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A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

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Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#81

Post by rsync »

moonbug wrote: post #18
mawise wrote: post #10

This is in my list of top 10 (ish) books I've read. If you've enjoyed it, He's got two more books in the Zones of Thought universe: A Deepness In The Sky, which follows Pham in his Queng Ho days before A Fire Upon The Deep (recommended!) as well as Children Of The Sky, which follows Ravna and the children on the Tines world as a direct sequel to Fire Upon The Deep.

Stay away from Children of the Sky unless, having finished Fire Upon the Deep, your response was "I'd sure like to hear more about those whiny children and the dogs"

"Stay away from Children of the Sky unless, having finished Fire Upon the Deep, your response was "I'd sure like to hear more about those whiny children and the dogs""

See my other comment up-thread ... what I really want is the opposite of this. I want the battling civilizations beyond the void memes all fleshed out. I want more details on how the civilizations "ascended" beyond the (whatever the demarcation point was). I want more details on how they came back on "our side" of that point and what it means and what their motivations are, etc.

Those are the plot pieces and background that are never fully fleshed out in Upon the Deep that make me rate it lower than In the Sky.

Let me also say ...

I have never played Mass Effect but there is a fascinating and deep backstory and created universe for that game that I find interesting and terrifying in the same ways I am interested in, and terrified by, the Vinge books:

"The Reapers are the original creators of the Citadel and the mass relay network. These massive constructs exist so that any intelligent life in the galaxy would eventually discover them and base their technology upon them – all part of a scheme to harvest the galaxy’s sentient life in a repeating cycle of purges that has continued relentlessly over countless millennia. "

https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Reaper

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#83

Post by TeMPOraL »

bitwize wrote: post #73
EvanAnderson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deepness introduced me to the concept of software archaeology. I won't spoil it, but there's a really fun bit when a character, digging deeply into the bowels of software systems in this far-future human society, makes an observation about the basis for timekeeping in the oldest systems. The "focused" remind me of the mentats from the Dune universe, but less general purpose-- more like replicating feedback-based cont…

There's a meme phrase that applies quite literally to Focus, and has similar implications in the real world to those in the novel. That phrase is "weaponized autism".

If we're going in this direction, you might find enjoyable the book Echopraxia (and its predecessor, Blindsight). Without spoiling too much, it features a group of people that pushed their cognitive wetware and hardware to the point they can't even communicate with normal humans anymore.

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#84

Post by jl6 »

rsync wrote: post #79
jvanderbot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is Deepness one of the best sci-fi stories I've read, it's also immensely better than Fire Upon the Deep. I read it first, and it's basically essential sci-fi in my book.

Agreed that _Deepness in the Sky_ is better than _Fire Upon the Deep_. However, in my opinion, _Fire Upon the Deep_ should be the better book and has, in many ways, deeper and more thought-provoking concepts at play. The problem is, none of them get fully explained or resolved. The book wraps up the character driven story arcs and the much deeper, conceptual story arcs involving non-human actors just peter out ...

Fire has the most breathtaking, hooking first chapter of any book I’ve read.

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#85

Post by stormking »

jordanpg wrote: post #26

These are the only sci-fi books I'm aware of that include a believable, fleshed-out secular explanation for the existence of supernatural, god-like beings in the Transcend. As an atheist who usually can't say out loud what I really think about facile, Earth-bound supernatural beliefs, I was enchanted to find this feature included in this already-mesmerizing world.

When I read that Ravna had a degree in "Applied Theology", I loughed out loud.

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#87

Post by sillyquiet »

_jal wrote: post #71
rout39574 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was my impression that he was the first articulator of the singularity concept. Other than fashion, why do you think it's outdated? I consider Rainbow's End to be a pretty good picture of what it might be like to live through the singularity. Especially evocative: the kid at the end chipping a skill his (grandfather?) worked for a career to accumulate, using it for a weekend, and then discarding it.

> why do you think it's outdated? I don't know if 'outdated' is the right word. Maybe just not that useful, except as mind-candy? It is mostly a computationally-focused reformulation of the Rapture.

Yeah, this covers it for me. Maybe outdated isn't wrong so much as nothing more than a fun intellectual exercise and what if - there's no road map, there's no solid technological basis for reaching a singularity, imo there's not much theory to it outside speculation and some fairly specious projections.

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#88

Post by Stratoscope »

joe-collins wrote: post #64
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh I just recommended that some do go forward with a deepness in the sky, but read a fire upon the deep first because of the aforementioned content warnings. I think if I didn't already have some faith in the author I would have just stopped because the theming is so dark

It was definitely dark, and before I was halfway through I was desperate for the alien chapters just because all of the humans were just so damned miserable.

I am a little confused. Which of the books are you and GP talking about that is so dark?

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#89

Post by sillyquiet »

rout39574 wrote: post #30
sillyquiet wrote: post #19

Some other really thought provoking books by Vinge which often go overlooked is "The Peace Wars" and "Marooned in Realtime" My personal guilty favorite (I say guilty because he really buys into the outdated concept of the technological singularity) is Rainbow's End, which deals with notions of augmented reality, digitalization of books, and even touches on right-to-repair issues in a way.

It was my impression that he was the first articulator of the singularity concept. Other than fashion, why do you think it's outdated? I consider Rainbow's End to be a pretty good picture of what it might be like to live through the singularity. Especially evocative: the kid at the end chipping a skill his (grandfather?) worked for a career to accumulate, using it for a weekend, and then discarding it.

See my reply to the other child of this comment, but basically I don't see a solid roadmap anymore from here to there - sure there's a a lot of progress and advances but taken as a whole, the singularity idea doesn't account for anything but technological advances as plotted on a curve. There are a ton of economic, social, and squishy human factors that aren't really taken into consideration. It's a fascinating idea, but I don't find it very realistic or practical, much like A.I., or self-driving cars, or casual human space travel.

If you had asked me 10-15 years ago, I would still be pretty sure it could happen, but the last decade or so of real-world technological advance has convinced me otherwise.

Re: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992)

#90

Post by JohnMashey »

JohnMashey wrote: post #74

1) In a 2004 article for ACM Queue magazine, I couldn't resist excerpting the software archaeology bit as a an introductory section: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039532 and of course, as an ancient Unix person, recognized the date.' 2) In 2007, I was Program Co-Chair for the Hot Chips conference, and got Vernor to give a keynote first day. We used keynotes for fun topics. (I had a connection via UC Berkeley P…

An interesting theme unmentioned so far here appears in Fire.., Children… & (somewhat) in Deepness…: technology progress and it’s possible acceleration depending on the information you have. Level of civilization tech has fallen (or never existed). People a) recall that some tech worked OR b) Know specific choices are right ones OR c) Have a computer (or at least a book)with detailed instructions. Now: is it possible to rebuild tech? If so, which paths and what’s quickest way? Often one needs to build a chain of techs first. For example, as a thought experiment, a time machine can send back a VLSI design textbook (which makes clear that planar CMOS wins). If that’s to 1947, diverts from building big vacuum tube computers into pushing to VLSI as fast as possible. But if sent to 1900? Likewise, complete design for iPhone sent to 1990 doesn’t help much.
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