push anything, they
| lost half their brain to a bioweapon.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I wasn't talking about the protagonist.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Who else doesn't communicate? The vampire isn't a
| candidate for having done anything to themselves.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Ok, so specifically, I meant the Bicameral Order from
| _Echopraxia_.
| hnmullany wrote:
| The protagonist is a synthesist - whose sole job is to
| translate the incomprehensible in-language of the
| augmented scientists to mission control
| maxerickson wrote:
| They speak sensible english.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Within that context, The title "Programmer-at-Arms" is the
| absolutely positively coolest three-word string I've
| encountered in English Language so far :)
| perihelions wrote:
| If anyone's purchasing this as an ebook, note that there is
| (unusually) a DRM-free version available [0]. I'm not sure if
| this is the publisher (Tor Books) or the author's decision -- the
| publisher's DRM philosophy been discussed on HN [1][2] but I
| don't know what the current information is.
|
| [0] for example (.epub), https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/a-fire-
| upon-the-deep-1
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630104 ( _" One Year
| Later, the Results of Tor Books UK Going DRM-Free_")
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3885513 ( _" More on DRM
| and ebooks"_)
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Tor Books has had a policy of not having DRM on their eBooks
| for years now. https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2013/05/tor-b...
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Tor books is well known for publishing their entire library
| DRM-free. It's pretty awesome that such a reputable publisher
| has made their works accessible.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| This is the book that reignited my love for sci-fi after college.
| It's the only book I've ever read twice.
| db48x wrote:
| You should read A Deepness in the Sky then :)
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| _Rainbows End_
|
| No apostrophe. The last chapter is "The Missing Apostrophe".
|
| See also:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/RainbowsEn...
|
| Memorable book. The method of digitizing the library is
| unforgettable.
| marstall wrote:
| For those that aren't familiar, a short teaser:
|
| Future archaeologists have traveled to a remote asteroid to
| investigate an alien artifact found within it, a computing device
| of some kind. They bring it to life and begin extracting its data
| and programs for their research.
|
| A debate breaks out about the substantial virus risk known to be
| associated with these "found" computing devices. They decide to
| cut and run, but not before the artifact has regained its ancient
| sentient awareness, unbeknownst to the crew.
|
| They wipe and rebuild their onboard computers as quickly and
| thoroughly as they can.
|
| But as they are rocketing away, the artifact scans their ship and
| finds a neglected peripheral on its surface.
|
| A software vulnerability is found! It makes its move.
| dsm9000 wrote:
| This scene in the book is maybe one of the earliest examples of
| fuzzing being used n fiction :-) ?
| marstall wrote:
| what's fuzzing?
| detaro wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzing
| kabdib wrote:
| Fuzzing was used in Thomas J Ryan's _The Adolescence of P-1_
| , circa 1977 (in an attack against some IBM mainframe's
| supervisor).
|
| (TAoP1 is a much-overlooked example of . . . well, I wouldn't
| call it cyberpunk, but definitely counter-culture computing.
| In the IBM world, I think that means you refuse to wear a
| tie. It's technically dated -- think modems-and-megabytes --
| but still kind of fun).
| bitwize wrote:
| Vernor Vinge did write _True Names_ , which is often
| considered a foundational cyberpunk text (even predating
| Gibson).
| [deleted]
| jrootabega wrote:
| TIL archive.org has a lending library. This is a great book.
| dekhn wrote:
| vinge's books set me on my life path decades ago. I still feel
| like the first book remains unresolved.
| dmd wrote:
| Here: https://3e.org/vvannot/
|
| is Vinge's *ANNOTATED* copy of A Fire Upon The Deep; all the
| editing notes he, his editors, and test readers sent to each
| other during the writing of the book.
|
| This should be mirrored more widely before it gets lost...
| cletus wrote:
| This is one of several books I read in the 90s that I still think
| about and love so much. Startide Rising and Downbelow Station are
| the other ones that immediately springs to mind.
