A Fire Upon The Deep

Vinge imagines an incredibly unique and interesting universe in A Fire Upon the Deep, with novel physics, races, and technology. Further, his writing style gives nothing away to early or blatantly, but instead gives the reader information slowly, giving you time to figure things out on your own. However, while the setting, action, and pacing certainly kept my attention, after finishing the book I realized that it really contained no substance- which is to say that the book really doesn't present any philosophical conjectures. The protagonists *minor spoiler alert* save the day (big surprise), and that's that. There are no far-reaching moral ramifications or grandiose ethical decisions that need to be made, they simply defeat the bad guys and that's that. And while the characters are reasonably developed, you'll notice that they often fall into stereotypical gender roles. Overall, I would say if you're a fan of scifi and want to waste some time, this is an entertaining book, but if you actually want to be intellectually stimulated, you'd be better off with Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

Vernor Vinge is a master of transhumanist/post-singularity sci-fi and the galaxy he constructs in this series is a smart device to get around the problem of novelizations involving post-singularity superintelligent entities and civilizations: namely, we can't know how such beings would behave or even speculate on their motivations.

Some aspects of the book are a little high concept for my tastes and never (or poorly) explained, but otherwise good. The ending is a little unsatisfying, but again good. A worthwhile read if you like your sci-fi with a dash of fantasy.