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{{short description|1992 science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge}}
{{Infobox Book | <!-- See ] or ] -->
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2019}}
{{Infobox book |
| name = A Fire Upon the Deep | name = A Fire Upon the Deep
| title_orig = | title_orig = Among the Tines
| translator = | translator =
| image = ] | image = A Fire Upon the Deep.bookcover.jpg
| image_caption = | image_size = 211px
| caption =
| author = ] | author = ]
| illustrator = | illustrator =
| cover_artist = ] | cover_artist = ]
| country = ] | country = United States
| language = ] | language = English
| series = Zones of Thought series | series = Zones of Thought series
| subject = <!-- Subject is not relevant for fiction --> | subject = <!-- Subject is not relevant for fiction -->
Line 16: Line 19:
| pub_date = ] | pub_date = ]
| english_pub_date = | english_pub_date =
| media_type = Print (] & ]) | media_type = Print (hardcover and paperback)
| pages = 391 pp <!-- First edition hardcover page count --> | pages = 391 <!-- First edition hardcover page count -->
| isbn = ISBN 0-312-85182-0 <!-- First edition hardcover --> | isbn = 0-312-85182-0 <!-- First edition hardcover -->
| dewey = 813/.54 20
| oclc= 24671893
| congress = PS3572.I534 F57 1992
| preceded_by = ] <!-- Remember, Pham is rescued by the Old One long *after* all his adventures with the Qeng Ho, after the lurker strategy in ''Deepness'' had succeeded, because at the end of ''Deepness'', he was planning an expedition to the Unthinking Depths, exactly where he was rescued from. If you don't believe me, go check the ] page. -->
| oclc = 24671893
| followed_by = <!-- Following novel in series -->
| preceded_by =
| followed_by = ]
}} }}


'''''A Fire Upon the Deep''''' is a ] ] written by ], an award-winning ] involving superhuman intelligences, ], variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a conversation medium resembling ]. ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' won the ] in 1993 (tied with ] by ]).<ref name="WWE-1993">{{cite web '''''A Fire Upon the Deep''''' is a 1992 ] novel by American writer ]. It is a ] involving ]s, aliens, variable physics, ]s, love, betrayal, ], and a communication medium resembling ]. ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' won the ] in 1993, sharing it with '']'' by ].<ref name="WWE-1993">{{cite web | url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1993
| title = 1993 Award Winners & Nominees | work = Worlds Without End | access-date=September 26, 2009}}</ref>
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1993
| title = 1993 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-09-26
}}</ref>


Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a ] sold by ] along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book. Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a ] sold by ] along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone ].<ref> No longer on sale but available at the Internet Archive</ref><ref> at ]</ref> It has a loose prequel, ], from 1999, and a direct sequel, ], from 2012.


==Plot summary== ==Setting==
The novel is set in various locations in the ]. The galaxy is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought"; it is not clear to the novel's characters whether this is a natural phenomenon or an artificially produced one, but it seems to roughly correspond with galactic-scale stellar density and a Beyond region is mentioned in the ] as well.<ref name="sculptor"/> The Zones reflect fundamental differences in basic physical laws, and one of the main consequences is their effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial. Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as a ship "descends" towards the Unthinking Depths. But even biological intelligence is affected to a lesser degree. The four zones are spoken of in terms of "low" to "high" as follows:
A human colony high in the Beyond (see ] for an explanation of the Zones of Thought) had dispatched an expedition to the low Transcend, having learned of a massive 5-billion year old archive of data which had been off the Known Net for all that time. It offers the possibility of unthinkable riches for the ambitious young civilization of Straumli Realm, and an expedition of archaeologist programmers is dispatched to open the archive and discover its secrets.


