A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, 2) Mass Market Paperback – January 15, 2000

Set twenty thousand years earlier than  A Fire Upon The Deep , Vernor Vinge's second book in the Zones of Thought universe shares little and requires nothing of its companion volume. It's action alternates between the inhabitants of an alien world and human observers concealed in orbit above. The Spiders have developed pre-space flight technology and struggle with the 250-year freeze-and-thaw cycle of their planet's On/Off variable star. The orbiting humans consist of two factions. The Qeng Ho have goals of trade and communication. The Emergents have the more direct agenda of conquest and domination. As the book proceeds, we watch the Spiders develop technically and socially. Simultaneously, the more advanced Emergents and Qeng Ho intrigue, fight, integrate, intrigue and fight. It all works out much better than it should.Like Vinge's other fiction, this book is host to a number of "big ideas" that take the stage along with the actions and inactions of the characters. They include:An alien species--the Spiders--that seems far less alien than they really should. What seems like bad writing through much of the book is given a reasonable explanation in the end. These creatures are interesting and even--heaven help me--cute.A variable star turns on and off at regular intervals. The possible explanations are intriguing as are its effects on the evolution of life on its planets.A tailored "mindrot" virus produces various neurological effects, including an exaggerated ability to concentrate called "Focus." The virus is both a disease and an altered state that makes workers diligent, productive and savant-like. It has uses and abuses, not always easy to distinguish.A flexible, self-organizing network technology constructed of large numbers of simple processors massively interconnected. The security and flexibility of the resulting "mesh networks" are explored by their Qeng Ho and Emergent users.If you plan to also read  A Fire Upon The Deep , then read it first for the most enjoyable experience. That said, this book can stand on its own and is good, enjoyable space opera. The story has its darker elements, but is well-worth a persistent reading. With good justification, it is considered one of science fiction's classics.

While the sci-fi elements of this were more low key that book one, I enjoyed this one more. The character development of both the humans and spiders was well done. Also really enjoyed the ending as it was satisfying while still leaving room for a book three.IMO the enslaved emergents and their role as part of the computer system is somewhat similar to the role LLMs are now starting to be employed for. The authors description of why you need humans rather than a code basically describes what LLMs are good at.

Eight thousand years into the future, the humankind has undergone "The Age of Failed Dreams". There is no "strong AI", no complex nano-machines or general assemblers, and no faster than light travel or communication. Yet humans travels between the stars, terraform planets, have encountered two (and are about to encounter the third!) intelligent species; medical advances, suspended animation, and relativistic time dilation aboard Bussard Ramjet ("ramscoop") equipped ships has drastically expanded lifespans. Since hardware has not advanced much in recent times, programming rarely involves writing new code, but rather adapting layers and layers of centuries old code (some going back to "The Old Earth") to new tasks and environments. There are positions such as "programmer-at-arms" and "programmer-archaeologist".The Qeng Ho (pronounced "Cheng Ho", after Zheng He -- a Ming Dynasty Chinese seafarer who has ventured with enormous fleets to the coast of Africa, Arabia, and the Malay Archipelago) is a relatively liberal human culture that trades between the stars and uses the UNIX epoch as its time system. Qeng Ho undertakes an expedition to the On-Off star (named so as it periodically turns itself on for 35 years, and then turns itself off for the next 215 to relight again in a highly predictable manner) 50 light years away from their starting point, the biggest wonder of the universe close to the known Human Space. Decision to undertake the expedition is made when they discover (by capturing spark-gap radio signals in Morse-like code) the only planet in its orbit is home to a civilization of Spider-like creatures who live in a world not dissimilar from the human twentieth century (they hibernate when the On-Off is off, so progress is interrupted by 215-year "darks").On the way there, they are (as expected) met by the "Emergents", a totalitarian human civilization that has recently emerged from a dark age (a major theme in the book are civilizations losing advanced technology including space travel and falling back into barbarism) and uses "Focus", a particularly nasty combination of mind control and slavery. Emergents ambush the Qeng Ho and are able to Focus many of them, but as a result of the Qeng-Ho Emergent conflict, neither the Emergent nor the Qeng Ho ships are capable of traveling back to their home worlds. They must now await the time that the Spider civilization advances to the point where they can repair their ramscoops.There are several lines in the story: the lives of Qeng Ho and Emergents in orbit around the On-Off star and preparing for contact with the Spiders; the story of a liberal-minded group of Spiders centered around "Sherkarner Underhill", who is a (quoting a character in the book) "von Neumman, Minsky, Einstein..." in one. Finally, there is the back-story of the Qeng Ho and human progress in space, told by Pham Nuwen. Pham Nuwen -- also a character in the earlier Fire Upon The Deep -- was born a medieval prince on a fallen colony world, but has become a Great Man of the Qeng Ho and a founder of its modern incarnation.This summary does very little justice to the book as is each chapter is laden with fascinating ideas. Dr. Vinge is a Computer Scientist and a mathematician and there is the above-mentioned discussion of what programming would be like in the future. Sensor networks and distributed systems / networking in general play a huge role in the story and are portrayed realistically (I say this as a developer working close to that space). It is quite possibly a true work of "Computer Science fiction". Vinge has popularized the idea of The Singularity, yet through a plot device introduced in "Fire Upon The Deep" The Singularity does not happen in the section of the Galaxy that contains the Qeng Ho space and our Earth. The Spider story-line is just plain fun to read at times, as it harkens back to our stories of greater inventions and scientific progress during what future humans depicted in the story call "The Dawn Age". Humans remain humans and Spiders are deliberately depicted in a humanized way: love is a strong part of each of the sub-stories.One thing to keep in mind is that the book is rather dark in places. The author rightly avoids glorifying totalitarianism: we don't see philosopher kings, instead we see sadistic, compulsively lying, and brutal apparatchiks of tyranny who own human beings and plot against each other, all while claiming to be working for the "common good". Slavery is depicted in its full brutality and not in a "Gone In The Wind" matter: we see brain damage from Focus, humans being given as gifts, and being reduced to machines. The aliens in the story may literally resemble giant spiders living in dark (to the human eyes -- the spiders can see UV) quarters, but the most grotesque monsters depicted are human. In all, the graphic nature of Emergent cruelty is not hidden, which at times makes the book difficult to read (I would not recommend this book to younger readers for this reason). However, the graphic and realistic portrayal is justified as a welcome and refreshing balance to much of the fiction that glorified totalitarian societies from Ancient Sparta to today's tyrants. Some reviewers objected to such a "one-sided portrayal", but it matches closely the actual narrative told by victims of totalitarianism.In all this is one of the books that demonstrates clearly how text can show what no motion picture can: while the plot could make for a great movie or a movie series, much of what is describes would be nearly impossible to properly convey on a screen.