|
| This book (and Startide Rising) are very much in the space opera
| camp. There's really no basis in physics for the zones in this
| book but I really love the ideas. I love the Tines. I also love
| the idea of the arms race that was unwittingly started on this
| world.
|
| If you like the theme of sudden technological advance, I highly
| recommend CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series. They're sets of
| trilogies and I think it's up to ~15 books now? This series is
| set in the same world as Downbelow Station (tangentially). The
| central premise is that FTL jumping is possible but difficult. In
| this series, a group of would-be colonists awake from jump sleep
| to find they have no idea where they've jumped to. They can't get
| any star bearings and they end up ultimately settling on a world
| that has an alien species on it that technologically is around
| the 19th century. It's not a fast-paced series but I love the
| thoughtfulness and introspection of it.
| db48x wrote:
| > There's really no basis in physics for the zones
|
| That's because the Zones are artificial.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Some other really thought provoking books by Vinge which often go
| overlooked is "The Peace Wars" and "Marooned in Realtime"
|
| My personal guilty favorite (I say guilty because he really buys
| into the outdated concept of the technological singularity) is
| Rainbow's End, which deals with notions of augmented reality,
| digitalization of books, and even touches on right-to-repair
| issues in a way.
| carapace wrote:
| (It's _Rainbows End_ w /o the apostrophe.)
| Sharlin wrote:
| Nitpick: It's _Rainbows End_ , without an apostrophe.
| rout39574 wrote:
| It was my impression that he was the first articulator of the
| singularity concept. Other than fashion, why do you think it's
| outdated?
|
| I consider Rainbow's End to be a pretty good picture of what it
| might be like to live through the singularity.
|
| Especially evocative: the kid at the end chipping a skill his
| (grandfather?) worked for a career to accumulate, using it for
| a weekend, and then discarding it.
| _jal wrote:
| > why do you think it's outdated?
|
| I don't know if 'outdated' is the right word. Maybe just not
| that useful, except as mind-candy?
|
| It is mostly a computationally-focused reformulation of the
| Rapture.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Yeah, this covers it for me. Maybe outdated isn't wrong so
| much as nothing more than a fun intellectual exercise and
| what if - there's no road map, there's no solid
| technological basis for reaching a singularity, imo there's
| not much theory to it outside speculation and some fairly
| specious projections.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| See my reply to the other child of this comment, but
| basically I don't see a solid roadmap anymore from here to
| there - sure there's a a lot of progress and advances but
| taken as a whole, the singularity idea doesn't account for
| anything _but_ technological advances as plotted on a curve.
| There are a ton of economic, social, and squishy human
| factors that aren 't really taken into consideration. It's a
| fascinating idea, but I don't find it very realistic or
| practical, much like A.I., or self-driving cars, or casual
| human space travel.
|
| If you had asked me 10-15 years ago, I would still be pretty
| sure it could happen, but the last decade or so of real-world
| technological advance has convinced me otherwise.
| nl wrote:
| Vinge _invented_ the idea (and name) of the singularity.
| carapace wrote:
| No, that was John von Neumann.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Technological.
| ..
|
| Vinge did "present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace"
| in _True Names_ in 1981 though.
|
| > _True Names_ is a 1981 science fiction novella by American
| writer Vernor Vinge, a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre.
| It is one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-
| out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to
| cyberpunk. The story also contains elements of transhumanism,
| anarchism, and even hints about The Singularity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
| hinkley wrote:
| Fuck Ray Kurzweil and his publicists (probably more his
| publicists) for pretending like he owns the idea.
|
| Also a fun bit of sobriety to look back at how sure some of
| us were that the singularity is coming and now we have humans
| arguing on Facebook all day and pausing occasionally to eat
| horse paste. Transcendence hasn't felt this far away since
| the Cold War.
|
| Seems we have some time yet. Just as well, we don't have
| fusion or flying cars yet and while by definition I can't
| know what the singularity will be like, it seems like fusion
| would certainly help with something like that.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| I think it's fairer to say that he named and articulated the
| idea, but there were certainly earlier books that described
| technological singularities (though often centred round
| energy or transport rather than computing).