* The '''Unthinking Depths''' are the innermost zone, surrounding the ]. In it, only minimal forms of intelligence, biological or otherwise, are possible. This means that any ship straying into the Depths will be stranded, effectively permanently. Even if the crew did not die immediately—and some forms of life native to "higher" Zones would likely do so—they would be rendered incapable of even human intelligence, leaving them unable to operate their ship in any meaningful way.
The expedition's precautions are insufficient, however, and their facility, known as High Lab, is compromised by a dormant super-intelligent entity similar to the Powers that develop in the Transcend, yet far more stable and able to exert influence in the Beyond. The entity, initially called the "Straumli Perversion" by the civilizations of the Beyond but later referred to as "the Blight," persuades the team to create machines and activate programs they do not understand nor can guard against. Slowly, the Blight awakens and takes over the expedition. This intelligence is able to infiltrate and control computer systems and biological beings, quickly infecting and taking over whole civilizations in the High Beyond. Hidden from the newborn Blight, two programs, copies of the minds of two expedition members, have Transcended and lurk in the facility's local network. Unable to stop the Blight, they settle instead for devising a risky scheme to activate the countermeasure against the Blight that is included in the archive.
* Surrounding the Depths is the '''Slow Zone'''. The ] (called "Old Earth") is located in this Zone, and humanity is said to have originated there, although Earth plays no significant role in the story. Biological intelligence is possible in "the Slowness", but not true, sentient, ]. Automation is not intelligent enough to calculate the jumps required for ] in the Slow Zone, but they may escape by performing an immediate reverse jump to where they arrived from if the Slowness is detected, and navigation systems watch for this and store the information required for a return to the start point during each jump. All ships which find themselves in the Slow Zone are restricted to sub-light speeds if an immediate reverse jump back out is impossible. ] is impossible into or out of the Slow Zone. As the boundaries of the Zones are unknown and subject to change, accidental entry to the Slow Zone is a major interstellar navigational hazard at the "Bottom" of the Beyond. Starships which operate near the Beyond/Slow Zone border often have an auxiliary ] drive, so that, if they accidentally stray into the Slow Zone (thus disabling any FTL drive), they will at least have a backup (sub-light) drive to push them back "up" to the Beyond. Such ships also tend to include "]" equipment, as it is likely that any such return will still take many subjective lifetimes for most species.
* The next outermost layer is the '''Beyond''', within which artificial intelligence, faster-than-light travel, and faster-than-light communication are possible. A few human civilizations exist in the Beyond, all descended from a single ethnic ] group which managed to travel from the Slow Zone to the Beyond (presumably at sub-light speeds) and thence spread using FTL travel. The original settlement of this group is known as Nyjora; other human settlements in the Beyond include Straumli Realm and Sjandra Kei. In the Beyond, FTL travel is accomplished by making many small "jumps" across intervening space, and the efficiency of the drive increases the farther a ship travels from the galactic core. This reflects increases in both drive efficiency and the ship's automation's increased capacity as one moves outward, enabling the computation of longer and longer jumps. The Beyond is not a homogeneous zone—many references are made to, e.g., the "High Beyond" or the "Bottom of the Beyond", depending on distance to the galactic core. These terms seem to refer to differences in the Zone itself, not just relative distance from the Core, but there are no obvious Zone boundaries within the Beyond the way there are between the Slow Zone and the Beyond, or between the Beyond and the Transcend. Whereas a ship that crosses from the Beyond to the Slow Zone or vice versa will experience a dramatic change in its capabilities, a ship in the Beyond which moves farther from the Core will experience a gradual increase in efficiency (assuming it has the technology to make use of it) until another major shift at the boundary to the Transcend. The Beyond is populated by a very large number of interstellar and intergalactic<ref name="sculptor">{{cite book|last1=Vinge|first1=Vernor|title=A Fire Upon the Deep|year=1992|publisher=Macmillan |isbn=9780812515282|url=https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving|url-access=registration|quote=Relay was now the main intermediate to the Magellanics, and one of the few sites with any sort of link to the Beyond in ].}}</ref> civilizations which are linked by a faster-than-light communication network, "the Net", sometimes cynically called the "Net of a Million Lies". The Net does connect with the Transcend, on the off-chance that one of the "Powers" that live there deigns to communicate, but has no connections with the Slow Zone, as FTL communication is impossible into or out of that Zone. In the novel, the Net is depicted as working much like the ] network in the early 1990s, with transcripts of messages containing header and footer information as one would find in such forums.
* The outermost layer, containing the ], is the '''Transcend''', within which incomprehensible, ] beings dwell. When a "Beyonder" civilization reaches the point of ], it is said to "Transcend", becoming a "Power". Such Powers always seem to relocate to the Transcend, seemingly necessarily, where they become engaged in affairs which remain entirely mysterious to those that remain in the Beyond.


One of the characters in the book, Ravna, uses this analogy to explain the relation between the zones:<ref>Vinge, A fire upon the Deep, Tor Books, 92-3</ref>
With some understanding of what they have unleashed, a few humans escape from the research colony before the Blight regains its full capabilities and absorbs it; of the two vessels, only one successfully escapes. That vessel travels to the edge of the Slow Zone, where the Blight would have difficulty operating. They take with them some semi-living information about their enemy (later labeled Countermeasure) from the archive, though they do not know what to do with it.


{{Blockquote|text="How long must a fish study to understand human motivation? It's not a good analogy, but it's the only safe one; we are like dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different things people do to animals— ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal—each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not exist." She waved at the misty star swarms. "The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface—superior though they are—can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories—but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't make them. And getting them is a deadly risky endeavor."}}
They land their ], with a cargo of children in ], on a planet with a ]-level civilization of dog-like creatures (the Tines) who exist as small packs of individuals. Each individual consciousness is generated by the "marriage" or enlistment of several Tines, who coordinate their thoughts via ]. A single Tine is about as smart as a clever dog; two to three can think as well as a young human child; four to six is the standard and possess human or greater intelligence and self-awareness and personalities; under normal circumstances packs that are much larger degrade into barely-coherent mobs<!-- Remember, the construction worker packs of ~30 still can get stuff down, and the tropics are oft mentioned as having enormous packs -->, though a rational pack of eight is not unheard of and one such pack plays a large role. Other configurations are possible for specialized roles. Examples include long strung-out ] lines and garrisoned slave teams.


==Plot==
The cargo ship carried most of the High Lab's children in "coldsleep boxes" - boxes which induce ]. The boxes are rapidly failing, and so the surviving adults begin unloading them onto the hospitable near-Earth world they had landed on. However, they are quickly ambushed and fall victim to a long-lived conflict between two Tine nations who fight over the ship. The group that initially contacts the humans, the Flenserists, led by a Tine named Steel (the protégé of the charming but sinister genius ], so named for his cruel research on other Tines), ambushes and kills the human adults and destroys many of the coldsleep boxes, intending to gain an advantage. The other group is led by the Woodcarver, so named for the artistic talent that first made her famous.
An expedition from Straumli Realm, a young human civilization in the high Beyond, investigates a newly discovered five-billion-year-old data archive in the low Transcend that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches. The expedition's facility, High Lab, is gradually and secretly compromised by an initially dormant ] within the archive later known as the Blight. However, shortly before the Blight's final "flowering", two self-aware entities created similarly to the Blight plot to aid the humans before the Blight can gain its full powers.


