A Deepness in the Sky
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''A Deepness in the Sky'' is a
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. Published in 1999, the novel is a loose
prequel A prequel is a literary, dramatic or cinematic work whose story precedes that of a previous work, by focusing on events that occur before the original narrative. A prequel is a work that forms part of a backstory to the preceding work. The term " ...
(set twenty thousand years earlier) to his earlier novel ''
A Fire Upon the Deep ''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 res ...
'' (1992). The title is coined by one of the story's main characters in a debate, in a reference to the hibernating habits of his species and to the vastness of space.


Background

The plot begins with the discovery of an intelligent
alien Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
species on a planet orbiting an anomalous star, dubbed OnOff because for 215 of every 250 years it is dormant, releasing almost no detectable energy. During this period, the planet freezes and its fauna go into
hibernation Hibernation is a state of minimal activity and metabolic depression undergone by some animal species. Hibernation is a seasonal heterothermy characterized by low body-temperature, slow breathing and heart-rate, and low metabolic rate. It most ...
. The planet's inhabitants, called "Spiders" by the humans for their resemblance to arachnids, have reached a stage of technological development very similar to that of Earth's humans in the early 20th century, although humans believe that they may once have been capable of space travel. If this is true, then whoever can establish ties with the aliens first could reap unimaginable rewards; humans have made contact with only one other intelligent (but non-technological) alien species in millennia of travel through the stars. Two human groups launch expeditions to the Spider world: the Qeng Ho (pronounced ''Chung Ho'' and named after the explorer
Zheng He Zheng He (; 1371–1433 or 1435) was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during China's early Ming dynasty. He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family and later adopted the surname Zheng conferred ...
), traders who have developed a common interstellar culture for humanity; and the Emergents, a civilization that literally enslaves selected human minds and has only recently re-emerged from a Dark Age.


Plot summary

The Qeng Ho arrive at the OnOff star shortly before the Emergent fleet, a few years before the sun turns on, at which point the Spider civilization will "wake up" and continue its climb into a technological civilization. A reception held by the Emergents doubles as a vector to infect the Qeng Ho with a timed "mindrot" virus. The Emergents time an ambush to take advantage of the onset of symptoms. During these events, a concurrent history of the Spider civilization unfolds – mainly through the picaresque, and then increasingly political and technocratic, experiences of a small group of liberal-minded and progressive Spiders. Their struggles against ignorance and obsolescent traditions are coloured with oddly human-like descriptions and nomenclature, prefiguring some major plot revelations towards the end of the story. Far above, after a close fight, the Emergents subjugate the Qeng Ho; but losses to both sides force them to combine and adopt the so-called "Lurker strategy", monitoring and aiding the Spiders' technological development, waiting until they build up the massive infrastructure and technological base that the visitors need in order to repair their vessels. The mindrot virus originally manifested itself on the Emergents' home world as a devastating plague, but they subsequently mastered it and learned to use it both as a weapon and as a tool for mental domination. Emergent culture uses mindrot primarily in the form of a variant which technicians can manipulate in order to release
neurotoxin Neurotoxins are toxins that are destructive to nerve tissue (causing neurotoxicity). Neurotoxins are an extensive class of exogenous chemical neurological insultsSpencer 2000 that can adversely affect function in both developing and mature ner ...
s to specific parts of the brain. An active MRI-type device triggers changes through dia- and paramagnetic biological molecules. By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent
manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activities o ...
s induce obsession with a single idea or specialty, which they call Focus, essentially turning people into brilliant appliances. Many Qeng Ho become Focused against their will, and the Emergents retain the rest of the population under
mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
, with only a portion of the crew not in suspended animation. The Qeng Ho trading culture gradually starts to dilute this, by demonstrating to the Emergents certain benefits of tolerated and restricted
free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...
; the two human cultures merge to some extent over the decades of forced co-operation.
Pham Nuwen ''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 res ...
, the founder of the Qeng Ho trading culture, is living aboard the fleet under the pseudonym Pham Trinli, posing as an inept and bumbling fleet elder. He subverts the Emergents' own oppressive security systems through a series of high-risk ruses. During his plotting he begins to admire the Emergents' Focus technology, seeing it as the missing link in his lifelong goal to create a true interstellar empire and break the cycle of collapse-and-rebuild that plagues human planetary civilizations. The plan to wrest fleet control from the Emergents, however, requires the co-operation of Ezr Vinh, a much younger Qeng Ho who, through attrition, has become the Qeng Ho "Fleet Manager". Ezr's position as the unique liaison officer between Qeng Ho and Emergents leads him to despair, and he accepts Pham Nuwen's offer to join a plot against the Emergents as a way to personal redemption as well as to take revenge against the Emergents. However, his understanding of Pham's ambitions for Focus technology leads to a confrontation between them over the future use of Focus by the Qeng Ho. With new knowledge of the effects and victims of Focus, Pham is forced to admit the cost is too high, and the two reach an agreement and continue their plotting. The critical moment comes when the Emergents attempt to provoke a nuclear war on the Spider home-world in order to seize power. The conspirators subvert the Emergents' systems and put their plans in action, but so do a small group of Spiders who have become aware of the humans and have been working in secret for years to subvert their Focused as well. Together, the two sides successfully defeat the ruling class of the Emergents. The combined Emergent/Qeng Ho fleet now negotiates with the Spider civilization as a trading partner. Pham announces his plans to free all of the Focused in the entire Emergent civilization, and, if he survives that, to go to the Galactic Center to find the source of the OnOff star and the strange technology remnants that have clearly traveled with it.