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I had to google what "ENCRYPTED DAISY download. For print-
| disabled users" means.
|
| " _" Print disabled" books are those that have been specially
| formatted in the DAISY format for users who can not read regular
| print books. These titles are only accessible on a specialized
| device to patrons having a key issued by the Library of
| Congress._"
|
| " _The Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) format is a
| means of creating digital talking books for people who wish to
| hear--and to navigate--written material presented in an audible
| format. DAISY helps those with "print disabilities," including
| blindness, impaired vision, and dyslexia, to read electronic
| texts that have been converted into its format. The DAISY
| consortium was formed in 1996 by talking book libraries around
| the world to lead the transition from analog talking books into
| digital format._"
|
| Imagine; machine readable, content separated from presentation,
| no mandatory awful UI, no DRM; dreadful. Good thing it's
| restricted to special Library issued keyholders only. /s
| User23 wrote:
| To the casual reader there may be some missing context here so
| let me fill it in. The overwhelming majority of "print
| disabled" persons in the USA are blind. The Library of Congress
| is funded to provide gratis talking books[1] for that community
| and provides an app that understands the DAISY format. There
| are also dedicated devices, but I don't know anyone that uses
| them anymore.
|
| While I agree with you that better accessibility is good for
| all users, your framing of this is a bit offensive[2]. I know
| you don't mean to be, but you're framing a big accessibility
| win for a community that faces serious everyday challenges as
| somehow being bad. Maybe don't do that?
|
| Edit: There is the potential for a big mutual win here. If
| sighted persons could pay fair value for DTBs, it would
| incentivize publishers to make more titles available. We would
| get the format's benefits and the blind community would get
| access to more titles.
|
| [1] https://nlsbard.loc.gov/
|
| [2] I'm not speaking for others, I'm relaying what I was told.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Good catch! I wonder how access to DAISY format can be made
| more accessible. Perhaps a service that automatically fills out
| the necessary paperwork?
| si1entstill wrote:
| One of my favorites to be sure - I kept pushing this on my book
| club for weeks until they finally caved. Its one of those works
| where, when people ask "what is it about?" I can never land on a
| succinct answer, and I love it.
| zimmertr wrote:
| Richard Stallman told me this was his favorite book.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Great book. I put Vinge in the same small group of criminally-
| underappreciated scifi authors who can really think and really
| write as Adrian Tchaikovsky and Nick Harkaway. Highly
| recommended.
| JohnMashey wrote:
| 1) In a 2004 article for ACM Queue magazine, I couldn't resist
| excerpting the software archaeology bit as a an introductory
| section:https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039532 and of
| course, as an ancient Unix person, recognized the date.'
|
| 2) In 2007, I was Program Co-Chair for the Hot Chips conference,
| and got Vernor to give a keynote first day. We used keynotes for
| fun topics. (I had a connection via UC Berkeley Prof Kris Pister
| (smart dust), whose Dust Networks company I advised.) Second day,
| I took Vernor around the Computer History Museum in Mountain View
| for the morning to tour.
|
| He said he was doing a sequel to Deepness in the Sky, about Pham
| & Anne's battle with the Emergents (obviously winning, given Fire
| Upon the Deep). Years later, I asked him what happened, as the
| sequel never appeared. He said it was too depressing(i.e., for
| those who thought Deepness dark, imagine the portrayal of the
| Emergents worlds.)
| stormking wrote:
| That was the sequel I wanted to read, instead we got more Game
| of Dogs.
|
| As much as I loved the Tines as an idea, I really hate it when
| large portions of a scifi book take place on some "medieval"
| world. If I wanted that, I would just read fantasy novels.
| JohnMashey wrote:
| An interesting theme unmentioned so far here appears in Fire..,
| Children... & (somewhat) in Deepness...: technology progress
| and it's possible acceleration depending on the information you
| have. Level of civilization tech has fallen (or never existed).