Finally recognizing the danger, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships, one carrying the adults and the second carrying the children in "]". The Blight discovers that the first ship lists a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship escapes.
Flenser had developed a small but powerful kingdom that specialized in subverting and taking over neighboring countries. To escape assassination by a mob after a failed attempt to take over such a country, Flenser's component bodies had been dispersed into two or more packs, one of which is Tyrathect, whose other members had previously been part of a naive Flenserist school teacher; it is later learned that Flenser's other members had not escaped. Tyrathect makes her roundabout way back to Flenser's stronghold, traveling in the company of the packs Peregrine Wrickwrackrum and Scriber Jaqueramaphan. They observe the ambush of the humans. The pilgrim and the spy resolve to steal the only survivor they see: Johanna Olsndot, a girl about 12 years old. Because of the return of Flenser, the troops are distracted, and the two manage to escape with Johanna aboard a Flenserist boat. Unbeknownst to them, Johanna's younger brother Jefri also survived, but remains in the hands of the Flenserists. The two groups begin frantically attempting to gain their respective human's trust, and exploit them to develop ] and other technology. The Woodcarvers begin with the assistance of an educational databank. Lord Steel's group begins developing radio and superior cannon with the help of Jefri and his communications with the outside world through the ship, as well as a well-placed spy in Woodcarver's camp. Each sibling is unaware of the other's survival and alliance with opposing groups.


The ship lands on a distant planet with a ]-level civilization of dog-like creatures, dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as ]. Upon landing, however, the two surviving adults, husband and wife, are ambushed and killed by Tine fanatics known as Flenserists, in whose realm they have landed. The Flenserists capture a young boy named Jefri Olsndot and his wounded sister, Johanna. Johanna is rescued by a Tine named Pilgrim who witnessed the ambush and taken to a neighboring kingdom ruled by a brilliant Tine named Woodcarver. Steel, the Flenserists' leader, tells Jefri that Johanna and their parents were killed by Woodcarver and exploits him in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication), while Johanna and the knowledge stored in her "dataset" device help Woodcarver rapidly develop as well. A highly placed Flenserist spy keeps Steel informed of Woodcarver's progress.
The ship had been transmitting through its FTL ] apparatus ever since it landed, and its message eventually reaches Relay, thanks to Ravna Bergsndot and the Old One. Ravna Bergsndot was working as the only human ] at the Vrinimi Organization, a vast, ancient, and wealthy communication and information provider (conceptualized as much like an ] of the late 1980s or early 1990s) based in the system of Relay. Relay is so named because it is offset from the ] in the Middle Beyond and so has a clear ] on many different and far-flung systems; it serves as a ] for a vast amount of Known Net traffic - somewhere around 2%.<ref>"But in the current era there was one instance of "Relay" known above all others. That instance appeared in the routing list of two percent of all traffic across the Known Net. Twenty thousand light-years off the galactic plane, Relay had an unobstructed line of sight on thirty percent of the Beyond, including many star systems right at the bottom, where starships can make only one light-year per day." pg 63</ref>


A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major information/service provider for the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent being named "the Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it, and reconstitutes a human man named Pham Nuwen from the wreckage of a spaceship to act as its agent, using his doubt of his own memory's veracity to keep him under its control. Ravna Bergsndot, the only human Relay employee, traces the sleeper ship's signal to the Tines' world and persuades her employer to investigate what it took from High Lab, contracting the merchant vessel ''Out of Band II'', owned by two sentient plant "Skroderiders", Blueshell and Greenstalk, to transport her and Pham there.
A benign Power called "Old One" (because it is known to be over 10 years old; Powers rarely maintain contact with the Beyond for more than a few years) makes contact, seeking information about the Blight and especially about humans in general who had released the Blight. It asks for Ravna to accompany its vessel back to the Transcend, but Ravna refuses, wary of the Power's intentions. The Vrinimi Organization supports her, even though the Old One was offering to set up an ] for them. So instead it reconstructs a seemingly human man, ], from a frozen body collected by a Slow Zone probe and stockpiled at Relay by Vrinimi Organization (along with parts from other bodies) and infuses him with some memory of his former life, to act as its remote agent. The Old One helps in the search for escapees from the High Lab, eventually finding Jefri's signal. It designs a ship, the ''Out of ] II'', designed to travel to the bottom of the Beyond and even handle limited travel in the Slow Zone, to reach Jefri and investigate what the ship carried with it from the High Lab.


Before the mission is launched, the Blight launches a surprise attack on Relay and kills Old One. As Old One dies, it downloads what information it can into Pham to defeat the Blight, and Pham, Ravna and the Skroderiders barely escape Relay's destruction in the ''Out of Band II''.
Relay and Old One fall victim to a double surprise attack by the Blight; Relay is attacked by a vast armada. The Blight is forced to engage Old One in a very personal way, and Old One steals information about the Blight, and apparently discovers its weakness. Before dying, Old One ] as much of itself as can fit into Pham, providing him with subconscious instructions to activate Countermeasure.


