Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a CD-ROM sold by ClariNet Communications along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone e-book.[2][3] It has a loose prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, from 1999, and a direct sequel, The Children of the Sky, from 2012.
Setting
The novel is set in various locations in the Milky Way. The galaxy is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought"; it is not clear to the novel's characters whether this is a natural phenomenon or an artificially produced one, but it seems to roughly correspond with galactic-scale stellar density and a Beyond region is mentioned in the Sculptor Galaxy as well.[4] The Zones reflect fundamental differences in basic physical laws, and one of the main consequences is their effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial. Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as a ship "descends" towards the Unthinking Depths. But even biological intelligence is affected to a lesser degree. The four zones are spoken of in terms of "low" to "high" as follows:
The Unthinking Depths are the innermost zone, surrounding the Galactic Center. In it, only minimal forms of intelligence, biological or otherwise, are possible. This means that any ship straying into the Depths will be stranded, effectively permanently. Even if the crew did not die immediately—and some forms of life native to "higher" Zones would likely do so—they would be rendered incapable of even human intelligence, leaving them unable to operate their ship in any meaningful way.
Surrounding the Depths is the Slow Zone. The Earth (called "Old Earth") is located in this Zone, and humanity is said to have originated there, although Earth plays no significant role in the story. Biological intelligence is possible in "the Slowness", but not true, sentient, artificial intelligence. Automation is not intelligent enough to calculate the jumps required for faster than light travel in the Slow Zone, but they may escape by performing an immediate reverse jump to where they arrived from if the Slowness is detected, and navigation systems watch for this and store the information required for a return to the start point during each jump. All ships which find themselves in the Slow Zone are restricted to sub-light speeds if an immediate reverse jump back out is impossible. Faster-than-light communication is impossible into or out of the Slow Zone. As the boundaries of the Zones are unknown and subject to change, accidental entry to the Slow Zone is a major interstellar navigational hazard at the "Bottom" of the Beyond. Starships which operate near the Beyond/Slow Zone border often have an auxiliary Bussard ramjet drive, so that, if they accidentally stray into the Slow Zone (thus disabling any FTL drive), they will at least have a backup (sub-light) drive to push them back "up" to the Beyond. Such ships also tend to include "coldsleep" equipment, as it is likely that any such return will still take many subjective lifetimes for most species.
The next outermost layer is the Beyond, within which artificial intelligence, faster-than-light travel, and faster-than-light communication are possible. A few human civilizations exist in the Beyond, all descended from a single ethnic Norwegian group which managed to travel from the Slow Zone to the Beyond (presumably at sub-light speeds) and thence spread using FTL travel. The original settlement of this group is known as Nyjora; other human settlements in the Beyond include Straumli Realm and Sjandra Kei. In the Beyond, FTL travel is accomplished by making many small "jumps" across intervening space, and the efficiency of the drive increases the farther a ship travels from the galactic core. This reflects increases in both drive efficiency and the ship's automation's increased capacity as one moves outward, enabling the computation of longer and longer jumps. The Beyond is not a homogeneous zone—many references are made to, e.g., the "High Beyond" or the "Bottom of the Beyond", depending on distance to the galactic core. These terms seem to refer to differences in the Zone itself, not just relative distance from the Core, but there are no obvious Zone boundaries within the Beyond the way there are between the Slow Zone and the Beyond, or between the Beyond and the Transcend. Whereas a ship that crosses from the Beyond to the Slow Zone or vice versa will experience a dramatic change in its capabilities, a ship in the Beyond which moves farther from the Core will experience a gradual increase in efficiency (assuming it has the technology to make use of it) until another major shift at the boundary to the Transcend. The Beyond is populated by a very large number of interstellar and intergalactic[4] civilizations which are linked by a faster-than-light communication network, "the Net", sometimes cynically called the "Net of a Million Lies". The Net does connect with the Transcend, on the off-chance that one of the "Powers" that live there deigns to communicate, but has no connections with the Slow Zone, as FTL communication is impossible into or out of that Zone. In the novel, the Net is depicted as working much like the Usenet network in the early 1990s, with transcripts of messages containing header and footer information as one would find in such forums.
The outermost layer, containing the galactic halo, is the Transcend, within which incomprehensible, superintelligent beings dwell. When a "Beyonder" civilization reaches the point of technological singularity, it is said to "Transcend", becoming a "Power". Such Powers always seem to relocate to the Transcend, seemingly necessarily, where they become engaged in affairs which remain entirely mysterious to those that remain in the Beyond.
One of the characters in the book, Ravna, uses this analogy to explain the relation between the zones:[5]
"How long must a fish study to understand human motivation? It's not a good analogy, but it's the only safe one; we are like dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different things people do to animals— ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal—each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not exist." She waved at the misty star swarms. "The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface—superior though they are—can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories—but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't make them. And getting them is a deadly risky endeavor."
