A Deepness in the Sky

And good read that captivates early but loses momentum until by the end you simply read to get to the conclusion. I feel the author got too caught up in minor character sub stories and that he tried too hard to make the spider aliens have human characteristics. He explains too much and this fictional book wrings away reader imagination and leaves a textbook feel. Never get attached to any one character as the story jumps about between a dozen different characters. An odd conclusion without sentiment

Over the course of telling an enthralling story (and making a great many thought-inducing observations and predictions over the course), Vinge plays the same cognitive tricks on the reader as his characters. This is one of the few novels I've kept through two moves and a major library purge, good for many rereads.

It's difficult for me to imagine how non-computer programmers see this book. As a programmer, I was thrilled by the clever uses of cryptography and computer security as themes. Would your average reader find these elements as interesting? Ignorable? Distracting? I don't know. What I do know is that this story combines a truly original alien race and society with a deeply plausible interstellar mercantile power-structure and that's really just the setting. The individual dramas are compelling; the action is gripping; and the science fiction is a plausible extrapolation which still manages to present a number of insightful leaps. As with all of Vinge's science fiction, the focus is not on the shiny tech toys, but on the consequences that they bring to the societies and even races that create and make use of them. For this, Vinge earns a seat at the table of science fiction authors who are not bounded by the limitations of their genre.