I think it was in Fire on the Deep that Vinge wrote about an alien species whose members are basically plants attached to motorized computer systems. What was the name of that species?
-Kris
They’re skroderiders. A Fire Upon the Deep - Wikipedia
And they’re not to be trusted. The Blight owns them, poor bastards.
Ah, Vinge’s “Zones of Thought” universe. Great stuff. I hope he returns to it, as I’ve heard he plans to.
I think they were actually sea life originally (think sea urchins, or other sea animals that look like plants). Blueshell was ‘retired’ to the sea near the end of the book, to mentally heal from previous events. The race was apparently semi sentient until ‘raised up’ to sentience by some long forgotten and now legendary benefactor.
ETA: If Vinge returns to this universe, I sure hope the effort is better than his last title, Rainbow’s End, which I disliked immensely. The two ZOT books (this and the even better Deepness In the Sky) were extremely good IMO.
I thought Rainbow’s End was okay, though not at all the strongest of his works. What did you dislike about it?
-Kris
Well, I felt like I’d already read it by Gibson (and, no, I don’t care to debate the similarities). I also couldn’t make myself care about the characters, and it was frankly tedious. I very much struggled to even finish it. I loaned it to a friend, with zero commentary about it beforehand, and he came up with a similar assessment. And we’d both liked ADITS immensely (although he had a less warm reaction to – but still liked – FOTD). I also like much of Vinge’s stories in the bobble universe.
[SPOILER]Benefactor ain’t really the word - they were better off as semi-sentient vegetables. Damn Blight.
Yah, I cried when Greenstalk died saving the kids. I’m a wuss. [/SPOILER]