A Fire Upon The Deep

This is one of the most creative and original stories I've ever read. In a genre with so many stories, concepts, and ideas, it's rare to run across something that feels novel. Something that doesn't leave the feeling of "I remember that from Star Trek / the Twilight Zone / Some Other Book". There's a lot to like here for the science fiction fan: the world-building, the galaxy's history without the over-explaining, the curiosities of the author's "Zones of Thought" and what other stories might be set here. That said, I found it hard to follow for about the first third of the novel. I finally came around and began to put the pieces together about halfway through, and as such ended up tearing through the rest of it. It might be that it's one of those stories ripe for re-reading and extra enjoyment the second time around, or maybe it was the "too many ideas" syndrome that can plague some sci-fi. There are so many original and wild constructs set up in the first act: hive mind pack creatures that function as single entities, rogue AIs destroying solar systems, plant-like aliens that ride on trucks strapped to their bodies. As I said, done in a very interesting and clever way, but I felt overwhelmed with too many ideas too fast. I've read great things about part 2 in the series, A Deepness in the Sky. The first one was plenty good to hook me for the next entry.

Deeply satisfying space opera. I thought of The Fifth Element and the Culture throughout, it is as stylish as these while being more serious. Software permeates the book in a way it unforgiveably doesn't in most scifi. Vinge is a master of dramatic irony - the reader wriggles with knowledge of treachery for hundreds of pages. His cool, medieval dog aliens are less interesting to me than the space opera bit, but you have to admire the craft involved in them. The big bad is genuinely unnerving. An elevation of plotfests.

Extremely dense. I had a hard time with this one. Couldn't connect with the characters and then when I finally did, one of them died. Rough book.

Rereading this for SFF book club. I read this ages ago. I really like the Tines as an alien species. The book is still good, but it's really long. It's probably been a couple of decades since I last read this. ETA: in my SFF group discussion, someone described the Skroderiders as "potted plants on Roombas". I laughed so hard I had to leave the discussion for a moment. #perfect

Very interesting concepts but not explained in a coherent order in my opinion.

Very enjoyable. It did an especially good job of creating a very new universe (solving the faster-than-light travel problem, kind of) and making that universe interesting enough and believable enough. I especially liked the use of the network.

I had started this book once before, and just stopped as I found reading it at night wasn’t working. It’s quite a complicated beginning, with lots of new names and concepts that you need to be properly concentrating for, and reading a couple of pages at night just wasn’t working for me. Vernor Vinge thought up a whole new way of thinking about space, with different areas being capable of more or less advanced technology, and you can advance through these areas at increasing speeds (space ship dependant), or go in to the slowness, which is where the Old Earth is in. The aliens were all different, and I thought he had really original ideas, but I don’t want to spoil anything! I read this for Sword and Laser book group, and I do love doing this, because I read books that I would never normally pick up! If you enjoy science fiction with a tinge of space opera, you’ll probably enjoy this!

Wonderfully written Scifi - even though this is normally not my Favorite Genre, i enjoyed it immensely. Great book!

This is a very well written book full of excellent ideas. Incredibly interesting story and world with great pacing. Why four stars? Well, it was rather dry (even for hard SciFi) and the characters were interchangeable unless they were clearly on different sides of the good/evil spectrum. I will probably read more Vinge at a point

Wow. Unbelievable. This book totally snuck up on me. I knew it was part of the SF cannon but found it kind of slow going to start. Then it became riveting and beautifully mind expanding. The Tines, the Skroderiders, the Zones and the Blight: each alone would have been a rich enough idea for a single book. Together it was like brain candy.

In NPR's top 100 Sci-fi/Fantasy list this was one I'd been wanting to read for a while. The ideas presented in it were inventive and elaborate, but my difficulty in following them kept me from fully enjoying the story. After reading the wiki synopsis of the book upon completion, I realized how many small things I'd missed. Vinge doesn't talk down to his readers -- he lets them discover things for themselves -- but unfortunately I didn't read between the lines on a number of concepts, leaving me confused for far too long. I have a feeling I would enjoy this one a lot more on a second reading.