| People a) recall that some tech worked OR b) Know specific
| choices are right ones OR c) Have a computer (or at least a
| book)with detailed instructions. Now: is it possible to rebuild
| tech? If so, which paths and what's quickest way? Often one
| needs to build a chain of techs first. For example, as a
| thought experiment, a time machine can send back a VLSI design
| textbook (which makes clear that planar CMOS wins). If that's
| to 1947, diverts from building big vacuum tube computers into
| pushing to VLSI as fast as possible. But if sent to 1900?
| Likewise, complete design for iPhone sent to 1990 doesn't help
| much.
| JohnMashey wrote:
| As a CS professor, Vernor was always familiar with then-
| current computing researcher(s) and practice, then
| extrapolated into stories.
|
| Hence: 1981 Arpanet => True Names' cyberspace, and lookahead
| to issues of identity and privacy
|
| 1992: USENET => FIre's galactic communication network, with
| mix of well-informed commenters, flamers and out-of-touch
| people
|
| 1999: smart dust => Deepness' localizers (note presentation
| by Pister 1997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust
|
| 2006: Wikipedia revert wars => battles to enforce augment3ed
| reality perceptions
|
| As for issues of sensor nets and surveillance, at 2004 Foo
| Camp, Pam Samuelson and I did a session where I talked about
| the sensor net technology and she talked about issues of
| surveillance, privacy, law that were already surfacing ...
| even years before iPhones.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Camp
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Samuelson
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| Read Vernor Vinge's "The Cookie Monster" to see one of the major
| inspirations for Black Mirror, and a character similar to Elon
| Musk. Full text here:
|
| https://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe44/lsff-book/Vernor%20Vinge%20-...
|
| Also everyone should read Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" to
| understand a plausible outcome of the technological change we are
| witnessing today.
|
| It's a bittersweet book, about being a small human in a world
| where the value of individual creative efforts are overwhelmed by
| the sheer might of automation and vast collaboration and
| technological accumulation.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
|
| You will recognize Pokemon Go, and many other things that
| happened after the book was published (2006). Great foresight.
|
| Wikipedia: Vernor Vinge is an American science fiction author and
| retired professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at
| San Diego State University. He is the first wide-scale
| popularizer of the technological singularity concept and perhaps
| the first to present a fictional "cyberspace" (in his novella
| True Names).
|
| By the way, Adam Back (probably Bitcoin's Satoshi Nakamoto) has
| referenced the True Names novella in interviews when explaining
| why Satoshi Nakamoto remains pseudonymous. So Vinge influenced
| that, too.
| bsanr wrote:
| >It's a bittersweet book, about being a small human in a world
| where the value of individual creative efforts are overwhelmed
| by the sheer might of automation and vast collaboration and
| technological accumulation.
|
| I also hold, strongly and somewhat idiosyncratically, that it
| would work quite well as a Studio Ghibli/Miyazaki film. (Chew
| on that for a minute, hahah.)
|
| RE is _phenomenally_ underrated, not just because of its
| prescience, but also because of the way that it 's
| simultaneously accessible and layered. It's apropos that
| Pokemon-like entities show up in the story since, like the
| original Pokemon games, it's a relatively simple and
| straightforward story, with some complex thoughts and troubling
| implications drifting below the surface. I like the tagline, "A
| novel with one foot in the future," because it perfectly
| alludes to the nature of adolescence, which describes the
| setting and also the age (and up) of people who should be
| reading it if they want to get a glimpse of the times that are
| fast barreling towards us.
|
| Excusing further Japanese pop culture analogies, I get the
| feeling that Vinge fans treat it as FFTA to ZOTs' FFT. Which is
| a bit of a shame, kind of like eschewing 1984 for The Forever
| War.