The Blight expands, taking over races and "rewriting" their people to become its agents, murdering several other Powers, and seizing other archives in the Beyond, looking for what was taken. It finally realizes where the danger truly lies and sends a hastily assembled fleet in pursuit.
During the attack, Pham and Ravna are in the company of Blueshell and Greenstalk, intelligent plants of an eons-old trading race known as Skroderiders, who use sophisticated personal vehicles ("skrodes") to enhance both their mobility and cognitive capabilities (Skroderiders have an almost complete lack of ]). All four escape Relay's destruction in the Skroderiders' ship ''Out of Band II'', which had previously been chartered and equipped to rescue the human refugees. They then follow Jefri's signal to the Tines' planet.


The humans arrive at the Tines' homeworld first and ally with Woodcarver to defeat the Flenserists and rescue Jefri. Pham initiates Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone outward by thousands of light years, enveloping and killing the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of civilizations and causing trillions of deaths. The humans are stranded on the Tines world, now in the depths of the Slow Zone. Activating Countermeasure is fatal to Pham, but before he dies, the ghost of Old One within his mind reveals to him that, although his body is a reconstruction, his memories are real. (Vinge expands on Pham's ] in '']''.)
While en route, they narrowly escape an alliance of anti-human military fleets, the "Alliance for the Defense," which not only knows that humans are responsible for the Blight's reanimation, but also accuse them of acting as its agents. After docking at the world of Harmonious Repose for necessary repairs to the ''Out of Band II'', the group learns that the core human civilization of Sjandra Kei has been annihilated by the Alliance. Shortly afterwards, it is discovered that Skroderiders are the Blight's true puppets; skrodes had been designed by the Blight billions of years previously to create a race of sleeper agents.


==Intelligent species==
After finally arriving at Tines' world and allying with Woodcarver to defeat Steel, Pham initiates the "Countermeasure," a ] fungus-like substance/device of Transcend capabilities and design. Countermeasure drastically alters the boundaries of the zones of thought in that sector of the galaxy, causing the Slow Zone to surge and penetrate into part of the Transcend. The massive shift envelops and destroys the Blight; however, this also kills Pham and strands the other humans on the Tines' world, now in the depths of the Slow Zone. An included Known Net message estimates that this event thrusts thousands of uninvolved civilizations into an environment where much of their technology no longer functions (a situation analogous to an Earth where electricity ceases to exist), causing trillions of deaths.


===Aprahanti===
==Notable elements==
A race of humanoids with colorful butterfly-like wings who attempt to use the chaos wrought by the Blight to reestablish their waning hegemony. Despite their attractive, delicate appearance, the Aprahanti are an extremely fearsome and vicious species.
===Zones of thought===
Vinge has often expressed an opinion that realistic fiction set after the development of superhuman intelligence &mdash; an event that he calls the ] and considers all but inevitable &mdash; would necessarily be too strange for a human reader to enjoy, if not impossible for a human writer to create. To sidestep the issue, he turns the Singularity sideways from time into space, postulating that the galaxy has been divided into "zones of thought":
* ''The Unthinking Depths'' are the lowest level, containing the galactic core. Even the simplest organic or machine intelligences function poorly, if at all. Space travel is nearly impossible, requiring big, dumb vessels with neolithic automation and massive redundancy. These properties make exploration of this zone problematic.
* ''The Slow Zone'' is the next layer. ] travel and communications do not function, dependent as they are on some physical property of the universe which changes at the boundary between the Beyond and the Slow Zone. Intelligence above the level of human-equivalent is not possible. Molecular ] also doesn't function well, if at all. Earth is deep within the Slow Zone.
* ''The Beyond'' is where the majority of the action takes place in ''A Fire Upon the Deep''. It is loosely divided into three sub-zones: the Bottom (where Tines' World is located) near the Slow Zone, the Middle (where Relay and Sjandra Kei were located), and the Top (where Straumli Realm was located) near the Transcend. FTL travel and communication are possible, though the latter can be prohibitively expensive, often requiring planet-sized transceiver arrays. ] and ]s, along with many other technological advances, work in the Beyond. The limits to organic and machine intelligence vary smoothly from the boundary of the Slow Zone to that of the Transcend.
* ''The Transcend'' is where super-intelligences known as Powers reside. Here there are no limits on nanotechnology, FTL travel is very fast (relative to the Beyond), FTL communications bandwidth is cheap, and there are no limits to organic or machine intelligences or meldings between the two. Indeed, many of the Powers are a single consciousness created from an entire civilization. The Powers have passed through the ] and their behavior is usually beyond human comprehension. They routinely ], perform near-miraculous feats of engineering on scales both ] and ], and have been known to employ technologies that warp the very nature of reality - the Countermeasure to the Blight is the obvious example, and it has been proposed that that the Zones themselves are the product of a similar technology. They regard involvement in the affairs of races in the Beyond in much the same way that humans would care about the competition for ] status amongst a pack of wild animals. Powers rarely maintain contact with the Beyond for more than a few years; it is not known whether they merely lose interest, die, go elsewhere, or transcend again to an even more incomprehensible level of being.