Plot
An expedition from Straumli Realm, a young human civilization in the high Beyond, investigates a newly discovered five-billion-year-old data archive in the low Transcend that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches. The expedition's facility, High Lab, is gradually and secretly compromised by an initially dormant superintelligence within the archive later known as the Blight. However, shortly before the Blight's final "flowering", two self-aware entities created similarly to the Blight plot to aid the humans before the Blight can gain its full powers.
Finally recognizing the danger, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships, one carrying the adults and the second carrying the children in "coldsleep boxes". The Blight discovers that the first ship lists a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship escapes.
The ship lands on a distant planet with a medieval-level civilization of dog-like creatures, dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. Upon landing, however, the two surviving adults, husband and wife, are ambushed and killed by Tine fanatics known as Flenserists, in whose realm they have landed. The Flenserists capture a young boy named Jefri Olsndot and his wounded sister, Johanna. Johanna is rescued by a Tine named Pilgrim who witnessed the ambush and taken to a neighboring kingdom ruled by a brilliant Tine named Woodcarver. Steel, the Flenserists' leader, tells Jefri that Johanna and their parents were killed by Woodcarver and exploits him in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication), while Johanna and the knowledge stored in her "dataset" device help Woodcarver rapidly develop as well. A highly placed Flenserist spy keeps Steel informed of Woodcarver's progress.
A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major information/service provider for the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent being named "the Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it, and reconstitutes a human man named Pham Nuwen from the wreckage of a spaceship to act as its agent, using his doubt of his own memory's veracity to keep him under its control. Ravna Bergsndot, the only human Relay employee, traces the sleeper ship's signal to the Tines' world and persuades her employer to investigate what it took from High Lab, contracting the merchant vessel Out of Band II, owned by two sentient plant "Skroderiders", Blueshell and Greenstalk, to transport her and Pham there.
Before the mission is launched, the Blight launches a surprise attack on Relay and kills Old One. As Old One dies, it downloads what information it can into Pham to defeat the Blight, and Pham, Ravna and the Skroderiders barely escape Relay's destruction in the Out of Band II.
The Blight expands, taking over races and "rewriting" their people to become its agents, murdering several other Powers, and seizing other archives in the Beyond, looking for what was taken. It finally realizes where the danger truly lies and sends a hastily assembled fleet in pursuit.
The humans arrive at the Tines' homeworld first and ally with Woodcarver to defeat the Flenserists and rescue Jefri. Pham initiates Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone outward by thousands of light years, enveloping and killing the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of civilizations and causing trillions of deaths. The humans are stranded on the Tines world, now in the depths of the Slow Zone. Activating Countermeasure is fatal to Pham, but before he dies, the ghost of Old One within his mind reveals to him that, although his body is a reconstruction, his memories are real. (Vinge expands on Pham's backstory in A Deepness in the Sky.)
Intelligent species
Aprahanti
A race of humanoids with colorful butterfly-like wings who attempt to use the chaos wrought by the Blight to reestablish their waning hegemony. Despite their attractive, delicate appearance, the Aprahanti are an extremely fearsome and vicious species.
Blight
An ancient, malevolent super-intelligent entity which strives to constantly expand and can easily manipulate electronics and organic beings.
Dirokimes
An older race which originally inhabited Sjandra Kei before the arrival of humanity. They work with the humans.
Humans
All humans in the novel (except Pham) are descended from Nyjoran stock.[6] Their ancestors were "Tuvo-Norsk" asteroid miners from Old Earth's solar system, which is noted as being on the other side of the galaxy in the Slow Zone. (Nyjora sounds similar to New Norwegian "New Earth".) One of the major human habitations is Sjandra Kei, three systems[7] comprising roughly 28billion[8] individuals. Their main language is Samnorsk, the Norwegian term for a hypothetical unification of the Bokmål and Nynorsk forms of the language. (Vinge indicates in the book's dedication that several key ideas in it came to him while at a conference in Tromsø, Norway.)
Skroders/Riders/Skroderiders
A race of plantlike beings with fronds that serve as arms. The Riders have little native capacity for short-term memory. They are one of the longest-existing species; five billion years ago, someone gave them six-wheeled mechanical constructs ("skrodes") to move around and to provide short-term memory that made it easier for them to retain information well enough to become long-term memory in the vegetable "rider". It is later revealed that their "benefactor" is the Blight, and it is able to easily corrupt and remotely operate the Riders via their skrodes.
Tines
A race of group minds: each person is a "pack" of 4–8 doglike members, which communicate within the pack using very short-range ultrasonic waves from drumlike organs called "tympana". Each "soul" can survive and evolve by adding members to replace those who die, potentially for hundreds of years, as Woodcarver does.