| scott-smith_us wrote:
| > Also everyone should read Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End"
|
| I often wonder if the AI in "Rainbows End" becomes the "Power"
| that gets resurrected in "Fire upon the Deep".
|
| . . .
|
| *SPOILER!* There's just a hint of the hidden villainy and
| ruthlessness at the end of Rainbow. *SPOILER!*
| philipswood wrote:
| I loved his "Tatja Grimm's World" for its depiction of a human of
| "superhuman" intelligence.
|
| There's a bit of dialog where the one character tells the other
| about information theory in a sentence - and the other groks it
| like Shannon did.
|
| In the same genre is "Understand" by Ted Chiang.
|
| For me good science fiction (if it's not for the physics or math)
| is often about the believable alien or superhuman intelligence.
| mawise wrote:
| This is in my list of top 10 (ish) books I've read.
|
| If you've enjoyed it, He's got two more books in the Zones of
| Thought universe: A Deepness In The Sky, which follows Pham in
| his Queng Ho days before A Fire Upon The Deep (recommended!) as
| well as Children Of The Sky, which follows Ravna and the children
| on the Tines world as a direct sequel to Fire Upon The Deep.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendations! I'll put them on the top of my
| reading list. I generally consider A Fire Upon the Deep to be
| one of the great achievements of human imagination.
|
| Reading this book and discovering Vinge's unique vision of a
| variable physics universe was akin to reading Tolkien and
| discovering his vision of a divine universe.
| hinkley wrote:
| Vinge already cemented himself with the peace war books, but
| his ability to present otherness in the Zones of Thought
| books is probably his most impressive accomplishment.
|
| Spiders you both can and can't understand, and then hive mind
| mammals... The facile approach would be to cut out the
| middleman and make hive insects, and he did not. The speed of
| sound aspect of his hive mind was a brilliant stroke, the
| intergenerational element was the cherry on top.
| akkartik wrote:
| _A Deepness in the Sky_ is my sentimental favorite scifi novel
| of all time. I rarely reread scifi.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I liked Children of The Sky, but in terms of plot it seems
| clearly meant to be a bridge to a next book, and seemed to
| suffer from the "middle book" syndrome of trilogies, losing a
| lot of the faster pace of the first book as it slowly builds up
| the details and tension to be resolved in the next book.
| undersuit wrote:
| There is a short story "The Babbler" set after Children but I
| don't think there will be another full book.
| duskwuff wrote:
| "The Blabber" (not Babbler!) was actually written some time
| _before_ "A Fire Upon The Deep". Some of the details in
| Blabber aren't fully consistent with the later novels; it's
| best seen as a first draft of the Zones of Thought
| universe.
|
| In an interview, Vinge has stated his hope to continue
| Children, but without much conviction:
| https://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/reprint-in-
| dee...
| jrootabega wrote:
| I acknowledge that I'm digressing into general Vinge talk here
| instead of Zones of Thought, but Rainbow's End was good, too,
| as more of a near-future vision that, these days, would barely
| be considered sci-fi. It's also got some elements that are
| scarily analogous to current trends in government/social
| media/political dialogue.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I read Rainbow's End during breaks at the 2006 HOPE
| conference. It was coincidence, just what I had next up in my
| reading list, but I don't think there could have been a
| better setting for it.
|
| I specifically remember putting it away as a session on
| rainbow tables began.
|
| Getting mooned by Jello Biafra was also interesting.
| ghaff wrote:
| On the more general Vinge theme, his "True Names" novella is
| probably overlooked compared to his novels. But, along with
| Varley's "Press Enter" (written about the same time) is a
| really good early take on the "Net" and its intersection with
| the real world.
| nl wrote:
| True Names was really really hard to find for a long time.
| dogman144 wrote:
| new-ish edition is out with good cypherpunk essays
| moonbug wrote:
| Stay away from Children of the Sky unless, having finished Fire
| Upon the Deep, your response was "I'd sure like to hear more
| about those whiny children and the dogs"
| abecedarius wrote:
| When it came out I was also disappointed, but nowadays the
| villainous power-seekers and the unhinged denialist group
| make Vinge seem more clear-seeing than I was. (If you think
| I'm dissing just one side of today's culture wars, nope.)
