A Deepness in the Sky: Vernor Vinge (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

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An excellent book, that I don't love quite as much as "A Fire Upon the Deep" -- but it's still pretty amazing.

On the contrary, he is so very believable that rather than finding that reality causes us to question the narrative, the narrative causes us to question reality in chilling and uncomfortable ways.

It is quite disturbing to see how they are treated like disposable wetware, while at the same time being relied on as sophisticated technicians in every conceivable aspect of Emergent life. Seven years later, he followed up with A Deepness in the Sky, set 20,000 years earlier in the same universe, and this captured the 2000 Hugo Award and John W. Once I understood why they were described in this way, the story made more sense, but it’s a major spoiler to say much more, and even after the truth emerged, I wasn’t really comfortable with how Vinge handled this part of the story. After that there was still slow parts, but it made the story seem realistic and not forced, and the story built up towards the end climax beautifully. I've become a lot pickier about my sci-fi, but A Deepness in the Sky has held up even better than the first book in the twelve years since it was written.

Alternând acțiunea între mai multe planuri, Vernor Vinge împletește cu ingeniozitate cele două lumi, conturând milenii întregi de evoluție, mentalități, conflicte sociale și politice. Ok, there are humans in there too, it reminds me of Bank´s culture ideas with the brains and Brin´s Uplift concepts with still not highly developed technology and influence, not sure about comparing it with Asimov´s foundation too, but why not, but the real stars are the arachnids, those beautiful, elegant, logical beasts.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first Zones of Thoughts novel, but this second one was too much of several things for me to care: too many characters, too much talking, too many (and too long) flashbacks. Now, probably appears in some other science fiction stories, but in this story it is a central feature. A Deepness in the Sky had all the fantastic alienness mixed with human drama and far future sci-fi awesomeness that made A Fire Upon the Deep one of my favorite SF novels ever. If you must do without something, do without beautiful prose and artsy metaphors and just tell a rip-roaring good yarn which people will sit around campfires and recount for as long as humans live under the stars. When the Qeng Ho and the Emergents arrive, the Spiders are dormant, frozen in their deepnesses, but when the star flares to life, they are poised to enter a modern technological age in the next generation.

ciuda avantajului tehnologic, odată ajunși la capătul expediției, Qeng Ho hotărăsc să încheie o alianță cu flota emergentă, fără a bănui cât de diferite erau cele două culturi.It's all fascinating--there wasn't a singe character (of the 20 or so viewpoints the reader is presented with) that I din't want to read about or cringed whenever the viewpoint shifted to him or her.