===Scandinavian influences=== ===Blight===
An ancient, malevolent super-intelligent entity which strives to constantly expand and can easily manipulate electronics and organic beings.
The name of the starship ''Lynsnar'' literally means "very fast" in ] and ]. Many other names have a Scandinavian sound to them. ''Arne'' is a common male name in Scandinavia. Most of the humans' surnames have the suffix ''-sndot'', suggestive of a blending of the common Scandinavian ''-son'' (or ''-sen'') and ''-dottir''; this form may have developed during the "Age of Princesses" on Nyjora , the Slow Zone world from which humans reached the Beyond. ''Nyjora'' resembles the ] pronunciation of the phrase "Nyjorda", which translates into "The New Earth". "]", the language of the Straumli Realm and its Perversion, was the name of a constructed language that attempted to unite the two different Norwegian national languages, ] and ] between 1917 and 1966. In the foreword, Vinge mentions his 1988 trip to ], the capital of ], and ], an Arctic Norwegian university town that hosted a computer conference that year.


===Dirokimes===
Another Scandinavian reference is the story of the ''Aniara'', referring to ]'s poem '']'', also referenced in the foreword as the Aniara Society, the Oslo-based science fiction-fandom club that hosted his visit to the capital.
An older race which originally inhabited Sjandra Kei before the arrival of humanity. They work with the humans.

===Humans===
All humans in the novel (except Pham) are descended from Nyjoran stock.<ref>{{cite book|last=Vinge|first=Vernor|title=A Fire Upon the Deep|year=1992|publisher=Tom Doherty Associates|location=New York|isbn=0812515285|lccn=91-39020|page=|edition=1st mass market|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving/page/62}}</ref> Their ancestors were "Tuvo-Norsk" asteroid miners from Old Earth's solar system, which is noted as being on the other side of the galaxy in the Slow Zone. (''Nyjora'' sounds similar to ] "New Earth".) One of the major human habitations is Sjandra Kei, three systems<ref>p. 436</ref> comprising roughly 28&nbsp;billion<ref>p. 322</ref> individuals. Their main language is ], the Norwegian term for a hypothetical unification of the ] and ] forms of the language. (Vinge indicates in the book's dedication that several key ideas in it came to him while at a conference in Tromsø, Norway.)

===Skroders/Riders/Skroderiders===
A race of plantlike beings with fronds that serve as arms. The Riders have little native capacity for short-term memory. They are one of the longest-existing species; five billion years ago, someone gave them six-wheeled mechanical constructs ("skrodes") to move around and to provide short-term memory that made it easier for them to retain information well enough to become long-term memory in the vegetable "rider". It is later revealed that their "benefactor" is the Blight, and it is able to easily corrupt and remotely operate the Riders via their skrodes.

{{Anchor|tines}}

===Tines===
A race of group minds: each person is a "pack" of 4–8 doglike members, which communicate within the pack using very short-range ultrasonic waves from drumlike organs called "tympana".
Each "soul" can survive and evolve by adding members to replace those who die, potentially for hundreds of years, as Woodcarver does.


==Related works== ==Related works==
Vinge first used the concepts of "Zones of Thought" in a 1988 novella '']'', which occurs after ''Fire''. Vinge's novel '']'' (1999) is a prequel to ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' set 20,000 years earlier and featuring Pham Nuwen. Vinge's '']'', "a near-term sequel to ''A Fire Upon the Deep''{{-"}}, set ten years later, was released in October 2011.<ref name=Norwescon33>{{cite web|url=http://www.norwescon.org/archives/norwescon33/vingeinterview.htm |title=Interview with Vernor Vinge |date=October 12, 2009 |publisher=]}}</ref>
A prequel to this book was subsequently written, '']'', set twenty thousand years earlier in the "Slow Zone" near Earth, detailing the earlier adventures of Pham Nuwen. Vinge's short story "The Blabber" takes place hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years after ''Fire'' though it was written first and contains several contradictions with the books. As of early 2009, Vinge is working on a sequel to ''A Fire Upon the Deep'', set approximately ten years after the events of the original novel.<ref>http://www.sffaudio.com/?cat=607</ref>

Vinge's former wife, ], has also written stories in the Zones of Thought universe, based on his notes. These include "The Outcasts of Heaven Belt", "Legacy", and (as of 2008) a planned novel featuring Pham Nuwen.<ref>{{cite web |author-link=Joan D. Vinge |first=Joan D. |last=Vinge |url=http://www.sff.net/people/jdvinge/letter_20081103.htm |title=A letter to my readers |date=November 2008 |url-status=dead |access-date=October 3, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303224912/http://www.sff.net/people/jdvinge/letter_20081103.htm |archive-date=March 3, 2016 }}</ref>

==Title==
Vinge's original title for the novel was "Among the Tines"; its final title was suggested by his editors.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=5258 |title=Interview: Patrick Nielsen Hayden |first=Ernest |last=Lilley |website=SFRevu |date=February 26, 2007 |access-date=May 18, 2014}}</ref>


==Awards and nominations== ==Awards and nominations==
* ] Winner of ] 1993 (tied with ] by ])<ref name="WWE-1993">{{cite web ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' shared the 1993 ] with '']''.<ref name="WWE-1993"/> The book was nominated for the ] of 1992,<ref name="WWE-1992">{{cite web
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1992| title = 1992 Award Winners & Nominees| work = Worlds Without End| access-date=September 26, 2009}}</ref> the 1993 ],<ref name="WWE-1993"/> and the 1993 ] for Best Science Fiction Novel.<ref name="WWE-1993"/>
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1993
| title = 1993 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-09-26
}}</ref>
* Nominated for the ] for ] in 1992.<ref name="WWE-1992">{{cite web
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1992
| title = 1992 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-09-26
}}</ref>
* Nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1993.<ref name="WWE-1993">{{cite web
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1993
| title = 1993 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-09-26
}}</ref>
* Nominated for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1993.<ref name="WWE-1993">{{cite web
| url = http://www.worldswithoutend.com/books_year_index.asp?year=1993
| title = 1993 Award Winners & Nominees
| work = Worlds Without End
| accessdate=2009-09-26
}}</ref>