Elements


Interstellar culture

The book discusses some of the problems of trying to maintain an interstellar trading culture without access to superluminal travel or to superluminal communication. Time-measurement details provide an interesting concept in the book: the Qeng Ho measure time primarily in terms of seconds, since the notion of days, months, and years has no usefulness between various star-systems. The timekeeping system uses terms such as kiloseconds and
megasecond The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds eac ...
s. The Qeng Ho's computer and timekeeping systems feature the advent of " programmer archaeologists": the Qeng Ho are packrats of
computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...
s and systems, retaining them over millennia, even as far back to the era of
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
programs (as implied by one passage mentioning that the fundamental time-keeping system is the Unix epoch): This massive accumulation of data implies that almost any useful program one could want already exists in the Qeng Ho fleet library, hence the need for computer archaeologists to dig up needed programs, work around their peculiarities and bugs, and assemble them into useful constructs.


Time

The Qeng Ho and other spacers in this series use kiloseconds (roughly 17 minutes), megaseconds (roughly 11.6 days), and gigaseconds (roughly 32 years) as units of time.


Localizers

With this work, Vinge introduces "localizers" to his set of science-fiction concepts. Localizers are tiny devices which can contain a simple processor, sensors, and short-range communications. Vinge explores how intelligent control can use
mesh network A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...
ing of these devices in ways quite different from those of traditional computer networks.


Relation to ''A Fire Upon the Deep''

Only one concrete connection links ''A Deepness in the Sky'' with ''
A Fire Upon the Deep ''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 res ...
'': the character of
Pham Nuwen ''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 res ...
, the "Programmer-at-Arms", who appears in both books. Hints occur about the "Zones of Thought" mentioned in ''Fire''. That novel posits that space around the
Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...
is divided into concentric layers called "Zones", each being constrained by different laws of physics and each allowing for different degrees of biological and technological advancement. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. The next layer, the "Slow Zone", is roughly equivalent to the real world in behavior and potential. Further out, the zone named the "Beyond" can support futuristic technologies such as AI and FTL travel. The outermost zone, the "Transcend", contains most of the galactic halo and is populated by incomprehensibly vast and powerful
posthuman Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of ...
entities. ''A Deepness in the Sky'' takes place in the Slow Zone, though Vinge does not explain the connections, and the characters in the story remain unaware of the zones' existence. The sun's inexplicably strange behavior, the unusual
planetary system A planetary system is a set of gravitationally In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interacti ...
(with only a solitary planet and several
asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...
-sized
diamond Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
s), and the discovery of "
cavorite ''The First Men in the Moon'' is a scientific romance by the English author H. G. Wells, originally serialised in ''The Strand Magazine'' from December 1900 to August 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantasti ...
" on the planet may indicate the system originated in the Transcend, though it is currently moving outward from the Unthinking Depths. Vinge's characters speculate that the Spiders descend from an ancient star-faring civilization, and that the anti-gravity material and other strange artifacts have connections with that civilization. Unfortunately, they guess the structure of the Zones (though not the actual properties) backwards, coming to the conclusion that the bright center of the galaxy is the most likely location for advanced civilization. This leads Pham on his path inwards to the Unthinking Depths, and his eventual resurrection.


