A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
Good stuff, thought-provoking as always (five stars)
(Review posted 14 Jun 2000 12:12:12)

(Copied from an old review originally posted elsewhere.)

Not as grand and universe-spanning as "A Fire Upon the Deep": "Deepness" takes place entirely in the Slow Zone, the part of the galaxy where you can't travel faster than light or make really high-tech gadgets, and the time when AI and nanotech seemed possible is known as The Age of Failed Dreams. Many reviewers have noted the dramatic irony: a reader who has read "Fire Upon the Deep" knows why the dreams failed and progress always seems to stagnate, but the characters in the book (and readers who haven't read "Fire") can only wonder.

Most of the characters in the book are human. Even the non-human aliens, the Spiders, are awfully human in culture and psychology if not in body-shape; this makes it easier to have them sympathetic characters, but misses the chance to illuminate human nature by showing something else (in this respect "Deepness" reminds me of Robert Forward's annoying "Camelot 30K", in which the alien society is essentially medieval England).

I have one structural gripe with "Deepness": something Very Important happens at around page 350, and continues happening through most of the rest of the book, but we don't find out about it until page 700 or so, where it provides a rather jarring deus ex machina for Our Heros. I'll admit it was a fun surprise, but I'm not sure Vinge was quite justified in keeping it from us all that time.

But anyway, the aliens, the human trader culture (the Queng Ho, happy capitalists who travel from star to star doing whatever business there is to do) and the Bad Guy culture (the Emergents, smiling fascists with one Big Secret) are interesting in themselves, and they clash in insightul and convincing ways, and there is enough cool scientific and cultural tech to keep any geek happy. It's a very good book (including various fun things I haven't mentioned), and it's part of the development of a fascinating future history.

(A direct sequel seems likely, as Queng Ho founder Pham Nuwen has to get himself frozen so he can show up millennia later in "Fire Upon the Deep", and the smartest Spider vanishes mysteriously and is (har har) presumed dead.)