==Critical reactions==
==Title translations==
] wrote: "Any one of the ideas in ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' would have kept an ordinary writer going for years. For me it's the book that does everything right, the example of what science fiction does when it works. ... ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' remains a favourite and a delight to re-read, absorbing even when I know exactly what's coming."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/06/the-net-of-a-million-lies-vernor-vinges-a-fire-upon-the-deep |title=The Net of a Million Lies: Vernor Vinge's ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' |first=Jo |last=Walton |date=June 11, 2009 |website=]}}</ref>
*]:''"深渊上的火"''
**四川科学技术出版社(Sichuan Science and Technology Press), 2005: ISBN 9787536454583
* ]: ''"Vatra nad dubinom"''
**Algoritam, 2002: ISBN 953-220-066-5
*]: ''"Dagen des Oordeels"''
**Meulenhoff, 1993: ISBN 90-290-4169-2
* ]: ''"Linnunradan ääret"''
**Like, 2008: ISBN 978-952-01-0089-6
*]: ''"Un feu sur l'abîme"''
**Robert Laffont, (31 octobre 1994): ISBN 2221076761 / ISBN 978-2221076767
**Livre de Poche, (1998): ISBN 2253072087 / ISBN 978-2253072089
*]: ''"Ein Feuer auf der Tiefe"''
**Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1995: ISBN 3-453-07986-8.
*]: ''"אש על פני תהום"''
** Keter Publishing 2007: דאנאקוד 692-48
* ]: ''"Universo incostante"''
**Editrice Nord, 1993: ISBN 88-429-0738-3
**Editrice Nord, Collana Cosmo Biblioteca, 2007: ISBN 9788842915102
*]: ''"Ogień nad otchłanią"''
**Wydawnictwo Prószyński i s-ka, 1998: ISBN: 83-7180-678-7
*]: ''"Foc în adânc"''
**Editura Nemira, 2008: ISBN 978-973-143-149-9
* ]: ''"{{lang|ru|Пламя над бездной}}"''
** AST, 2001: ISBN 5-17-005186-7; 2003: ISBN 5-237-03425-X/ISBN 5-17-002594-7
** AST, Yermak, 2003 (two editions): ISBN 5-17-020474-4/ISBN 5-9577-0665-5, ISBN 5-17-019900-7/ISBN 5-9577-0663-9.
*]: ''"Plamen nad ponorom"''
**Laguna, 2007: ISBN 978-86-7436-572-4<ref>Vernor Vindž: Plamen nad ponorom; Prevela (Translation by): Bojana Ilić; Naslov originala (Title of original): Vernor Vinge: A Fire upon the Deep; Translation copyright 2007 za srpsko izdanje, Laguna (- for the Serbian edition, Laguna); Ilustracija na koricama (Cover art): Boris Vallejo; ], Laguna 2007; ISBN: 978-86-7436-572-4</ref>
*]: ''"Un fuego sobre el abismo"''
**Ediciones B, 1994: ISBN 84-406-4469-8.


==References== ==References==
{{Reflist}}
<references/>


==External links== ==External links==
* {{isfdb title|id=1952|title=A Fire Upon the Deep}} * {{isfdb title|id=1952|title=A Fire Upon the Deep}}
* {{OL work|id=1975714W|cname=''A Fire Upon the Deep''}}
* at ]
* at Worlds Without End * at Worlds Without End
*


{{Hugo Award Best Novel 1991–2000}}


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Latest revision as of 22:15, 4 December 2024

1992 science fiction novel by Vernor Vinge

A Fire Upon the Deep
AuthorVernor Vinge
Original titleAmong the Tines
Cover artistBoris Vallejo
LanguageEnglish
SeriesZones of Thought series
GenreHard science fiction
PublisherTor Books
Publication dateApril 1992
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover and paperback)
Pages391
ISBN0-312-85182-0
OCLC24671893
Dewey Decimal813/.54 20
LC ClassPS3572.I534 F57 1992
Followed byA Deepness in the Sky 

A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.

Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a CD-ROM sold by ClariNet Communications along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone e-book. It has a loose prequel, A Deepness in the Sky, from 1999, and a direct sequel, The Children of the Sky, from 2012.

Setting

The novel is set in various locations in the Milky Way. The galaxy is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought"; it is not clear to the novel's characters whether this is a natural phenomenon or an artificially produced one, but it seems to roughly correspond with galactic-scale stellar density and a Beyond region is mentioned in the Sculptor Galaxy as well. The Zones reflect fundamental differences in basic physical laws, and one of the main consequences is their effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial. Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as a ship "descends" towards the Unthinking Depths. But even biological intelligence is affected to a lesser degree. The four zones are spoken of in terms of "low" to "high" as follows:

