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A Deepness in the Sky is a science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999 the novel is a loose prequel (set 30,000 years earlier) to his earlier novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992).
Plot introduction The book deals with the discovery of an intelligent alien species on a planet orbiting the bizarre, appropriately named OnOff star, which spends 215 of every 250 years almost completely dormant, releasing almost no energy. During this period, the planet freezes and its fauna goes into hibernation. The planet's inhabitants, named "Spiders" by the humans for their resemblance to arachnids, have reached a stage of technological development very similar to that of Earth's humans in the early 20th century. Two human expeditions set out to trade/exploit the situation: the Qeng Ho traders (pronounced Cheng Ho, presumably named after Zheng He); and the Emergents, an autocratic culture that literally enslaves selected human minds. Plot summary After suffering decimation due to a disease they call "mindrot", the Emergents have learned to engineer the disease and to use it to their advantage as a form of mind control. They use it as a weapon against the unwitting Qeng Ho expedition, infecting them during a meeting with a time-delayed variant of the disease. As both groups of humans approach the On/Off star, a surprise attack by the Emergents, timed to coincide with the mindrot symptoms, leaves both fleets crippled. They have perforce to work together and wait for the Spider civilization to achieve a greater technological maturity in order to help them refurbish their ships. Emergent culture uses mindrot primarily in the form of a variant which technicians can manipulate in order to release neurotoxins to specific parts of the brain. An active MRI-type device triggers changes through dia- and paramagnetic biological molecules. By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent managers induce a state they call Focus, in which Focused persons become completely obsessed with a single idea or speciality, essentially turning them into brilliant appliances. Many Qeng Ho become Focused against their will, and the Emergents retain the rest of the population under mass surveillance. The Qeng Ho trading culture gradually starts to dilute this totalitarian régime, however, as the Emergents discover certain benefits of tolerated and restricted free trade; and the two human cultures merge to some extent over many years of forced co-operation. The book discusses some of the problems of trying to maintain an interstellar trading culture without access to superluminal travel or to superluminal communication. Time-measurement details provide an interesting concept in the book: the Qeng Ho measure time primarily in terms of seconds, since the notion of days, months, and years has no usefulness between various star systems. The timekeeping system, based on the Unix epoch, uses terms such as kiloseconds and megaseconds. Only one concrete connection links A Deepness in the Sky with A Fire Upon the Deep: the character of Pham Nuwen, the "Programmer-at-Arms", who appears in both books. Hints occur about the "zones of thought" mentioned in the earlier book; the story takes place in the Slow Zone, though Vinge does not explain the connections, and the characters in the story remain unaware of the zones' existence. The sun's inexplicably strange behavior, the unusual planetary system (with only a solitary planet and several asteroid-sized diamonds), and the discovery of "cavorite mines" on the planet appear as possible leftovers from the passage of the system through the center of the galaxy. Vinge's characters speculate that the Spiders descend from an ancient star-faring civilization, and that the antigravity material and other strange artifacts have connections with that civilization. At the end of the book, Pham announces his plans to free all of the Focused in the entire Emergent civilization, and, if surviving that, to embark on a journey to the center of the galaxy to find the source of these strange artifacts. A Fire Upon the Deep reveals that he died during this journey, and that one of the god-like Powers re-assembled his body parts and memories to use as a puppet. In the later novel also shows that Pham had misidentified the center of the galaxy as the likely source of the artifacts, as the outer portions of the galaxy were the ones with greater technological sophistication. With this work Vinge introduces localizers to his set of science-fiction concepts. Localizers comprise tiny devices which can contain a simple processor, sensors, and short-range communications. Vinge explores how intelligent control can use mesh networking of these devices in ways quite different from those of traditional computer networks. (See also: smartdust.) Awards and nominations These awards make A Deepness in the Sky one of the most honored science fiction novels in recent history. Release details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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