A Fire Upon the Deep

By: Vernor Vinge

Narrated by: Peter Larkin

Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.

Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought", but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.

Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization.

A Fire upon the Deep, which began the Zones of Thought series, is the winner of the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

©1992 Vernor Vinge (P)2010 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 1993

Good Story Torn apart by bad narration

The story and premise are really good, but god that narration. The cartoonish voices have been frequently mentioned but what really got me was how congested the narrator sounded. It's like he had a really bad cold or flu and they decided to record anyway. I couldn't finish i'll have to get a hard copy of the book.

Compartmentalized laws of physics

Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep is the initial installment in his Zone of Thought series. In this universe, different regions of space display distinct properties. A malevolent entity has been awakened inadvertently and begins to run roughshod over the region known as the Beyond. An eclectic group comes together to recover the only possibility means of stopping the entity while being pursued by various groups. The "weapon" has ended up on an offbeat planet of little consequence inhabited by intelligent canids who are absorbed with power struggles, now aided by the arrival of alien technology.

Vinge's universe offers a unique scenario where space possesses distinct, unique regions: close to the galactic core lies the unthinking depth where technology and intelligence do not work at all; immediately outward is the slow zone, where Earth lies along with the normal laws of physics, including light speed. After this, lies the Beyond where faster than light travel is possible and the bulk of space worthy intelligences reside, including a menagerie of alien races. Beyond the Beyond is the realm of the Transcend which is ill-defined, but suggests some form of post-human, non-biological based entities. Most of the action takes place in the Beyond with a gradient effect in place. There are also zone interface tsunamis that produce upwelling from one zone into the next. The alien species are well crafted, especially the canids that are a dog like creature, but with multiple, independent, intelligent, but disconnected units coming together to form a single person.

The narration is well done with good character distinction as well as children, especially alien juveniles. Pacing and tone are appropriate to the action.

Good science fiction; reader has a cold

It's a fun and sometimes very interesting story--especially the parts on the dog-pack planet--but it's actually rather difficult to follow the story via audiobook. There are many made-up names for technology, planets, civilizations, etc. and I often wished for a paper copy to rifle back through to figure out certain things.

The reader does a good job with voices but he seems to have had a cold for at least a couple of days of the recording. So careful-- it's distracting.

Very clever... but who cares?

There were a number of extremely creative and intelligent ideas about the future in this tale... but the author failed to make me care about any of the characters. The result is a book with a ton of brains but no heart.

Fantastic epic space story

There is a hard learning curve at the beginning to figure out the dynamics of the Zones of Thought and the different civilizations, but the prose is well written and it's worth it to see it through. The written communications across the net were my favorite part. Excellent narrator.

A head-spinning revalation!

Would you consider the audio edition of A Fire Upon the Deep to be better than the print version?

The genius of the novel is self-evident in any format.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I really loved the scrode-riders.

What does Peter Larkin bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His characters are filled with life. Peter Kenny and he have a lot in common in this respect.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. It's too long to listen to in one sitting, obviously, but I finished it in a few days.

took a leap of faith...

I let Reddit recommend this book to me and was very pleasantly surprised. The concept is very well executed and it is a solid universe to explore.

Ok story

The story has potential but the problem is the author uses words and provides no explanation to their meanings. Think about being transported to another planet and having people talking where you have no real idea what the heck they are saying or the things they are talking about. Then in chapter 6 the story jumps to another planet with no explanation. Leaving you saying what the heck where the hell are we now and what are they talking about.

Weird and Imaginative

If you are a fan of weird inventive sci-fi that makes you think, this is a great book to pick up. While it lacks the depth of character and political consciousness of Dune, Dispossessed, Man in the High Castle, or Book of the Second Sun, it belongs in that same company. It imagines radically different worlds and sees them through in detail even if the plot and characters feel a little stock.

it was aight.

Isaac Arthur suggested this it was okay but I think the story could have done better. the tines were the best part.