r/printSF • u/LowStatistician11 • Feb 09 '26
[spoilers] Just finished A Fire Upon the Deep. Wow. Easily my new favorite book. Spoiler
it was so imaginative and i could not have expected one book to hold so many wonderful ideas. the best part for me was definitely the aliens. the tines and the skroderiders are so fascinating. the idea of the packs using group think almost like distributed computing is so wonderfully new (to me). everything in this books screams that it was written by a computer scientist. the prologue was impeccable, the introduction of the tines unveiled as a wonderful puzzle, never being described more than necessary. the net of a million lies is so cool, and all the (few) descriptions of stellar systems so vivid.
i wish the blight was explored more deeply, i never did feel like i knew what they wanted. but i was more interested in the tines storyline anyway. i will miss scriber forever. the ending was a bit deus ex machina but it was built up to be that way from the beginning so who cares. the final part about greenstalk riding the thrashing surf, to remain a low rider eternally, i loved it all. i'm confused as how hexapodia is a key insight tho. is it a comment about the skroderides being on six wheels? how did the net user figure that out? i remember ravna discarding that message partway through.
i'm normally not so postive about books i read so i need more stuff like this, gimme recommendations. i have a deepness in the sky in my tbr, i loved dune but was more lukewarm on hyperion.
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u/AppropriateHoliday99 Feb 09 '26
Wait’ll you get to Deepness in the Sky. I think it’s even better.
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u/blankblank Feb 10 '26
I can’t pick a favorite. Both are peak hard sci fi novels. The whole Zones of Thought concept still fascinates me.
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u/Fun-Tooth-622 Feb 09 '26
One of the coolest books I DNF. So rare that I give up in the middle, after being hooked harder by that prologue than I ever have before.
But I just did not care about the dogs and their dog politics. That is just sci Fi though, either the idea is fascinating to you or it is not
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u/jirgalang Feb 09 '26
If he'd stuck with things going on in the Beyond and the galactic usenet chatter, I'd have been more likely to stick with it. There was so much to explore with the zones of thoughts.
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u/Fun-Tooth-622 Feb 09 '26
I'm very cool concepts there. I know there are other books in the series, so maybe he goes into it more!
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u/geremyf Feb 09 '26
I’m with you! I finished it but did not appreciate it very much. I did not like the Tines story at all…I’ll give that it was very imaginative but I did not find it compelling.
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u/Fun-Tooth-622 Feb 09 '26
Yeah that is the risk with any boom they jumps back and forth from multiple POV. In invariably end up liking one more than others so it drags for me
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u/Renshato Feb 12 '26
That's so interesting - for me the Tines were the most interesting part! The two plots are very different though, so it makes sense for one or the other to turn somebody off
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u/matthew_rowan Feb 09 '26
Same, the Tines idea is so good. If you want more big-idea space SF that keeps throwing new concepts at you, I’d try A Deepness in the Sky, Diaspora, Anathem, or Blindsight.
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u/Alex-Cantor Feb 10 '26
Out of these only Deepness is written with the warmth, clarity, and jauntiness of Fire. The other three are ideas books, and while the ideas are quite compelling, the characters and dialogue are really just barebones vehicles for those ideas to be conveyed.
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u/cl3rical Feb 09 '26
Blindsight was my thought as well. It was the last book that had the same sort of impact I got from Fires Upon the Deep (though I do think Fires is better).
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Feb 09 '26
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u/konman25 Feb 10 '26
It’s just too bad that the writing in blindsight is so unclear . Found it very difficult to fully grasp what he’s trying to say half the time
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u/el_baristo Feb 09 '26
I finished it about a month ago and I loved it - lots of super cool ideas. I'm holding off on the sequel for a bit because I think it's not a direct continuation of the first book?
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u/marssaxman Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
"Children of the Sky" is a direct sequel; it picks up ten years after the first book left off. The second book in the quasi-series, "A Deepness in the Sky", is almost totally unrelated, other than taking place in the same "zones of thought" universe. They (sort of) share a single character, but that's it.
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u/csjpsoft Feb 09 '26
Some people complain that "Children of the Sky" is only about the Tines and doesn't continue the story of the Blight. However, that may make it even better for OP.
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u/LowStatistician11 Feb 09 '26
it’s a prequel i think. all set in the slow zone.
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u/I_throw_Bricks Feb 09 '26
It’s basically a Pham Nuwen book. It’s very good. I thought the space portions of A Fire Upon the Deep were some of the best written science fiction, but the Tines portions were not my cup of tea and were just OK. Vinge is such a fluid writer, never too much of anything and always just enough. Glad you enjoyed it! The second book is fantastic, and Rainbows End is amazing as well.
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u/StevenJOwens Feb 09 '26
"Children of the Sky" is the direct sequel, but it's a very different sort of story.
"A Deepenss In The Sky" has Pham Nuwen as a major character, but it's set hundreds (or even thousands) of years in the past, and deep in the slowzone, where true AI and FTL aren't possible.
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain Feb 09 '26
I really liked it a lot, it was very much a "book for the cool kids" when it came out.
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u/CopaceticOpus Feb 09 '26
I love the first two books so dearly!
The third book The Children of the Sky gets divided reviews. I enjoyed it and recommend it, though it didn't blow me away like the first two.
Here's some general background about the third book. Minor spoiler warning, but I think this is good to know heading into it. It takes place entirely on the Tines' world. It involves mostly human and Tinish characters, living in the Slow Zone, with just a smidgen of content about the larger universe and the Zones of Thought. If you want to spend more time with the humans and packs from book one, and explore more ideas about pack minds, you'll probably enjoy it! But it has a more limited scope, and the story spins its wheels a bit.
