 |
|
What's New
Review Features
S - Science Fiction
F - Fantasy
H - Horror
Complete Listing
|
|
Ads links:
|
|
Adams, Douglas (S)
Asher, Neal (S)
Aylett, Steve (S)
Banks, Iain M (S)
Barclay, James (F)
Barker, Clive (H)
Baxter, Stephen (S)
Brin, David (S)
Bury, Stephen (S)
Card, Orson Scott (S)
Cherryh, CJ (S/F)
Clute, John (S)
Cockayne, Steve (F)
Cook, Glen (F)
Danielewski, Mark (H)
Dick, Philip K (S)
Egan, Greg (S)
Feist, Raymond (F)
Gaiman, Neil (F)
Gibson, William (S)
Goodkind, Terry (F)
Grimwood, Jon C (S)
Hamilton, Peter (S)
Jeter, K.W. (S)
Jordan, Robert (F)
Lethem, Jonathan (S)
McAuley, Paul (S)
MacLeod, Ken (S)
Martin, George RR (F)
McMullen, Sean (S)
Miéville, China (S)
Moran, Daniel K (S)
Morgan, Richard K (S)
Nagata, Linda (S)
Niven, Larry (S)
Noon, Jeff (S)
Robinson, Kim S. (S)
Rucker, Rudy (S)
Simmons, Dan (S)
Smith, Michael Marshall (S)
Stephenson, Neal (S)
Sterling, Bruce (S)
Vinge, Vernor (S)
Westerfeld, Scott (S)
Williams, Sean (S)
Williams, Tad (S/F)
Collections (S/F)
|
| The Classics |
Bradbury, Ray (S/H)
Burgess, Anthony (S)
Tolkien, JRR (F) |
|
| Vernor Vinge |
| Author Information |
Reviewed Books |
Other Books |
| Notes: Deepness is actually the prequel to
Fire. |
Fire Upon
The Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
|
Threats... (Short Stories)
True Names... (Short Stories)
The Witling |
|
|
|
 Our
Ranking A Fire upon the Deep won the Hugo award
in 1993 and after only the first 20 pages or so it is obvious why. Vinge creates
an alien race the is amazingly complete as far as culture, personalities and politics.
The truly impressive part is that the race is not humanoid, but rather a collective
society. I don't want to give too much detail because this is one of the highlights
of the book, understanding how this alien race interacts and survives. Vinge does
a terrific job of not just explaining the alien makeup but actually making you
live what they live. It's a bit confusing at first, and it should be, but once
you get to understand it, it makes the book much more enjoyable. The plot of the
book is also very well done. Vinge does a good job mixing in the intergalactic
conflict as well as the individual conflicts down on the alien planet. Some of
Vinge's concepts, especially his space travel, are nicely spelled out and really
add to the atmosphere of the book. The characters are well written, but sometimes
get a little stereotypical, especially the two child characters trapped on the
alien world. They got a bit annoying at some points. The alien characters are
just as good, but once again, one or two get a little too molded. The only real
complaint I had with the book is that the main evil force is not explained terribly
well. This may have been done on purpose to keep you guessing, but it was somewhat
tough to follow. I would have liked some more detail on this. All in all this
is a very good book. It made a plane trip to Europe go by extremely fast. A must
read. |
|
|
 Our
Ranking A Deepness in the Sky is the prequel
to the very deserving Nebula Award winner, A Fire Upon the Deep. Like the original,
this is another massive space opera tale of nearly 800 pages that took me nearly
a month to finish. Granted there were some periods of no reading at all in there,
but the point is that this is not a book that you should undertake if you're in
the mood for some idle reading. The plot is quite interesting. While not up to
the huge galactic scale of Fire Upon the Deep, it still has the sweeping space
operaish feel to it. The story is centered around a world that happens to be the
first evidence of non-human life that humans have come across in their centuries
of space travel. The world is in a bizarre solar system that contains a star that
actually turns on and off every thirty or so years. The aliens have adapted to
this harsh existence by going into hibernation for the years the star is turned
off. (more about the aliens later). While the aliens sleep, two separate competing
fleets of humans reach the world at the same time. Each desires the massive potential
of treasure that is below and eventually treachery ensues, the result being the
near destruction of both fleets. The humans are now trapped in orbit, without
the resources to head home, the conquered being forced to try and cooperate with
the conquerors in order for both to survive. They have just enough resources to
bide their time and wait for the aliens to awaken and hopefully achieve a level
of industry and technology that will allow them to head home. In the process,
both fleets aspire to complete different plans for the unknowing aliens below.
An interesting enough plot. The problem is it was enough to hold me on the edge
of my seat for the entire length of the book. There were points where the booked
just seemed to drag as Vinge went through nearly painful lengths to describe the
slow evolution of not only the aliens, but also the relationship between the two
human races. There were points where he would seemingly fixate on points to really
drive home how much a character felt about something. It became a bit tedious
after a while and I found myself wishing the plot along. The other problem was
around the alien race. While in A Fire Upon the Deep, the aliens were utterly
fascinating and incredibly unique, I found the race in this one to be a bit cliche.
While alien they were still very human in their actions and characteristics. The
aliens for A Fire, were so unique, that I wanted to learn more of them and their
ways. I had no such fascination with this set. What was fairly interesting though,
was their slow development of technology towards a networked and space faring
race. Technologically this was a big step back from A Fire. Granted it is a prequel
and so therefore should be, but when you've written a novel with so many mind
blowing and utterly creative aspects, I don't understand how you could step back
as Vinge did. He seemed to try to replace the technology with more creativity
around the humans. The race of Emergents have perfected the art of slavery to
the nth degree and managed to merge it into their technology. While this made
for some interesting ideas, I just couldn't get beyond the "been there done that
feeling". Mind control is not exactly the newest concept. Despite all of this,
the book was still enjoyable believe it or not. Vinge does have a flair for very
dramatic scenes, and the last 200 pages are a true testament of this. The ending
alone saved this book from being a not recommend. The characters are also very
well done but some of them had a tendency of being very one dimensional. Overall
though, this was a good read. If you enjoyed the first one, you will probably
still like this one, but understand this is by far no where near the ground breaking
effort of A Fire Upon the Deep.
|
|