[.ca] A Deepness in the Sky (ISBN 0312856830)

From Amazon.com:
This hefty novel returns to the universe of Vernor Vinge's 1993 Hugo winner A Fire Upon the Deep--but 30,000 years earlier. The story has the same sense of epic vastness despite happening mostly in one isolated solar system. Here there's a world of intelligent spider creatures who traditionally hibernate through the "Deepest Darkness" of their strange variable sun's long "off" periods, when even the atmosphere freezes. Now, science offers them an alternative... Meanwhile, attracted by spider radio transmissions, two human starfleets come exploring--merchants hoping for customers and tyrants who want slaves. Their inevitable clash leaves both fleets crippled, with the power in the wrong hands, which leads to a long wait in space until the spiders develop exploitable technology. Over the years Vinge builds palpable tension through multiple storylines and characters. In the sky, hopes of rebellion against tyranny continue despite soothing lies, brutal repression, and a mental bondage that can convert people into literal tools. Down below, the engagingly sympathetic spiders have their own problems. In flashback, we see the grandiose ideals and ultimate betrayal of the merchant culture's founder, now among the human contingent and pretending to be a senile buffoon while plotting, plotting... Major revelations, ironies, and payoffs follow. A powerful story in the grandest SF tradition. --David Langford, Amazon.co.uk

Deserves all 5 stars!:
I found this book impossible to put down. The development of the characters, the evil podmasters, Pham Nuwen, the Spider society - it was all fascinating. I've read many sci-fi books and this is one I highly recommend. Gotta say, the podmasters ethics seem strangely familiar - Reminds me of some of the politicians these days! Overall, if you like a real sweeping epic, this is the book for you

A truly great book deserving 6 stars!!:
The Alien. A beautiful, strange world thriving in a uniquely alien climate. A totally alien sentient race, described in an evolving, and fantastically evocative, thoughtful manner. Problems of first contact language and societal issues are crucial to the story, and handled amazingly well. The Human. Terribly cruel despotic rule, involving slavery, rape, bigotry, and "state-of-the-art" diplomacy and duplicity. Millennia spanning civilizations, hemmed in by extremely well-chosen scientific, economic, ecological and societal barriers. Love is crushed, lost, rampaged and explosively rediscovered. Dreams are buried and reawakened. Deepness in the Sky is one of those very, very few novels that encompasses all of the above, in a beautifully interwoven story. A civilization of millennium spanning space traders races to an astronomical anomaly, a newly discovered planet in an on/off-star galaxy. They are met there by another group of space travelers whom they had not previously encountered. Both groups are hoping to harvest huge profits from being the first to interact with the new non-human civilization just discovered on the planet. We learn about all three civilizations in detail, via big picture views/histories, and through many, many personal characterizations. This book manages to get us involved with, and caring about at least 12 major characters. Vinge's amazing story is beautifully, tragically, magically, heartrendingly emotional, and at the same time mind-bendingly thoughtful on many levels. I cannot overstate how great this book is. The way he evolves our understanding of the alien civilization, until we can still care (strongly!!) about these beings as they are described not in translated human-conditioned terms, but rather in a true first-contact, "eye-to-eye" manner, is only one of the rare, and beautiful, back-shivering moments Vinge brings us to. Absolutely, read and enjoy this book!! I do wish a sixth star could be found to rate books like this!! 5 stars are given for lesser books, because these are such rare finds.

The Deepness of the book:
Vernor Vinge successfully juggles about a couple dozen characters with very rich personalities with out losing track of the story. He also shows his skill by weaving many sub-plots in and out of the main plot which eventually converge into one story line. There are few authors who can take you to a wholly different world like Vernor Vinge does in this story. I read this book about two years ago and the images are still clear to this day. I often daydream what it would be like to live in a solar system where our sun turns on and off. I think of the waning years before the sun goes out and the brutal time of the new sun. I would agree with other reviewers that this book should not be properly called a prequel to A Fire Upon Deep. I have read every thing from Vernor Vinge and loved it all, but A Deepness In The Sky is by far my favorite.

Great science fiction:
This is great science fiction! I usually like Vinge's books, and this one was fully up to par. It intertwines two converging stories. One is about a group of (human) freedom loving space traders who travel and sell in many star systems, who are thrown together with (human) totalitarian exploiters. The other is about an intelligent race of spiders whose "on-off" star blinks with a century-long period -- thus they must endure a multi-decade deep freeze during their lifetimes (the "Deepness" in the title is a place where spiders can hibernate through a freeze). This is great science fiction. The plot is exciting, and Vinge invents and explores the ramifications of several interesting technologies plus the weird on-off star environment. He also explores social conflicts between the human societies and the spider societies. Both sets of societies appear to have intentional parallels with current societies here on earth. I believe Vinge intends those parallels to be an important part of the book, so I'm going to write a little more about them. Many of Vinge's books feature societies based around a libertarian ideal of little or no government, and privatization of government's traditional functions. For example, in a story called "The Ungoverned," a section of the former United States has no government at all, and people hire private companies with names like "Michigan State Police" and "Al's protection Racket" for traditional government services. One problem with a government-free society is the possibility that some people may completely trample the rights of others without fear of reprisal. In "Deepness," Vinge encapsulates that problem as the problem slavery. The totalitarians are not averse to slavery; the freedom-loving traders despise slavery. I see one flaw in the book, which doesn't affect the science fiction or the exciting plot; only the philosophy. The flaw is that Vinge doesn't adequately account for *why* the good guys' hate slavery. After all, one could consider slavery a form of contract, or slaves an article of trade (slavery was treated this way here on earth for thousands of years). Vinge's explanation of why the traders hate slavery is essentially social taboo -- it's part of the trader culture. But it's a taboo that has lasted a thousand years and holds everywhere in the many loose-knit trader communities. Why? We know societies change and upstarts challenge taboos, so the ones that remain must serve some very useful purpose. Vinge doesn't account for the constancy of the taboo. I think a libertarian philosophy that allowed slavery would be repugnant to many readers, so Vinge created one that prevented slavery, but his taboo mechanism is weak. I think this points up a flaw in libertarian philosophy that Vinge is struggling to deal with -- the flaw being that libertarianism may be a little to value-neutral to appeal to mainstream American readers raised on apple pie and the U.S. Constitution. I'll be interested to see how Vinge continues to deal with this issue in future writings. Never the less, as I mentioned above, the flaw doesn't affect the plot or the science fiction; only the philosophy of the book. It's still great SF, imaginative and thought provoking, and a very enjoyable read.

Great Prequel:
After reading A Fire Upon the Deep, I was eager to get my hands on this prequel. Vinge delivered again...in fact, this book is even slightly better than its predecessor. The spidery aliens in this book, who are on the verge of a technical and social revolution, are brilliantly drawn. The humans and their futuristic ships and corollary technologies are highly believable. I thoroughly believe that Pham Nuwen was brought back in Deepness in the Sky because he was the strongest human character in the previous book...Vinge enhanced the Nuwen character beautifully, highlighting his strengths and elaborating on his weaknesses. Also, I thought the unusual phenomenon of a planet whose day/night cycle is decades long was a rather clever plot device that Vinge used quite well and to his full advantage. Overall, if you enjoyed its predecessor this book is certainly worth the read and highly recommended.