A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (1992) • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by garmaine » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #42

btown wrote: post #27

Highly, highly recommend Vinge's A Deepness In The Sky [0], which won the Hugo in 2000. It's a hard-sci-fi story about how various societies, human and alien, attempt to assert control & hegemony over centuries of time (in many ways thinking of this as a distributed systems and code documentation problem!), and how critical and impactful the role of language translation is in helping people to understand foreign ways…

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

Same here. I would have put down and thrown away Deepness if I hadn't read Fire Upon The Deep first and trusted the author. I'm glad I finished it because of the parts about the spiders and Pham Nuwen's past was really interesting. But the "present-day" emergents story line is dark... I did not enjoy reading those parts.

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

#152

Post by garmaine » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

bsanr wrote: post #105

37ef_ced3 wrote: post #68

Read Vernor Vinge's "The Cookie Monster" to see one of the major inspirations for Black Mirror, and a character similar to Elon Musk. Full text here: https://www.ida.liu.se/~tompe44/lsff-book/Vernor%20Vinge%20-... Also everyone should read Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" to understand a plausible outcome of the technological change we are witnessing today. It's a bittersweet book, about being a small human in a world w…

>It's a bittersweet book, about being a small human in a world where the value of individual creative efforts are overwhelmed by the sheer might of automation and vast collaboration and technological accumulation. I also hold, strongly and somewhat idiosyncratically, that it would work quite well as a Studio Ghibli/Miyazaki film. (Chew on that for a minute, hahah.) (EDIT: So much so that I did, at one point, badly mo…

(minor spoilers for Deepness follow)

When I read Deepness I actually imagined in my head a Studio Ghibli like aesthetic for the spider world chapters. I thought if it were ever adapted into film or TV, it would be essential to display the spider world as the humans listening to their radio broadcasts imagined it, as a playful, colorful, animated world populated by anthropomorphized cartoon spiders. Given the level of technology and political environment, it would feel very similar to the city backdrops of Kiki's Delivery Service or Howl's Moving Castle.

It would also make the reveal at the end when the spiders and humans finally meet all the much more dramatic, as humans land on the planet to find not the cute lovable anime world we'd been watching, but the primordially scary reality of spiders with human-level intelligence.

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

#153

Post by nl » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #59

nl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vinge invented the idea (and name) of the singularity.

No, that was John von Neumann. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Technological... Vinge did "present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace" in True Names in 1981 though. > True Names is a 1981 science fiction novella by American writer Vernor Vinge, a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre. It is one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be centr…

Hmm..

The first to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context was John von Neumann.[4] Stanislaw Ulam reports a discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue

but also

The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate.

both from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (linked from the link you shared).

I've never seen it attributed to von Neumann before, and it looks like Wikipeida has slowly increased the emphasis on it. In this earlier edit it says:

> This quote has been several times taken out of context and attributed to von Neumann himself, likely due to von Neumann's widespread fame and influence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_sin...

von Neumann wasn't credited until late 2004: See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_sin...

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

#154

Post by goatlover » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 9:50 AM UTC

stormking wrote: post #147

goatlover wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fiction, not a science book. I'm responding to the claim that an author can't depict something akin to transcendence or very advanced technology. Both of which are fictional, at least as far as we know. Arthur C Clarke has also written stuff along those lines.

I was referring to "managed to provide some very interesting answers regarding the nature of the cosmic dark forest and higher dimensional space". No, he was not because his ideas about "the nature of the cosmic dark forest" - allthough having at least some internal consistency - lack any foundation in actual science and his ideas about "higher dimensional space" were pure nonsense. They were not "answers" but plot d…

Do you suppose ascended beings and advanced alien technology are scientific as opposed to plot devices? It's all fictional. Star Trek, Star Gate, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, even plenty of things in the Expanse (Epstein drive, protomolecule tech). Interesting answers means expanding on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up.

It doesn't mean providing a hard scientific explanation for something that supposed to be beyond our scientific knowledge. Who took out the protomolecule builders and why? Leviathan Falls will likely provide some answers. Same with Death's End giving more details about the Dark Forest. It's an exploration of an idea, not a documentary.

Imagine criticizing Dune because the spice and sand worms aren't based on actual biology.

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

#155

Post by garmaine » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 9:56 AM UTC

jrootabega wrote: post #15

goatlover wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liu Cixin managed to provide some very interesting answers regarding the nature of the cosmic dark forest and higher dimensional space in Death's End, the third book in the Three Body Problem trilogy. The Expanse book nine, Leviathan Falls, will probably explain the advanced alien conflict and unknown aggressors that proceeded human discovery in the distant past. Given how the authors have handled mysterious alien st…

I'll have to check it out! I've been delinquent on reading those.