Relation to ''The Outcasts of Heaven Belt''

Joan D. Vinge Joan D. Vinge (; born April 2, 1948 as Joan Carol Dennison) is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award–winning novel ''The Snow Queen'' and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and ...
has indicated that her novel ''The Outcasts of Heaven Belt'' is also set in the Slow Zone of the Zones of Thought setting.Vinge, Joan D. (2008-11)
"A letter to my readers."
/ref> Both novels show their spacefaring civilizations using seconds, kiloseconds, megaseconds, and gigaseconds as their primary units of time.


Reception

''Deepness'' won the 2000 Hugo Award for Best Novel, the 2000
John W. Campbell Memorial Award The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, or Campbell Memorial Award, is an annual award presented by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best science fiction no ...
, the 2000 Prometheus AwardAwards
at the Libertarian Futurist Society; retrieved March 14, 2017
and the 2004 Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for Best Foreign Fiction;2004
at Kurd-Lasswitz-Preis.de; retrieved March 14, 2017
as well, it was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2000
Arthur C. Clarke Award The Arthur C. Clarke Award is a British award given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It is named after British author Arthur C. Clarke, who gave a grant to establish the award i ...
, and the 2000
Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel The Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel is one of the annual Locus Awards presented by the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus''. Awards presented in a given year are for works published in the previous calendar year. The award f ...
Nick Gevers Nick Gevers (born 1965) is a South African science fiction editor and critic, whose work has appeared in ''The Washington Post Book World'', '' Interzone'', Scifi.com, SF Site, ''The New York Review of Science Fiction'' and ''Nova Express''. H ...
called ''Deepness'' "one of the best constructed and most absorbing space operas of the decade", and commented that its "shrewd triumph" is that neither optimism nor pessimism defeats the other.A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
reviewed by
Nick Gevers Nick Gevers (born 1965) is a South African science fiction editor and critic, whose work has appeared in ''The Washington Post Book World'', '' Interzone'', Scifi.com, SF Site, ''The New York Review of Science Fiction'' and ''Nova Express''. H ...
, at InfinityPlus.co.uk; published September 18, 1999; retrieved March 14, 2017
John Clute John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940) is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part o ...
lauded it as "the most extended example of
dramatic irony Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into ...
ever published," in that not only do none of the characters ever learn the truth about the universe, neither does anyone who has not read ''Fire''; he did, however, criticize "the odd dozen-page segments given over to hard-SF geekishness about orbits and computers and stuff".Excess of Candour: We are breathing in the dark
by
John Clute John Frederick Clute (born 12 September 1940) is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part o ...
, at
Scifi.com Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Launc ...
, via
archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
; published no later than April 24, 2000 (date of earliest version on archive.org); retrieved March 14, 2017
The '' SF Site''s Greg L. Johnson considered the novel to be "deceptively straight-forward",A Deepness in the Sky
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson; published 1999; retrieved March 14, 2017
and at '' Strange Horizons'', Amy Harlib praised it as "huge, complex and captivating" and "rich and satisfying and deserving of its award", emphasizing that it is the equal of its predecessor work.Vernor Vinge's ''A Fire Upon the Deep'' and ''A Deepness in the Sky''
at Strange Horizons, by Amy Harlib; published July 9, 2001; retrieved March 14, 2017
''
Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' described it as a "chilling, spellbinding dramatization of the horrors of slavery and mind control",A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY, by Vernor Vinge
at ''
Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
''; published February 1, 1999; archived online May 20, 2010; retrieved March 14, 2017
while ''
Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
'' noted that it would "fully engage" readers'
sense of wonder A sense of wonder (sometimes jokingly written sensawunda) is an intellectual and emotional state frequently invoked in discussions of science and biology, higher consciousness, science fiction, and philosophy. __TOC__ Definitions This entry fo ...
, and correctly predicted that it would be nominated for the Hugo Award.DEEPNESS IN THE SKY / Vernor Vinge, author
reviewed at
Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...
; published February 1, 1999; retrieved March 14, 2017


References


Release details

*1999, United States of America, Tor Books, , Pub date March 1999, Hardback *2000, United States of America, Tor Books, , Pub date January 2000, Paperback


External links

* *
A Deepness in the Sky
at Worlds Without End {{DEFAULTSORT:Deepness in the Sky, A 1999 science fiction novels 1999 American novels American science fiction novels Hugo Award for Best Novel-winning works John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel-winning works Novels by Vernor Vinge Tor Books books Novels about mass surveillance Fiction about mind control