  • The Unthinking Depths are the innermost zone, surrounding the Galactic Center. In it, only minimal forms of intelligence, biological or otherwise, are possible. This means that any ship straying into the Depths will be stranded, effectively permanently. Even if the crew did not die immediately—and some forms of life native to "higher" Zones would likely do so—they would be rendered incapable of even human intelligence, leaving them unable to operate their ship in any meaningful way.
  • Surrounding the Depths is the Slow Zone. The Earth (called "Old Earth") is located in this Zone, and humanity is said to have originated there, although Earth plays no significant role in the story. Biological intelligence is possible in "the Slowness", but not true, sentient, artificial intelligence. Automation is not intelligent enough to calculate the jumps required for faster than light travel in the Slow Zone, but they may escape by performing an immediate reverse jump to where they arrived from if the Slowness is detected, and navigation systems watch for this and store the information required for a return to the start point during each jump. All ships which find themselves in the Slow Zone are restricted to sub-light speeds if an immediate reverse jump back out is impossible. Faster-than-light communication is impossible into or out of the Slow Zone. As the boundaries of the Zones are unknown and subject to change, accidental entry to the Slow Zone is a major interstellar navigational hazard at the "Bottom" of the Beyond. Starships which operate near the Beyond/Slow Zone border often have an auxiliary Bussard ramjet drive, so that, if they accidentally stray into the Slow Zone (thus disabling any FTL drive), they will at least have a backup (sub-light) drive to push them back "up" to the Beyond. Such ships also tend to include "coldsleep" equipment, as it is likely that any such return will still take many subjective lifetimes for most species.
  • The next outermost layer is the Beyond, within which artificial intelligence, faster-than-light travel, and faster-than-light communication are possible. A few human civilizations exist in the Beyond, all descended from a single ethnic Norwegian group which managed to travel from the Slow Zone to the Beyond (presumably at sub-light speeds) and thence spread using FTL travel. The original settlement of this group is known as Nyjora; other human settlements in the Beyond include Straumli Realm and Sjandra Kei. In the Beyond, FTL travel is accomplished by making many small "jumps" across intervening space, and the efficiency of the drive increases the farther a ship travels from the galactic core. This reflects increases in both drive efficiency and the ship's automation's increased capacity as one moves outward, enabling the computation of longer and longer jumps. The Beyond is not a homogeneous zone—many references are made to, e.g., the "High Beyond" or the "Bottom of the Beyond", depending on distance to the galactic core. These terms seem to refer to differences in the Zone itself, not just relative distance from the Core, but there are no obvious Zone boundaries within the Beyond the way there are between the Slow Zone and the Beyond, or between the Beyond and the Transcend. Whereas a ship that crosses from the Beyond to the Slow Zone or vice versa will experience a dramatic change in its capabilities, a ship in the Beyond which moves farther from the Core will experience a gradual increase in efficiency (assuming it has the technology to make use of it) until another major shift at the boundary to the Transcend. The Beyond is populated by a very large number of interstellar and intergalactic civilizations which are linked by a faster-than-light communication network, "the Net", sometimes cynically called the "Net of a Million Lies". The Net does connect with the Transcend, on the off-chance that one of the "Powers" that live there deigns to communicate, but has no connections with the Slow Zone, as FTL communication is impossible into or out of that Zone. In the novel, the Net is depicted as working much like the Usenet network in the early 1990s, with transcripts of messages containing header and footer information as one would find in such forums.
  • The outermost layer, containing the galactic halo, is the Transcend, within which incomprehensible, superintelligent beings dwell. When a "Beyonder" civilization reaches the point of technological singularity, it is said to "Transcend", becoming a "Power". Such Powers always seem to relocate to the Transcend, seemingly necessarily, where they become engaged in affairs which remain entirely mysterious to those that remain in the Beyond.

One of the characters in the book, Ravna, uses this analogy to explain the relation between the zones:

"How long must a fish study to understand human motivation? It's not a good analogy, but it's the only safe one; we are like dumb animals to the Powers of the Transcend. Think of all the different things people do to animals— ingenious, sadistic, charitable, genocidal—each has a million elaborations in the Transcend. The Zones are a natural protection; without them, human-equivalent intelligence would probably not exist." She waved at the misty star swarms. "The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface—superior though they are—can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories—but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't make them. And getting them is a deadly risky endeavor."

Plot

An expedition from Straumli Realm, a young human civilization in the high Beyond, investigates a newly discovered five-billion-year-old data archive in the low Transcend that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches. The expedition's facility, High Lab, is gradually and secretly compromised by an initially dormant superintelligence within the archive later known as the Blight. However, shortly before the Blight's final "flowering", two self-aware entities created similarly to the Blight plot to aid the humans before the Blight can gain its full powers.

Finally recognizing the danger, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships, one carrying the adults and the second carrying the children in "coldsleep boxes". The Blight discovers that the first ship lists a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship escapes.

The ship lands on a distant planet with a medieval-level civilization of dog-like creatures, dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. Upon landing, however, the two surviving adults, husband and wife, are ambushed and killed by Tine fanatics known as Flenserists, in whose realm they have landed. The Flenserists capture a young boy named Jefri Olsndot and his wounded sister, Johanna. Johanna is rescued by a Tine named Pilgrim who witnessed the ambush and taken to a neighboring kingdom ruled by a brilliant Tine named Woodcarver. Steel, the Flenserists' leader, tells Jefri that Johanna and their parents were killed by Woodcarver and exploits him in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication), while Johanna and the knowledge stored in her "dataset" device help Woodcarver rapidly develop as well. A highly placed Flenserist spy keeps Steel informed of Woodcarver's progress.

