171–175 of 175 posts
Have read all of Vinges works. They’re all great reads at different levels except Rainbows End (that one is a bust IMO). The nice thing about them, is that while some are loosely related, there is no order they need to be read in.
Context: personal SF collection of a few thousand volumes, can devour a good book in a day even it's 1000-pager.
But RE defeated me.
I enjoyed the sci-fi parts of this book. The whole thing about the ship trying to evade the Blight was some of the best hard sci-fi I've come across. What I liked less was the subplot about the children marooned in a medieval-style society of dog-like aliens, which got a bit Game of Thrones-y for my taste, and felt like a completely different book. I considered reading A Deepness in the Sky, but then learned it invol…
The spiders in Deepness are already a technological society with cars, airplanes, radio etc. Furthermore, the interaction between them and humans in space above their planet is one of the main storylines in the book. To a certain extent, it's one of those "what if we were the aliens?" kinds of stories, but very thoroughly fleshed out.
This is where the novel switches gears completely. It introduces a new narrator who describes the spider world, except in human terms with cars, royal families, blacksmiths and references places with Earth-like names like Princeton, so clearly a kind of allegorical form of storytelling. It completely put me off what was up to then pretty decent hard sci-fi. It reminded me of the fable-like way the aliens are described in The Three-Body Problem, which I did not like.
I will try a few more chapters, I guess.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The spiders in Deepness are already a technological society with cars, airplanes, radio etc. Furthermore, the interaction between them and humans in space above their planet is one of the main storylines in the book. To a certain extent, it's one of those "what if we were the aliens?" kinds of stories, but very thoroughly fleshed out.
I started reading it last night. Then I remembered that I had started reading it about a year ago, but that I had given up around chapter 4. This is where the novel switches gears completely. It introduces a new narrator who describes the spider world, except in human terms with cars, royal families, blacksmiths and references places with Earth-like names like Princeton, so clearly a kind of allegorical form of story…
A (hopefully) non-spoiler TL;DR is that this has to do with how our perception of others affects our ability to humanize or dehumanize them. In fact, there's one scene near the end where this metaphorical narration is intentionally and explicitly contrasted with the actual appearance of the Spiders and their world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started reading it last night. Then I remembered that I had started reading it about a year ago, but that I had given up around chapter 4. This is where the novel switches gears completely. It introduces a new narrator who describes the spider world, except in human terms with cars, royal families, blacksmiths and references places with Earth-like names like Princeton, so clearly a kind of allegorical form of story…
If you read on, you'll eventually find out just why it's narrated the way it is. You're correct in that it's clearly metaphorical - but that actually has a compelling in-story explanation, and it is a major factor later in the plot. A (hopefully) non-spoiler TL;DR is that this has to do with how our perception of others affects our ability to humanize or dehumanize them. In fact, there's one scene near the end where…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a short story "The Babbler" set after Children but I don't think there will be another full book.
"The Blabber" (not Babbler!) was actually written some time before "A Fire Upon The Deep". Some of the details in Blabber aren't fully consistent with the later novels; it's best seen as a first draft of the Zones of Thought universe. In an interview, Vinge has stated his hope to continue Children, but without much conviction: https://ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/reprint-in-dee...