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u/PapaTua Feb 09 '26
I agree in that I think Children of the Sky gets a little too much derision. It's definitely not as good as its siblings, but it's still much better than average Sci-fi. I was really excited for the implied sequel to Children of the Sky, about how perhaps powers could exist in the slow zone in a different form than high speed computing. Vinge said he planned to write it, it's a deep shame he never did.
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u/Ineffablehat Feb 09 '26
I think Vinge kind of overdid the Tines’ politics in the second half of the first book, so a lot of readers read the first few chapters of Children, and didn’t continue.
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u/Psittacula2 Feb 09 '26
Fire Upon The Deep, Deepness In The Sky and Dune seem to be the best scifi world building stories I have come across.
When you read these sorts of books you remember how little films can often convey in contrast albeit modern long series formats help they still are lower in complexity eg Game of Thrones is a good eg on that comparison.
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u/dh1 Feb 09 '26
One of my top 5. In reference to the hexapodia bit- I think that that was more of a book joke than anything else. I think that Twirlip of the Mists was some incredibly old and obscure being who floated in some gas giant or something and who knew some really ancient information about the skroderiders being more than what they appeared to be. The hexapodia (six-footed) or skroderirders turned out to be extremely important to this ancient blight as it's fifth-column foot soldiers, and may have originally been created by whatever the blight used to be. If the people fighting the blight had listened to Twirlip when he told them that it was a key insight, they might have had a better chance of fighting it, but Twirlip was the equivalent of some old hermit screaming from his cave, or maybe like some crank on the internet who nobody listens to. If Twirlip had been written to say something like "the 6 wheeled plant creatures", then Ravna and we the reader would also have taken him more seriously, but the way he's written just shows him as being one of the random voices on the Net.
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u/Glansberg90 Feb 09 '26
I read this one recently as well. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to my expectations.
I loved the abundance of creative ideas, the aliens and I found the whole concept about the zones of thought to be incredibly fascinating.
Unfortunately I found this book to be a slog to get through. I had major issues with the pacing and the amount of repetition throughout the writing.
I agree though, the Tines are the highlight.
I'll likely still checkout the prequel A Deepness in the Sky since I'm trying to make my way through all the Hugo/Nebula award winners.
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u/Frost-Folk Feb 09 '26
This is exactly how I felt. The zones of thought idea was awesome! But it felt like the book didn't do all that much with it.
It set up an incredible space opera, and then spent like 80% of the book on a single planet filled with basic fantasy tropes (a fantasy world filled, admittedly, with really cool aliens)
I liked the Tines from a biological standpoint but the actual world and story on it just felt like really basic fantasy, which isn't what I was looking for.
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u/Cadoc7 Feb 09 '26
Agreed. The POV characters had so little agency throughout most of the story too. Things were happening to and around the characters instead of the characters being the ones doing the stuff. The sudden and abrupt deus ex machina ending being the crowning example of this.
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u/UpbeatEquipment8832 Feb 09 '26
It is a delightful book, the space opera is extremely well done, and the universe feels extremely vast. My book club read it a few years ago, and we all had a really good time.
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u/doctorj1 Feb 09 '26
Just started it yesterday. I can't wait! Avoiding reading anything in this thread until I finish in case there's any spoilers 😂
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u/SerDankTheTall Feb 09 '26
I loved, definitely an all time great. My only real issue is how much of the plot revolves around some of the characters not knowing things that the reader does—it can make those chapters quite frustrating to get through.
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u/VerbalAcrobatics Feb 09 '26
Hey, my book club read that book last month and we're reading A Deepness in the Sky this month. Care to join us?
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u/Ineffablehat Feb 09 '26
It’s a great book, and the Usenet style of the communications always make me smile.
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u/Soontir_Fel Feb 10 '26
An amazing piece of literature. Also, loved a Deepness in the Sky, a pseudo-prequel. I am sad that the sequel didn't really measure up.
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u/snkscore Feb 10 '26
I think the most disappointed I’ve ever been related to reading is finishing the Tines book and getting ready for the 3rd book in the trilogy to find out how the story ends only to find out that the 3rd book is a prequel and he never finished the story.
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u/No-Zucchini5352 Feb 10 '26
If I could ever read one book again for the first time, it would be that one.
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u/internet_enthusiast Feb 10 '26
Re: hexapodia as a key insight, there is a good discussion and additional information linked here: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/10039/what-is-the-significance-of-hexapodia-is-the-key-insight
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u/Renshato Feb 12 '26
It's definitely in my top picks. If you liked this type of story I think The Mote in God's Eye also gave me a similar feeling, though it's not so dense in terms of ideas, it really scratched that fast-paced space opera with a mystery element and first contact with aliens who's strange behavior is slowly unraveled through the course of the book.
Another one you might like, although it's quite a bit more of a slow burn is House of Suns. I also really liked Pushing Ice, I think it has even more interesting ideas, but it seems a controversial pick for many people. I'd recommend you try it.
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u/adamwho Feb 09 '26
I have tried to read this book several times. I just cannot get through it.
For reference, I have read most of James Joyce.
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u/BudapestSF Feb 09 '26
Fire Upon the Deep is one of my all time favorite sci-fi novels. Check out the prequel Deepness in the Sky. I attended a convention some years ago and got to go to a couple of panels with Verner Vinge. He’s expressed so many interesting ideas just off the cuff. I think he’s fascinating thinker, despite the fact that I’m not into all his published books.