Cynical Monkey

Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge was my first enjoyable space-opera this year. Fire Upon the Deep first made it on my reading list by way of it’s Hugo status. I have a goal of reading all the Hugo award novels. Among the Hugos winners I have read it stood out near the top of the space-opera sub-genre. I found the story really drew me in and it never felt tedious.

“Zones of thought” was a very novel concept. The idea of separate cosmic layers with different physical properties is at once both fantastic, and oddly plausible. I really like the way “zones of thought” acts as a plot device for exploring omnipotence in a finite universe, and the idea of entities operating at a level of complexity that is physically beyond our level of understanding. It’s kind of like Pointland, Flatland, Spaceland (Flatland 1884) are all adjacent and one simply has to travel a bit to observe radical changes in the physicality of the universe.

I also like the Tines alien race. It was the first instance of a collaborative intelligence that I can remember encountering in my reading. I would expect a Professor of computer science to envisage a sentient intelligence that operated in such a decentralized way.  I really see potential to develop this concept more in future novels set in the universe.

Overall this book was a 4.5/5. A very enjoyable read that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys good space-opera type science fiction. I’m really looking forward to reading more of Vinge’s work.