See the sibling comments... those books are SF thriller junk. Don't let me stop you from reading them if you enjoy that, but their reputation for "deep ideas" is not deserved.

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

#156

Post by stormking » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #154

stormking wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to "managed to provide some very interesting answers regarding the nature of the cosmic dark forest and higher dimensional space". No, he was not because his ideas about "the nature of the cosmic dark forest" - allthough having at least some internal consistency - lack any foundation in actual science and his ideas about "higher dimensional space" were pure nonsense. They were not "answers" but plot d…

Do you suppose ascended beings and advanced alien technology are scientific as opposed to plot devices? It's all fictional. Star Trek, Star Gate, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, even plenty of things in the Expanse (Epstein drive, protomolecule tech). Interesting answers means expanding on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up. It doesn't mean providing a…

"Interesting answers means expanded on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up."

That's the root cause of our disagreement. I simply call that a good story. On the other hand, to me a book gives "interesting answers" to something if it has something meaningful to say about reality, not just the fictional universe.

In Dune, that would be true for politics and religion but not for sandworm biology.

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

#157

Post by goatlover » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 10:18 AM UTC

stormking wrote: post #156

goatlover wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you suppose ascended beings and advanced alien technology are scientific as opposed to plot devices? It's all fictional. Star Trek, Star Gate, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, even plenty of things in the Expanse (Epstein drive, protomolecule tech). Interesting answers means expanding on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up. It doesn't mean providing a…

"Interesting answers means expanded on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up." That's the root cause of our disagreement. I simply call that a good story. On the other hand, to me a book gives "interesting answers" to something if it has something meaningful to say about reality, not just the fictional universe. In Dune, that would be true for politic…

> That's the root cause of our disagreement. I simply call that a good story. On the other hand, to me a book gives "interesting answers" to something if it has something meaningful to say about reality, not just the fictional universe.

But that's guaranteed to be the case when it comes to aliens, since we don't yet know of any. Even if someone uses a more plausible resolution to the Fermi Paradox in their story, it will still be based on speculation, instead of telling us something about reality, since we simply don't know.

So in the context of ascension and aliens, it's all fictional and down to whether the writer can deliver a creative enough explanation. To use a fantasy example, that didn't work out so well for the Game of Thrones tv show, and might be a reason why GRR Martin is taking so long to finish the books.

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

#158

Post by stormking » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

stormking wrote: post #156

goatlover wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you suppose ascended beings and advanced alien technology are scientific as opposed to plot devices? It's all fictional. Star Trek, Star Gate, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, even plenty of things in the Expanse (Epstein drive, protomolecule tech). Interesting answers means expanding on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up. It doesn't mean providing a…

"Interesting answers means expanded on the rules and story in the fictional universe to provide explanations for mysteries the author(s) set up." That's the root cause of our disagreement. I simply call that a good story. On the other hand, to me a book gives "interesting answers" to something if it has something meaningful to say about reality, not just the fictional universe. In Dune, that would be true for politic…

That's why the only books that have something meaningful to say about aliens are Solaris and Blindsight.

In case of the fermi paradoxon, I'd add the first two books of Baxter's Manifold series where he offers two distinct explanations, the first one being "it's not a paradox at all, we're truly the first" and "some natural process is killing them off before they can colonize the galaxy".

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

#159

Post by larksimian » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

bradknowles wrote: post #144

AdamHominem wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently read Fire Upon the Deep and I think I'd agree that Vinge is great at speculative fiction. I hadn't looked at the publish/copyright date when I borrowed the ebook from my library. I was shocked just now to see it's a thirty year old book. Zero signs or hints of it, at least to me. The concept that computers/AIs can be affected by the region of space they're in is a nifty idea I don't think I've seen before,…

It is a bit of a slow burn. But with these books, Vernor Vinge has now become one of my favorite authors, up there with Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, David Drake, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle (although I don’t care for Niven and Pournelle when they work together). Larry Niven has introduced me to some new authors that I’ve liked, through his “Man-Kzi…

I liked Madame Bovary so much :( I did read it in my late 20s though. It's such a slick book, I loved the... style/aesthetics. True nothing happens in it, but still. I guess I was going through a more lyrically motivated reading phase at the time.

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

#160

Post by sillyquiet » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

roca wrote: post #120

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.

The Peace War is okay but oddly enough in this case the sequel Marooned in Realtime is much better IMHO. Much more thought-provoking and genuinely moving.

yes, agreed, I really listed it because it's a necessary (imo) prologue to the events in `Marooned in Realtime`