Foundation was my teens fav, Dune my 20's and Vinge has taken the cake for my 30's, incredible mind-expanding story.The printing was good too, well bound, a nice vacation read.

This is a gripping story set in a rich and well-imagined universe. It's a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, set thousands of years earlier, in a time and place of ram ships and "coldsleep", where interstellar expeditions stretch over decades. In particular, it concerns an expedition from the Qeng Ho trading empire to an astronomical anomaly on the edge of known space. From the very beginning, things are fraught with danger.The plot isn't tightly coupled to that of A Fire in the Deep. Instead, the two books share themes and structure: an alien species, treachery, a romantic portrayal of software systems built over generations into almost unknowable complexity, and a light smattering of typos in the SF Masterworks reprints. The two books also share one character (I think, despite the inconsistencies). You can probably guess who, but it's revealed in the first few pages anyway.The cosmic scope here is not quite as broad as that of A Fire Upon the Deep, but in fact this book is better for its tighter focus. I do have some reservations, though, the most significant being that halfway through, a technology is introduced that is so wondrous and so convenient that a suspension of disbelief becomes difficult, for just a few pages. Then the plot sweeps you up again.

The story moves too slowly, I dont understand how the author can use so much text without advancing it more.Also the alien race is described in a way that makes the book feel surreal; they are apparently some kind of arachnids but when reading about their doings and interactions they are indistinguishable from humans. Even their cities have names that sounds like places in the UK.Some interesting concepts are there, but as a story this is just not good enough for me. Not recommended.

"Deepness" is an amazing book. By far one of the best Sci-fy I've ever read. It's a long book, and a demanding one. Action packed at the beginning, same at the end. But most of the book is a slow and grindy exploration of the consequences of civilization, technology and interstellar politics. I love the stuff, but it's not for everyone. I think it's a shame that more people are not addicted to Vinge's books. I actually found Deepness, for example, better in many ways than "A fire upon the deep", and still that's the famous one, probably thanks to all the prizes. A shame.

I loved this book <3It somehow seems that instead of going forward in time on book 2 of Zones of Thought, it goes backward, to Qeng Ho time. Qeng Ho, the Spiders, Sherkaner, Pham, Qiwi, Ezr... These are some of the awesome characters that are found in this book! I fell in love with the characters a lot more than on book one, but the story is quite different than book one. Anyhow, it is a great sci fi book, lots of space, adventure, and aliens. Spidery aliens :)