A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)

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A Fire Upon the Deep
by Vernor Vinge

*****
In what was perhaps the biggest surprise of my reading experience thus far, A Fire Upon the Deep managed to top my list of books, making the best sci-fi novel I've ever read. It even tops Ender's Game, which says quite a lot. (Technically, I still think Ender's Game is a better book, but I'm sick of it now because I've read it more than twice.)

Basically, this is epic sci-fi at its best, almost a fabulous combination of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Each page of A Fire Upon the Deep contains more fascinating ideas than are found in most 500-page books. Every moment is a joy to read, and it's hard to forget the novel even long after reading it.

Vernor Vinge—an author I hadn't heard of previously—opens his novel with a cryptic prelude, where a mysterious experiment, conducted by human scientists, goes hideously awry and lets loose a terrible force of god-like proportions. Fleeing this galactic menace, a ship of escapees lands on an uncharted planet to await rendezvous, but are unexpectedly besieged by a medieval race of dog-like creatures, the Tines. The survivors, a pair of children (Jeffrey and Johanna), are captured by two separate factions of the Tines who are at war with one another: the Flenserists, who seek world domination, and the Woodcarvers, who resist the Flenserists' plans. In the meanwhile, chaos erupts with the spreading of this galactic plague as entire solar systems and civilizations are consumed. Responding to the grounded ship's distress signal, a rescue team races against time to retrieve the children and recover a secret weapon, located on board the ship, needed to prevent the destruction of the universe.

The premise is downright stunning—but there is so much more to this tale than what I have just described above. Vinge's universe is awesomely constructed: the Milky Way, divided into ‘zones of thought' where the laws of physics differ from one zone to the next. Nearest to the galactic core is the Unthinking Depths, where intelligent life cannot flourish. This is followed by the Slow Zone, where the human race was born—intelligent life is possible, but faster-than-light travel is not. At the rim of the galaxy is the Beyond. Most space-faring civilizations inhabit this region, where faster-than-light travel and communication are possible. At the very outskirts of the Milky Way lies the Transcend, a zone where computers have achieved superhuman intelligence and the beings who thrive there are literally gods, taking little interest in the races ‘below.'

Much of the action is centered in the Beyond. The Beyond is also the site for an intriguing communications network, spanning thousands of civilizations and systems and resembling a gigantic internet. Dispersed throughout the novel are newsgroup messages pertaining to issues and events on a galactic scale. Some of these are absolutely hilarious. It is obvious that Vinge was poking fun at us Internet dweebs when he wrote these segments, since we get everything from ‘flamers'—users who constantly bash others' opinions while their ‘objectionable' words or phrases are filtered by a censoring device—to newbies and loonies, symbolic of users who repeatedly post nonsensical, irrelevant, or childish things on newsgroups. And the endless speculations and debates that arise are a perfect reflection of the global web today.

But the real gem of this novel are the alien Tines, who are developed convincingly and appealingly. Made up of packs, each pack functions as a single organism whose thoughts are shared by each member. When the members are separated, they lose intelligent consciousness, and when they come close to another pack their thoughts mingle into chaos. Many of the great moments in this novel involve the interactions between the human children and the Tine packs, and we get the perspectives of each species as they attempt to understand one another.

It is this contrast between the Tines' story and the galactic one which gives A Fire Upon the Deep its mind-blowing scope. Even as orbital stations are annihilated, planets are gobbled up and entire species are assimilated, Vinge never loses touch with the smallest (one might say insignificant, if they weren't so enjoyable) details of the Tines' existence: from the layout of village streets, to the fierce betrayals and espionage between the warring Tine factions, even down to the internal conflicts within the Tines' hierarchal structures. The characters in the novel (mostly Tines) are well-defined, not overly complex but not simplistic either, and each has his/her story to tell: Lord Steel, ambitious and power-hungry, seeks to rule the world but first must destroy his master, Flenser, who faces an even greater challenge—the struggle for his own soul. Then there's Peregrine, a wise pilgrim; Scriber, the comic spy; Woodcarver, the good-hearted, aging leader. As for the human characters, the most interesting is Pham Nuwen, a slightly more solemn Han Solo who must confront the dreadful truth of his own past.

And the action never lets up. The plot twists and turns like a sidewinder, filled with little surprises and shocks. Scenes of spectacular fleet chases, medieval wars, and galactic genocide will be enough to keep you glued to the final two hundred pages till the end. Oh, and what a beautiful ending it is. I don't ever remember feeling so satisfied after reading a book, except maybe at the conclusion of The Return of the King. In case you didn't realize by now, this is a recommendation. A very, very, very big recommendation. Read it immediately!

Buy A Fire Upon the Deep at Barnesandnoble.com.