# Vernor Vinge - ‘A Fire Upon The Deep’ is now my favorite hard SF **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 5, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717 "2019-09-05T00:51:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/1 "2019-09-05T00:51:22Z")
Both this book and ‘A Deepness In The Sky’ (also in the same universe) won the Hugo award. If you understand the difference between inertial mass and active gravitational mass, I highly recommended this book. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/2 "2019-09-05T00:54:21Z")
I’ve enjoyed most of VV’s works. I love his “Zones of Thought” universe. I just wish he’d write faster. It’s been 8 years since “Children of the Sky” came out. Grrrrrrr! Gotta see if humanity ever gets out of the “slow zone”. ---
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/3 "2019-09-05T01:11:50Z")
I’m only 2/3 way through Deepness. I think the on-off star is moving into the low beyond. The spiders thought they detected a difference between inertia and gravitational mass. I can’t wait to see how the human’s automation works out. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/4 "2019-09-05T01:33:19Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > I’ve enjoyed most of VV’s works. I love his “Zones of Thought” universe. I just wish he’d write faster. It’s been 8 years since “Children of the Sky” came out. Grrrrrrr! Gotta see if humanity ever gets out of the “slow zone”. Don’t get me started on _The Cookie Monster_. It appears that Vinge wrote what essentially was the opening chapters to a novel and then decided to abandon plans for a novel and sell the opening as a short story. So you start reading, the characters are introduced, some mysteries are discovered, the plot moves along, the characters discover a big secret, and … The End. The story stops at what would appear to be the end of the first act. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/5 "2019-09-05T02:31:22Z")
Love this series. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/6 "2019-09-05T04:25:53Z")
Moved to Cafe Society. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/7 "2019-09-05T05:15:10Z")
I liked ‘Fire’ quite a lot, though the middle act was a bit endless and could have used a better editor (esp Harmonious Repose and thereabouts). Deepness IMO was a far better book, and the two-man / several-spider rebellion against the Emergency was fantastic to watch play out. All that said, Vinge seems to have run his course with Deepness. Rainbow’s End, and the sequel to Fire were kind of awful for me, and he doesn’t seem to be writing any longer which is a blessing and a shame. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/8 "2019-09-05T05:44:58Z")
_Rainbows End_. Like _Pet Sematary_, the bad spelling is relevant in the book. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/9 "2019-09-05T06:01:47Z")
Fair enough, I saw the apostrophe error after I posted. RE still sucked. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/10 "2019-09-05T08:30:57Z")
Peace War/Marooned in Realtime are also excellent, IMO (“Marooned” is my favourite, though the antagonist’s motive, when we find it out, leaves something to be desired) I will admit to skim-reading a lot of Pham Nguyen in “Fire” to get to the Johanna/Tines bits more quickly though. The Tines are one of the best-realised alien races I’ve ever read. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/11 "2019-09-05T10:48:41Z")
I really liked the concepts in _A Fire upon the Deep_, but I was so disappointed in _The Children of the Sky_ that I gave up on Vinge. Thanks for letting me know I should look at his other books. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/12 "2019-09-05T17:12:14Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > Peace War/Marooned in Realtime are also excellent, IMO (“Marooned” is my favourite, though the antagonist’s motive, when we find it out, leaves something to be desired) Peace War was quite good, but again a long, muddled middle act. Marooned was excellent IMO, an actual time traveling (sorta) murder mystery, and quite fun. Set in the same universe as Peace War, and the first appearance that I’m aware of of “the singularity”. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/13 "2019-09-05T17:28:01Z")
I’m more of a “soft” SF person, of the Bradbury/Matheson/Beaumont/Sturgeon school, and can’t handle the hardboys’/hardgirls’ mathematics. But Vernor’s is my favorite ginger ale! ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/14 "2019-09-05T17:55:07Z")
I love Fire Upon the Deep and Deepness in the Sky, they’re both really good and inventive. The idea of technology so advanced that probing into it is like trying to use Lovecraftian magic is great, and there were a lot of neat pieces and places to the universe. The various ambiguities in the world are also interesting, like was Pham Newen completely made up by Old One and are the Zones a natural phenomenon or created. Children of the Sky was pretty meh to me - it didn’t really have any neat new stuff or explore the Zones Universe. He’s got some other good stuff, like Marooned in Realtime and Peace War, but I’m not aware of much recent writing. It’s kind of weird because he retired as a professor supposedly to write more, but seems to be writing less as a full-time writer than he did as a hobbiest. His politics sometimes make stories a little silly though - The Ungoverned reads almost as a parody of Anarcho-Capitalist ideas, where a fledgling government fails to invade an anarcho-capitalist area because a crazy farmer has personal nuclear weapons and another group of people invent cruise missiles. The idea that conquering leaders will stop just because they’re personally threatened flies in the face of history - notably both Hitler and Stalin believed that they were constantly at great personal risk of death). And ‘that crazy old geezer who puts up no-trespassing signs and booby traps might also have a nuke that he’ll fire off if you piss him off’ is not nearly as reassuring as he seems to think it is. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/15 "2019-09-05T18:40:56Z")
When trying to come up with the title for a YouTube Channel it really annoyed me that someone had already taken Twirlip of the Mists and they aren’t even using it for anything. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/16 "2019-09-06T00:07:00Z")
I’d like to also shout out “True Names” as an excellent Vinge short story. 1981 and ridiculously outmoded by the actual internet, it’s still an amazing story and well worth reading. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/17 "2019-09-06T00:09:16Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > When trying to come up with the title for a YouTube Channel it really annoyed me that someone had already taken Twirlip of the Mists and they aren’t even using it for anything. Did someone take HexapodiaIsTheKeyInsight, though? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2019, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/18 "2019-09-06T01:53:50Z")
When he abandoned the zones to write stories of industrializing dogs, that’s when he kinda fell from my must-reads. I truly detest novels which are set in a fascinating Universe, but then limit themselves to minor characters in insignificant backwaters. ---
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2019, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/19 "2019-09-09T22:19:28Z")
I just finished Deepness. A small sadistic part of me enjoyed what happened to Ritser Brughel. Awesome book. Has anyone read Joan D Vinge -Vernor’s ex-wife? I think she wrote a book in the zone-of-thought universe. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2019, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717/20 "2019-09-09T22:22:06Z")
> [@EastUmpqua](#): > > I just finished Deepness. A small sadistic part of me enjoyed what happened to Ritser Brughel. Awesome book. Has anyone read Joan D Vinge -Vernor’s ex-wife? I think she wrote a book in the zone-of-thought universe. It’s been suggested that her “Outcasts of the Heaven Belt” takes place in the Slow Zone, I think. P.S. Tomas Nau got off light… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vernor-vinge-a-fire-upon-the-deep-is-now-my-favorite-hard-sf/839717.md?page=2)