Humanity is still around, and has become technologically advanced since leaving Old Earth. A Fire Upon the Deep takes place in a diverse galactic society (or group of societies) in the far future. Vinge also exhibits a sense of cosmic wonder that brings the reader back when the novel threatens to stray from itself.Īlthough this book seems to have aged well, I was struck by one critical issue that’s come to play a much bigger role in scifi since the early 90s: human augmentation. Fortunately, the story and characters are engaging and well conceived, so the bits that were over my head didn’t quash my overall enjoyment. Books like this emphasize that, for a reader of my capabilities, trying to fully grasp the vision of hard scifi writers is like trying to map an anthill by only scrutinizing it from the outside––the guesswork might be stimulating, but there’s no guarantee of accuracy. My visually-challenged brain and Vinge’s staggering intellect couldn’t always find common ground. Vinge is a competent writer capable of communicating complex thoughts with relatively simple language, but I found many of his descriptions of space travel, and especially of spaceships themselves, annoyingly opaque and often yawn-inducing. Like many sprawling scifi tales, A Fire Upon the Deep has its fair share of obscure moments. A Fire Upon the Deep is more than two decades old––long enough to qualify as outdated in this genre––and while the novel contains some dated elements, its central concepts and themes are still relevant to humanity’s ongoing discussion about what technological development is for and where it might be taking us.

As the first writer to popularize the idea of a technological singularity in fiction as well as nonfiction, Vinge has proved himself one of scifi’s most intelligent and prescient minds. I picked up Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep as part of my due diligence for understanding key moments in the history of science fiction.

Vernor vinge's a fire upon the deep