Related works
Vinge first used the concepts of "Zones of Thought" in a 1988 novella The Blabber, which occurs after Fire. Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky (1999) is a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep set 20,000 years earlier and featuring Pham Nuwen. Vinge's The Children of the Sky, "a near-term sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep", set ten years later, was released in October 2011.[9]
Vinge's former wife, Joan D. Vinge, has also written stories in the Zones of Thought universe, based on his notes. These include "The Outcasts of Heaven Belt", "Legacy", and (as of 2008) a planned novel featuring Pham Nuwen.[10]
Title
Vinge's original title for the novel was "Among the Tines"; its final title was suggested by his editors.[11]
Jo Walton wrote: "Any one of the ideas in A Fire Upon the Deep would have kept an ordinary writer going for years. For me it's the book that does everything right, the example of what science fiction does when it works. ... A Fire Upon the Deep remains a favourite and a delight to re-read, absorbing even when I know exactly what's coming."[13]
Related Research Articles
An ansible is a category of fictional devices or a technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star-systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science-fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities. A related term is ultrawave.
The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is set in a future history in which civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, including Terra ("Earth"), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, peaceful Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth but were the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago, which was followed by a long period when interstellar travel ceased. Some of the races have new genetic traits, a result of ancient Hainish experiments in genetic engineering, including people who can dream while awake, and a world of hermaphroditic people who only come into active sexuality once a month, not knowing which sex will manifest in them. In keeping with Le Guin's style, she uses varied social and environmental settings to explore the anthropological and sociological outcomes of human evolution in those diverse environments.
Vernor Steffen Vinge was an American science fiction author and professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He was the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singularity concept and among the first authors to present a fictional "cyberspace". He won the Hugo Award for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and Rainbows End (2006), and novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2001) and The Cookie Monster (2004).
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good's intelligence explosion model of 1965, an upgradable intelligent agent could eventually enter a positive feedback loop of self-improvement cycles, each successive; and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase ("explosion") in intelligence which would ultimately result in a powerful superintelligence, qualitatively far surpassing all human intelligence.
Singularitarianism is a movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the singularity benefits humans.
A Deepness in the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999, the novel is a loose prequel to his earlier novel A Fire Upon the Deep (1992). The title is coined by one of the story's main characters in a debate, in a reference to the hibernating habits of his species and to the vastness of space.
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. A sequel book, The Singularity Is Nearer, was released on June 25, 2024.
Underhill may refer to:
Marooned in Realtime is a 1986 murder mystery and time-travel science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge, about a small, time-displaced group of people who may be the only survivors of a technological singularity or alien invasion. It is the sequel to the novel The Peace War (1984) and the novella The Ungoverned (1985). Both novels and the novella were collected in Across Realtime.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge is a collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Vernor Vinge. The stories were first published from 1966 to 2001, and the book contains all of Vinge's published short stories from that period except "True Names" and "Grimm's Story".
Death or Glory is a science fiction novel by Vladimir Vasilyev, first published in Russian in 1998, then translated into English in 2004 by Capricorn Publishing. The first part of Death or Glory may be read online.
The Ballad of Beta-2 is a 1965 science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. The book was originally published as Ace Double, together with Alpha Yes, Terra No! by Emil Petaja.
The Excalibur Alternative is a science fiction novel by American writer David Weber, published by Baen Books in 2002. It is one of several novels based on the premise of David Drake's 1986 novel Ranks of Bronze. This novel is based on the short story "Sir George and the Dragon", which appeared in the 2001 anthology Foreign Legions.
The Beyond may refer to:
A group mind, group ego, mind coalescence, or gestalt intelligence in science fiction is a plot device in which multiple minds, or consciousnesses, are linked into a single collective consciousness or intelligence.
Impossible colors are colors that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning. Different color theories suggest different hypothetical colors that humans are incapable of perceiving for one reason or another, and fictional colors are routinely created in popular culture. While some such colors have no basis in reality, phenomena such as cone cell fatigue enable colors to be perceived in certain circumstances that would not be otherwise.
Tatja Grimm's World is a 1987 science fiction novel by American author Vernor Vinge.
The Children of the Sky is a science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep and shares the Zones of Thought universe with the prequel A Deepness in the Sky. It was published 20 years after the first novel but is set 10 years after its events.
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, a sequel to his 1977 novel Gateway and the second book in the Heechee series. It was a finalist for two major annual awards, the 1981 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the 1980 Nebula Award. In the 1981 poll of Locus readers it finished second to The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge.
The Saga of Shadows is a trilogy of space opera novels written by Kevin J. Anderson. First announced in 2011, it is a sequel to Anderson's seven-book series, The Saga of Seven Suns (2002–2008). The first novel, The Dark Between the Stars, was released by Tor Books on June 3, 2014. The second book in the series, Blood of the Cosmos, was published on June 2, 2015. The third novel, called Eternity's Mind, was released on September 13, 2016.
1 2 Vinge, Vernor (1992). A Fire Upon the Deep. Macmillan. ISBN9780812515282. Relay was now the main intermediate to the Magellanics, and one of the few sites with any sort of link to the Beyond in Sculptor.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