A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major information/service provider for the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent being named "the Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it, and reconstitutes a human man named Pham Nuwen from the wreckage of a spaceship to act as its agent, using his doubt of his own memory's veracity to keep him under its control. Ravna Bergsndot, the only human Relay employee, traces the sleeper ship's signal to the Tines' world and persuades her employer to investigate what it took from High Lab, contracting the merchant vessel Out of Band II, owned by two sentient plant "Skroderiders", Blueshell and Greenstalk, to transport her and Pham there.

Before the mission is launched, the Blight launches a surprise attack on Relay and kills Old One. As Old One dies, it downloads what information it can into Pham to defeat the Blight, and Pham, Ravna and the Skroderiders barely escape Relay's destruction in the Out of Band II.

The Blight expands, taking over races and "rewriting" their people to become its agents, murdering several other Powers, and seizing other archives in the Beyond, looking for what was taken. It finally realizes where the danger truly lies and sends a hastily assembled fleet in pursuit.

The humans arrive at the Tines' homeworld first and ally with Woodcarver to defeat the Flenserists and rescue Jefri. Pham initiates Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone outward by thousands of light years, enveloping and killing the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of civilizations and causing trillions of deaths. The humans are stranded on the Tines world, now in the depths of the Slow Zone. Activating Countermeasure is fatal to Pham, but before he dies, the ghost of Old One within his mind reveals to him that, although his body is a reconstruction, his memories are real. (Vinge expands on Pham's backstory in A Deepness in the Sky.)

Intelligent species

Aprahanti

A race of humanoids with colorful butterfly-like wings who attempt to use the chaos wrought by the Blight to reestablish their waning hegemony. Despite their attractive, delicate appearance, the Aprahanti are an extremely fearsome and vicious species.

Blight

An ancient, malevolent super-intelligent entity which strives to constantly expand and can easily manipulate electronics and organic beings.

Dirokimes

An older race which originally inhabited Sjandra Kei before the arrival of humanity. They work with the humans.

Humans

All humans in the novel (except Pham) are descended from Nyjoran stock. Their ancestors were "Tuvo-Norsk" asteroid miners from Old Earth's solar system, which is noted as being on the other side of the galaxy in the Slow Zone. (Nyjora sounds similar to New Norwegian "New Earth".) One of the major human habitations is Sjandra Kei, three systems comprising roughly 28 billion individuals. Their main language is Samnorsk, the Norwegian term for a hypothetical unification of the Bokmål and Nynorsk forms of the language. (Vinge indicates in the book's dedication that several key ideas in it came to him while at a conference in Tromsø, Norway.)

Skroders/Riders/Skroderiders

A race of plantlike beings with fronds that serve as arms. The Riders have little native capacity for short-term memory. They are one of the longest-existing species; five billion years ago, someone gave them six-wheeled mechanical constructs ("skrodes") to move around and to provide short-term memory that made it easier for them to retain information well enough to become long-term memory in the vegetable "rider". It is later revealed that their "benefactor" is the Blight, and it is able to easily corrupt and remotely operate the Riders via their skrodes.

Tines

A race of group minds: each person is a "pack" of 4–8 doglike members, which communicate within the pack using very short-range ultrasonic waves from drumlike organs called "tympana". Each "soul" can survive and evolve by adding members to replace those who die, potentially for hundreds of years, as Woodcarver does.

Related works

Vinge first used the concepts of "Zones of Thought" in a 1988 novella The Blabber, which occurs after Fire. Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky (1999) is a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep set 20,000 years earlier and featuring Pham Nuwen. Vinge's The Children of the Sky, "a near-term sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep", set ten years later, was released in October 2011.

Vinge's former wife, Joan D. Vinge, has also written stories in the Zones of Thought universe, based on his notes. These include "The Outcasts of Heaven Belt", "Legacy", and (as of 2008) a planned novel featuring Pham Nuwen.

Title

Vinge's original title for the novel was "Among the Tines"; its final title was suggested by his editors.

Awards and nominations

A Fire Upon the Deep shared the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel with Doomsday Book. The book was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel of 1992, the 1993 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the 1993 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Critical reactions

Jo Walton wrote: "Any one of the ideas in A Fire Upon the Deep would have kept an ordinary writer going for years. For me it's the book that does everything right, the example of what science fiction does when it works. ... A Fire Upon the Deep remains a favourite and a delight to re-read, absorbing even when I know exactly what's coming."

References

  1. ^ "1993 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved September 26, 2009.
  2. No longer on sale but available at the Internet Archive
  3. Review of the annotated ebook edition of A Fire Upon the Deep at Slashdot
  4. ^ Vinge, Vernor (1992). A Fire Upon the Deep. Macmillan. ISBN 9780812515282. Relay was now the main intermediate to the Magellanics, and one of the few sites with any sort of link to the Beyond in Sculptor.
  5. Vinge, A fire upon the Deep, Tor Books, 92-3
  6. Vinge, Vernor (1992). A Fire Upon the Deep (1st mass market ed.). New York: Tom Doherty Associates. p. 62. ISBN 0812515285. LCCN 91-39020.
  7. p. 436
  8. p. 322
  9. "Interview with Vernor Vinge". Norwescon. October 12, 2009.
  10. Vinge, Joan D. (November 2008). "A letter to my readers". Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved October 3, 2016.
  11. Lilley, Ernest (February 26, 2007). "Interview: Patrick Nielsen Hayden". SFRevu. Retrieved May 18, 2014.
  12. "1992 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved September 26, 2009.
  13. Walton, Jo (June 11, 2009). "The Net of a Million Lies: Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep". Tor.com.

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