A Deepness in the Sky
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| The first edition cover | |
| Author | Vernor Vinge |
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| Cover Artist | Bob Eggleton |
| Country | United States of America |
| Language | English |
| Series | Zones of Thought universe |
| Genre(s) | Hard science fiction |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
| Released | March 1999 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| Pages | 606 (Hardback), 775 (Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-312-856830 (Hardback 1st edition), ISBN 0-812-536355 (Paperback) |
| Followed by | A Fire Upon the Deep |
A Deepness in the Sky is a science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999 the novel is a loose prequel (set 30,000 years earlier) to his earlier novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992). The title is coined by one of the main characters in a debate, in a reference to the hibernating habits of his species and to the vastness of space.
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[edit] Plot introduction
The book deals with the discovery of an intelligent alien species on a planet orbiting the bizarre, appropriately named OnOff star, which spends 215 of every 250 years almost completely dormant, releasing almost no energy. During this period, the planet freezes and its fauna goes into hibernation.
The planet's inhabitants, named "Spiders" by the humans for their resemblance to arachnids, have reached a stage of technological development very similar to that of Earth's humans in the early 20th century. Two human expeditions set out to trade/exploit the situation: the Qeng Ho traders (pronounced [Cheng Ho], named after Zheng He and his expeditions); and the Emergents of the Emergency, an autocratic culture that literally enslaves selected human minds.
[edit] Plot summary
The Qeng Ho arrive at the On/Off star a number of decades before the Emergency fleet arrives, and before the sun turns on and the Spider civilization "wakes up" and continues its climb into a technological civilization. As both groups of humans approach the On/Off star, a surprise attack by the Emergents, timed to coincide with the mindrot symptoms, leaves both fleets crippled; the Qeng Ho had fully expected treachery, and had contemplated it themselves: the logic of the prisoner's dilemma the two factions found themselves in compelled such considerations. The Emergents' secret weapon, developed long ago on their original colony world after suffering decimation due to a disease they call "mindrot", the Emergents have learned to engineer the disease and to use it to their advantage as a form of mind control. They use it as a weapon against the unwitting Qeng Ho expedition, infecting them during a meeting with a time-delayed variant of the disease.
The Emergents take over, but the mutual losses force them to take the so called "Lurker strategy", in which they monitor and aid the Spiders' technological development, waiting until they build up the massive infrastructure and technological base that the visitors lack but need in order to repair their vessels: they have perforce to work together and wait for the Spider civilization to achieve a greater technological maturity in order to help them refurbish their ships.
Emergent culture uses mindrot primarily in the form of a variant which technicians can manipulate in order to release neurotoxins to specific parts of the brain. An active MRI-type device triggers changes through dia- and paramagnetic biological molecules. By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent managers induce a state they call Focus, in which Focused persons become completely obsessed with a single idea or speciality, essentially turning them into brilliant appliances. Many Qeng Ho become Focused against their will, and the Emergents retain the rest of the population under mass surveillance, with only a portion of the crew awake and not in suspended animation. The Qeng Ho trading culture gradually starts to dilute this totalitarian régime, by demonstrating to the Emergents certain benefits of tolerated and restricted free trade; the two human cultures merge to some extent over the decades of forced co-operation.
The book discusses some of the problems of trying to maintain an interstellar trading culture without access to superluminal travel or to superluminal communication. Time-measurement details provide an interesting concept in the book: the Qeng Ho measure time primarily in terms of seconds, since the notion of days, months, and years has no usefulness between various star systems. The timekeeping system, uses terms such as kiloseconds and megaseconds. An interesting feature of the Qeng Ho's computer, and hence, timekeeping, systems is the "programmer archaeologists"[1]: the Qeng Ho are packrats of computer programs and systems, retaining them over millennia, even as far back to the era of Unix programs (as implied by one passage mentioning that the fundamental time-keeping system is the Unix epoch, retained for backwards compatibility. This massive accumulation of data implies that almost any useful program one could want already exists in the Qeng Ho fleet library - hence the need for computer archaeologists to dig up needed programs, work around their peculiarities and bugs, and assemble them into useful constructs.
Only one concrete connection links A Deepness in the Sky with A Fire Upon the Deep: the character of Pham Nuwen, the "Programmer-at-Arms", who appears in both books. Hints occur about the "zones of thought" mentioned in the earlier book; the story takes place in the Slow Zone, though Vinge does not explain the connections, and the characters in the story remain unaware of the zones' existence. The sun's inexplicably strange behavior, the unusual planetary system (with only a solitary planet and several asteroid-sized diamonds), and the discovery of "cavorite mines" on the planet appear as possible leftovers from the passage of the system through the center of the galaxy. Vinge's characters speculate that the Spiders descend from an ancient star-faring civilization, and that the antigravity material and other strange artifacts have connections with that civilization.
At the end of the book, Pham announces his plans to free all of the Focused in the entire Emergent civilization, and, if surviving that, to embark on a journey to the center of the galaxy to find the source of these strange artifacts. A Fire Upon the Deep reveals that he died during this journey, and that one of the god-like Powers re-assembled his body parts and memories to use as a puppet. In the later novel also shows that Pham had misidentified the center of the galaxy as the likely source of the artifacts, as the outer portions of the galaxy were the ones with greater technological sophistication.
With this work, Vinge introduces "localizers" to his set of science-fiction concepts. Localizers comprise tiny devices which can contain a simple processor, sensors, and short-range communications. Vinge explores how intelligent control can use mesh networking of these devices in ways quite different from those of traditional computer networks, such as supporting. (See also: smartdust.)
[edit] Awards and nominations
- Nebula Award Nominated for Best Novel 1999
- Hugo Award Winner of Best Novel 2000
- Prometheus Award Winner of best libertarian science fiction 2000
These awards make A Deepness in the Sky one of the most honored science fiction novels in recent history.
[edit] Release details
- 1999, United States of America, Tor Books, ISBN 0-312-85683-0, Pub date March 1999, Hardback
- 2000, United States of America, Tor Books, ISBN 0-812-53635-5, Pub date January 2000, Paperback
[edit] External links
- A Deepness in the Sky publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Review by Nick Gevers
- Review by John Clute
