A Deepness in the Sky: Vernor Vinge (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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but I don't know what I'd do with the other half, and the endless cycle of rape and mind control that happens to a particularly sympathetic character. The first are Qeng Ho, wandering traders, who try to keep the human civilization (light years apart) the whole.

When the Qeng Ho and the Emergents arrive, the Spiders are dormant, frozen in their deepnesses, but when the star flares to life, they are poised to enter a modern technological age in the next generation. Ezr's position as the unique liaison officer between Qeng Ho and Emergents leads him to despair, and he accepts Pham Nuwen's offer to join a plot against the Emergents as a way to personal redemption as well as to take revenge against the Emergents.While the Quen Ho/Emergence folks are tied up in a L1 orbit above the planet, lurking, Vinge takes us to the spiders and tells there story. These ships are equipped with cold storage for humans, so the century-long trips are mostly in status; this means that the Quen Ho travelers/merchants live quite long objectively and indeed, Pham Nuwen here is almost 3000 years old subjectively (and about 300 objective-- gotta love modern medicine!

Two human groups launch expeditions to the Spider world: the Qeng Ho (pronounced Chung Ho and named after the explorer Zheng He), traders who have developed a common interstellar culture for humanity; and the Emergents, a civilization that enslaves selected human minds and has only recently re-emerged from a Dark Age. Because if there's one constant across the depths of space and time, it's that nothing lasts forever. The author really threw me for loop for the first quarter of the book, I thought may be he is too lazy to think up weird alien names, silly bast that I am. We follow some spiders through large parts of their life, and their stories sometimes left me in tears.

It was an interesting decision to set the “prequel” so far back in chronology that none of the distinguishing features of the Zones of Thought are known. If this is true, then whoever can establish ties with the aliens first could reap unimaginable rewards; humans have made contact with only one other intelligent (but non-technological) alien species in millennia of travel through the stars. That was probably the most original and interesting idea of A Fire Upon the Deep, so I was surprised Vinge didn’t want to explore it further.

Two space faring races of humans discover a unique physical anomaly: a star that mysteriously turns on and off at regular intervals. Tomas Nau is in many ways a moustache-twirling villain, complete with the sadistic right-hand minion (Ritser Brughel) and the indispensable trusted lieutenant (Anne Reynolt). Pham also helped create a broadcasting center where the Quen Ho send tech notes and such to the stars. The Qeng Ho, stuck under the thumb of Nau's Emergent control, do what they do best: they slowly, inexorably wear down the stringent Emergent psyche, corrupting it with an underground market. Instead, human space has been explored mainly by the Qeng Ho, who have pursued interstellar trade throughout human space.The other main narrative in A Deepness in the Sky focuses on the dozens of Qeng Ho and Emergent characters as they are forced to work together to observe the Spiders as their society emerges from the darkness as their star enters the ‘On’ period. The book is extremely strong, but it is hard to read it in one go; it clearly benefits from a reread. I did get lost in some scientific details but most of them do become self explanatory as you read on. Hrunkner Unnerby, συνεργώντας με το πιο φαντασιόπληκτο άτομο που υπάρχει και παρατηρώντας τις πιο τρελές ιδέες του να υλοποιούνται, θα δει τον κόσμο του από μια διαφορετική σκοπιά· ο Tomas Nau, παίζοντας τις θανάσιμες πολιτικές των Emergents του και στοιχηματίζοντας πολλά για να νικήσει, θα κάνει ό,τι περνά από το χέρι του για την απόλυτη επιτυχία του· ο Pham Trinli, επανεντάσσοντας στο Qeng Ho μετά από πολύ καιρό και δουλεύοντας σκληρά για να διατηρήσει την κρυφή του περσόνα, θα ξεκινήσει να στήνει τα δικά του σχέδια· η Qiwi, ζώντας τη μισή παιδική ηλικία της μόνη μεταξύ των αστεριών και μεγαλώνοντας μαθαίνοντας για την επιβίωση στο διάστημα, θα πέσει θύμα των πολιτικών παιχνιδιών· και η Μικρή Victory, γεννημένη μαζί τα αδέρφια της εκτός φάσης και περνώντας τα χρόνια της κρυμμένη από τον υπόλοιπο κόσμο, θα ξεκινήσει σε μια περιπέτεια που θα σημαδέψει την ζωή της για πάντα. A prequel which, although only has a loose connection to A Fire Upon the Deep, focusing all the action to the Slow Zone, where worlds remain in ignorance of the rest of the galaxy, plunges deep into Pham Nuwem’s and the Qeng Ho’s past, bringing to light their origins, the rise and fall of planetary civilisations, as well as the discovery of Spiderkind, and revealing through a large cast of characters and multiple points of view a Human Space full of optimistic dreams and flawed ideals, crafting masterfully an unmatched epic with real, human repercussions.

Some of the characters, like Ezr or Qiwi, are probably safely labelled as "good guys," but no one is squeaky clean. If there is anything I could say against the novel, it is that Thomas Nau doesn't endure nearly a painful enough death. In the elite group of authors of speculative fiction that truly understand the power of story and are masters of it, we must include such names as J. More seriously, the only thing that makes me limit my recommendation it is that it is a nerd's novel filled with nerdy references to 'Cavorite' and a surprising amount of hard science for such a far future setting. Vinge manages to make Tomas a believable antagonist, one whose defeat comes not from his own incompetence but from a combination of betrayal and skillful planning on the part of the protagonists.I can't help but feel that the book would have been better if it couldn't have trimmed off 100 or 200 pages of this information throughout the book, and in its place spend more time at the end. In contrast, A Deepness in the Sky unifies some of the same tropes—as well as new ones—to create a compelling story and pathos for the plights of the characters. Later in the book, we get a description of the spiders from a human perspective and that is very different. This three-way contest, with Qeng Ho and Emergents fighting a bitter war with each other full of treachery and dashed hopes, while the fate of the Spiders hangs in the balance, makes for a compelling story all the way through to the end.