| ansible wrote:
| Vinge fans (myself included) were expecting another high-
| concept space opera, and weren't that interested in social
| commentary (however relevant that has turned out to be to
| present day society).
|
| It has been a while, maybe I'll give it a re-read at some
| point.
| rsync wrote:
| "Stay away from Children of the Sky unless, having finished
| Fire Upon the Deep, your response was "I'd sure like to hear
| more about those whiny children and the dogs""
|
| See my other comment up-thread ... what I _really want_ is
| the opposite of this. I want the battling civilizations
| beyond the void memes all fleshed out. I want more details on
| how the civilizations "ascended" beyond the (whatever the
| demarcation point was). I want more details on how they came
| back on "our side" of that point and what it means and what
| their motivations are, etc.
|
| _Those_ are the plot pieces and background that are never
| fully fleshed out in Upon the Deep that make me rate it lower
| than In the Sky.
|
| Let me also say ...
|
| I have never played Mass Effect but there is a fascinating
| and deep backstory and created universe for that game that I
| find interesting and terrifying in the same ways I am
| interested in, and terrified by, the Vinge books:
|
| "The Reapers are the original creators of the Citadel and the
| mass relay network. These massive constructs exist so that
| any intelligent life in the galaxy would eventually discover
| them and base their technology upon them - all part of a
| scheme to harvest the galaxy's sentient life in a repeating
| cycle of purges that has continued relentlessly over
| countless millennia. "
|
| https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Reaper
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Too late a warning. I hate post-award contract-filler sequel
| books.
| jwalton wrote:
| I read an interview with Vernon Vinge where he said he had
| this whole story arc with Ravna planned out that he expected
| to take five books in total. It's been 10 years since the
| last Zones of Thought book... Although, it was longer than
| that between book two and book three.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| A Deepness in the Sky is terrifying.
| undoware wrote:
| One of the best books I've ever read. Not only that, the prequel,
| _A Deepness in the Sky_, has the most plausible managerial
| villains I've ever read.
|
| Vinge, man. Vinge.
| flint wrote:
| The first intelligent life from earth to meet extraterestial
| intelligent life will be a dog, and it will speak mandrin.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Have read all of Vinges works. They're all great reads at
| different levels except Rainbows End (that one is a bust IMO).
| The nice thing about them, is that while some are loosely
| related, there is no order they need to be read in.
| atombender wrote:
| I enjoyed the sci-fi parts of this book. The whole thing about
| the ship trying to evade the Blight was some of the best hard
| sci-fi I've come across.
|
| What I liked less was the subplot about the children marooned in
| a medieval-style society of dog-like aliens, which got a bit Game
| of Thrones-y for my taste, and felt like a completely different
| book.
|
| I considered reading A Deepness in the Sky, but then learned it
| involves a civilization of spider-like aliens. How is it?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Sorry, not answering your question, but commenting on the dog
| aliens. I agree that the two stories felt quite disconnected.
| What was interesting about the dog-like aliens though was his
| representation of a telepathic hive-mind. Unfortunately, your
| general argument about those sections still stands though. I
| was actually even reminded of Star Wars: Ewok Adventure which
| arguably is worse than being reminded of GoT.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| In my opinion _A Deepness in the Sky_ is a better book. The
| spiders are more interesting than the dogs, and the two
| storylines are much more closely intertwined.
| db48x wrote:
| What I like about both of them, is how deeply alien the
| aliens feel _at the end of the book_, after characters from
| the separate story lines start interacting more directly. The
| differences are mentioned early, but the alien's point of
| view is told by narrators who, for various reasons, are
| subtly unreliable. Rereading these books is especially
| rewarding.
|
| But I do agree with you that A Deepness in the Sky is better
| in many ways. It's a much more subtle book.
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